Reminiscences and Reflections: A Youth in Germany - Hardcover

Mann, Golo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393028712 ISBN 13: 9780393028713

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1990

Synopsis

A portrait of the author's childhood and adolescence describes the intellectual and political climate of Germany prior to World War I

About this title

Reviews

Those hoping to learn what it was like growing up in the household of Thomas Mann will gain few insights from these memoirs of his third child. The father--referred to throughout as "TM"--comes across as a shadowy figure. So, too, do the luminaries TM encounters, from novelist Hermann Hesse to educator Kurt Hahn and philosopher Karl Jaspers. Replete with dropped names, platitudes and chitchat about nearly every book the younger Mann has read, his reminiscences seem one-dimensional and inconsequential. Exceptions include his evocation of a prewar German village and an episode in which he, as a 14-year-old, is snubbed by a prince for a breach of etiquette, but such rewards are few. The author writes awkwardly: the drama of the crucial years 1932 and 1933, when he fled his country, is undercut by secondhand, needlessly complicated accounts of the maneuverings of politicians as Hitler rose to power. Nonetheless, the book concludes with remarkably moving ruminations on the plight of the exile.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As the latest in a distinguished line of memoirists from what may be Germany's most chronicled family, the eminent historian reveals little new about his famous father Thomas, Uncle Heinrich, or siblings Klaus and Erika, but he is painfully honest about his difficulty in finding his own place within a family dominated by a father whom he respects but for whom he displays little affection. In this intertwined tale of his own intellectual development and Germany's descent into fascism, Mann devotes substantial space to Kurt Hahn, the founder of the Salem School; the philosopher Karl Jaspers; and the browning of Heidelberg in the last years of the Weimar Republic. Filled with allusions to major and minor German cultural and political figures, this book is likely to appeal mostly to specialists and avid readers of German history.
- Michael T. O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393028712
• ISBN 13: 9780393028713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360