The correspondence is great and I wish there was an English translation. Meanwhile, you'll have to do with my my translation/selection from their key WWI letters. On the softer side, in his very last novel, "Der Atem", Heinrich wrote a death scene for an older sister speaking to her ambitious younger sister, and it's very obviously himself talking to his younger brother, a love declaration.
I made it easy for you, I wasn't ambitious.A very great flaw. You were disgruntled that I avoided the competition, instead of putting up resistence and then being defeated. This continued until you finally accepted that success was your, not my nature. Mine, if I have to embarass myself while dying, was arrogance. Not to compete for the world's honors is arrogance. (...) Marie-Louise, ma soeur bien-aimée, tu m'as vaincue et bien vaincue, est-se là une raison pour me hair? Aussi m'aimes-tu. (...) We are allowed to love each other again. Wasn't it always the case, with all that happened to us, that we loved each other as much as we hated each other?
Wälsungenblut: just imagine: you're the Pringsheims, one of Munich's top families, host of great salons. Your daughter has married the young, good-looking (as a young man, he was) and incredibly successful author of the season. ... And then he pulls a stunt like that. Mind you, Katia Mann had to put up with a lot in general, including, as they both figured out, a husband who on the one hand was gay (and not just "in a phase") but on the other determined not to ever sexually act on it. (The most he ever did was touch the fingertips of a waiter he adored as an old man.) "Katja very understanding" is a frequent diary entry. (Their oldest son Klaus, otoh, was not only gay but determined to have sex whenever and with whomever he wanted. This made one annoying critic conclude that since in his opinion Thomas was a genius and Klaus "just a talent" that repressing your sex urge is good for literature.) And later of course, there was the perma stress of living with Germany's Greatest Writer (TM) (In both senses) (TM about TM, when arriving in California in exile: "Wo ich bin, da ist die deutsche Kultur.") He was treated accordingly, and Katja was the gatekeeper of the literary court, so to speak.
I must say though that all of this is making me think that I am now too old and have too much on my read pile to read to spend any more time reading books written by That Kind of Guy.
I'm not going to make the case for Thomas Mann here based on my own feelings. (He has so many fans who can do it instead, and there are so many books and authors I care more deeply about you can read.) I will say, though, that it's a shame he never wrote his planned Fritz novel, because between the burning ambition and vanity, the live long brother complex, being good at irony and sarcasm and of course the gay orientation, they would have been a good match. (Except for the Fritzian Francophilia. That was Heinrich Mann's thing. TM was fluent in French and French literature as par the course for a well educated German of his time, but he didn't really love either the country or its literature.)
One more letter quote from Thomas, this time not to, but about Heinrich, written in 1917:
"The brother problem is the true, or at least the strongest problem of my life. Such closeness and such a strong inner repulsion is tormenting me. Everything is radical kinship and insult at the same time - I can hardly bear to talk about it."
Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
I made it easy for you, I wasn't ambitious.A very great flaw. You were disgruntled that I avoided the competition, instead of putting up resistence and then being defeated. This continued until you finally accepted that success was your, not my nature. Mine, if I have to embarass myself while dying, was arrogance. Not to compete for the world's honors is arrogance. (...) Marie-Louise, ma soeur bien-aimée, tu m'as vaincue et bien vaincue, est-se là une raison pour me hair? Aussi m'aimes-tu. (...) We are allowed to love each other again. Wasn't it always the case, with all that happened to us, that we loved each other as much as we hated each other?
Wälsungenblut: just imagine: you're the Pringsheims, one of Munich's top families, host of great salons. Your daughter has married the young, good-looking (as a young man, he was) and incredibly successful author of the season. ... And then he pulls a stunt like that. Mind you, Katia Mann had to put up with a lot in general, including, as they both figured out, a husband who on the one hand was gay (and not just "in a phase") but on the other determined not to ever sexually act on it. (The most he ever did was touch the fingertips of a waiter he adored as an old man.) "Katja very understanding" is a frequent diary entry. (Their oldest son Klaus, otoh, was not only gay but determined to have sex whenever and with whomever he wanted. This made one annoying critic conclude that since in his opinion Thomas was a genius and Klaus "just a talent" that repressing your sex urge is good for literature.) And later of course, there was the perma stress of living with Germany's Greatest Writer (TM) (In both senses) (TM about TM, when arriving in California in exile: "Wo ich bin, da ist die deutsche Kultur.") He was treated accordingly, and Katja was the gatekeeper of the literary court, so to speak.
I must say though that all of this is making me think that I am now too old and have too much on my read pile to read to spend any more time reading books written by That Kind of Guy.
I'm not going to make the case for Thomas Mann here based on my own feelings. (He has so many fans who can do it instead, and there are so many books and authors I care more deeply about you can read.) I will say, though, that it's a shame he never wrote his planned Fritz novel, because between the burning ambition and vanity, the live long brother complex, being good at irony and sarcasm and of course the gay orientation, they would have been a good match. (Except for the Fritzian Francophilia. That was Heinrich Mann's thing. TM was fluent in French and French literature as par the course for a well educated German of his time, but he didn't really love either the country or its literature.)
One more letter quote from Thomas, this time not to, but about Heinrich, written in 1917:
"The brother problem is the true, or at least the strongest problem of my life. Such closeness and such a strong inner repulsion is tormenting me. Everything is radical kinship and insult at the same time - I can hardly bear to talk about it."