structural:scholar_edition
Pre-war and Second World War period

In 1912, Katia was treated for tuberculosis for a few months in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, where Thomas Mann visited her for a few weeks, which inspired him to write his novel The Magic Mountain, published in 1924. He was also appalled by the risk of international confrontation between Germany and France, following the Agadir Crisis in Morocco, and later by the outbreak of the First World War. The novel ends with the outbreak of this war, in which the hero perishes.

As a “German patriot,” Mann had the proceeds from their summer house used in 1917 to subscribe to war bonds, which lost their face value after the war was lost. His father-in-law did the same, which caused a loss of a major part of the Pringsheim family's wealth. The disastrous inflation of 1923 and 1924 resulted in additional high losses. The sales success of the novella The Magic Mountain, published in 1924, improved the financial situation again, as did the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. He used the prize money to build a cottage in the fishing village of Nidden, Memel Territory (now Nida, Lithuania) on the Curonian Spit, where there was a German art colony and where he spent the summers of 1930–1932 working on Joseph and His Brothers. Today, the cottage is a cultural center dedicated to him, with a small memorial exhibition.

In February 1933, while having finished a book tour to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, Thomas Mann recovered in Arosa (Switzerland) when Hitler took power and Mann heard from his eldest children, Klaus and Erika in Munich, that it would not be safe for him to return to Germany. His political views (see chapter below) had made him an enemy of the Nazis for years. He was doubtful at first, because, with a certain naïveté, he could not imagine the violence of the overthrow and the persecution of opponents of the regime, but the children insisted, which later turned out to be spot on when it emerged that even their driver-caretaker had become a snitch and that Mann's immediate arrest would have been very likely. The family (except these two children who went to Amsterdam) emigrated to Küsnacht, near Zürich, Switzerland, after a stopover in Sanary-sur-Mer, France. The son Golo managed, at great risk, to smuggle the already completed chapters of the Joseph novel and the (sensitive) diaries into Switzerland. The Bavarian Political Police searched Mann's house in Munich and confiscated the house, its inventory and the bank accounts. At the same time, an arrest warrant was issued. Mann was also no longer able to use his holiday home in Lithuania because it was only a few hundred yards from the German border and he seemed to be at risk there. When all members of the Poetry Section at the Prussian Academy of Arts were asked to make a declaration of loyalty to the National Socialist government, Mann declared his resignation on March 17, 1933.

The writer's freedom of movement was reduced when his German passport expired. The Manns traveled to the United States for the first two times in 1934 and 1935. There was great interest in the prominent writer; the authorities allowed him entry without a valid passport. He received Czechoslovak citizenship and a passport in 1936, even though he had never lived there. A few weeks later, his German citizenship was revoked – at the same time as his wife Katia and their children Golo, Elisabeth and Michael. Furthermore, the Nazi government now expropriated the family home in Munich, which Reinhard Heydrich in particular insisted on. It had already been confiscated and forcibly rented out in 1933. In December 1936, the University of Bonn withdrew Mann's honorary doctorate, which he had been awarded in 1919.

In 1939, following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Mann emigrated to the United States, while his in-laws only managed thanks to high-ranking connections to leave Germany for Zurich in October 1939. The Manns moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where they lived on 65 Stockton Street and he began to teach at Princeton University. In 1941 he was designated consultant in German Literature, later Fellow in Germanic Literature, at the Library of Congress. In 1942, the Mann family moved to 1550 San Remo Drive in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The Manns were prominent members of the German expatriate community of Los Angeles and would frequently meet other emigres at the house of Salka and Bertold Viertel in Santa Monica, and at the Villa Aurora, the home of fellow German exile Lion Feuchtwanger. Thomas Mann's always difficult relationship with his brother Heinrich, who envied Thomas's success and wealth and also differed politically, hardly improved when the latter arrived in California, poor and sickly, in need of support. On 23 June 1944, Thomas Mann was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. The Manns lived in Los Angeles until 1952.