Von Lübeck zu Kaisersaschern. Die Wandlung in Thomas Manns Vorstellung von seiner geistigen Heimat.

Abstract

<p>Thomas Mann did not produce any regional literature, despite his <em>Buddenbrooks</em> being a Lübeck novel. In the essay <em>Bilse und ich</em> (1906), he explains that Lübeck was used only as a material to which he assigned symbolic meaning for creating a work of art. However, in the essay <em>Lübeck als geistige Lebensform</em> (1926) Mann writes that Lübeck is the growing ground of his entire artistic work. Representing an ethical stance on life, it stands for <em>Lebensbürgerlichkeit</em>, i.e. a commitment to the responsibilities of life. This is in accordance with how Mann, in his <em>Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen</em> (1918), describes the Germans as being positioned in the “middle ground” where the demands of the intellect, or spirit (<em>Geist</em>), and the unconscious urges of life attain a balance. In <em>Joseph und seine Brüder</em>, rooted intellectually in the epoch of the Weimar Republic, the idea of <em>Lebensbürgerlichkeit</em> can be recognized in a biblical setting. However, in <em>Doctor Faustus</em> (1947), which mirrors the epoch of the Third Reich, it is Kaisersaschern, the protagonist’s (fictional) school town that represents the Germans’ intellectual-spiritual stance on life, which Mann now describes as an “antiquatedness of the soul”. In this “soul”, the irrational forces of life are uncontrollable. In the essay <em>Deutschland und die Deutschen</em> (1945), Mann describes Lübeck by quotations taken from the description of the medieval atmosphere of Kaisersaschern. Lübeck no longer represents the <em>Lebensbürgerlichkeit</em> but has become a representative of what is questionable (“demonic”) in the Germans.</p>