Explaining 'The Magician'

Art peels the kitsch off of life. --Robert Musil

Thomas Mann's popularity has been going the way of the Buddenbrooks family business. It is in decline. With many used editions of his books circulating, a drop in consumption would be hard to assess. But there are better indicators. After all, a shrinking readership does not always imply a decrease in stature.

So consider instead what happened this past October, when Die Zeit, Germany's most prestigious cultural-political weekly, listed fifty authors whose works would constitute an ideal library for young students of German literature. Mann came in a humiliating forty-second. And in an unrestrained act of cruelty, Die Zeit put his older brother and frequent rival, Heinrich, one spot ahead of him. Could Mann's love of obscure references and epic sweep have prompted such hostile treatment? That seems unlikely. For you will find Friedrich Hölderlin and his recondite Hyperion in twenty-third place, with Hans Henny Jahnn's huge Wood Ship next in line.

Among the Nobel laureates, Mann finished last. Yet he had the greatest effect on the global imagination. His works have been translated into fifty-one languages. And of all the characters created by all the authors on Die Zeit's list, only Goethe's Werther and Faust and Kafka's Gregor Samsa and Joseph K. are international icons of the same order as Mann's Gustav von Aschenbach and Hans Castorp. Furthermore, Mann himself developed into an international symbol. Through his BBC radio addresses, he quite literally became the voice of German antifascism during World War II. Forty-second place for the writer who, upon fleeing Europe in 1938, arrogantly, defiantly and with some justification, dared to claim, "Wherever I am, Germany is"? Has "the Magician," as Mann's children called him, lost his magic touch?

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