Thomas Mann

His maternal grandmother was Portuguese: Maria Senhorinha da Silva (1829-1856).

Son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (1840-1891) and Júlia da Silva Bruhns (1851-1923).

Born on 6 June 1875 in Lübeck, his family moved to Munich in 1893, where he lived until 1933 and wrote some of his most successful novels like "Buddenbrocks" (1901), "Death in Venice" (1912) or "The Magic Mountain" (1924).

Brother of writer Heinrich Mann, Julia Elizabeth Mann (1877-1927), Carla Augusta Mann (1881-1910), Carl Viktor Mann (1890-1949).

Father of Erika Mann(writer), Golo Mann and Klaus Mann (writer), Monika Mann (1910-1992) and Michael Thomas Mann (1919-1977).

Conferred an honorary doctor's degree by the University of Bonn in 1919 (deprived in 1937, and restored in 1946).

Since 1922 he defended democratic freedom and fought against the upcoming national socialism in Germany.

Father-in-law of actor Gustaf Gründgens from 1926 to 1929.

Thomas Mann was probably Germany's most influential author of the 20th century, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.

From 1936 to 1944 Mann and his family were citizens of Czechoslovakia.

Grandfather of Fridolin Mann, born 1940, and Anthony Mann, born 1942 (Michael's sons), Angelica, born 1940, and Domenica, born 1944 (Elizabeth's daughters).

After the Nazi takeover, the humanist and anti-fascist, married to Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a secular Jewish family, emigrated to Switzerland, then to Princeton and Pacific Palisades in the United States, where he finished his great tetra-logy "Joseph and His Brothers" in 1942.

Two years later, he became a naturalized US citizen, but finally returned to Europe in 1952.

Is portrayed by Armin Mueller-Stahl on Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman (2001).

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 133, pp. 317-333. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.