Dieter Borchmeyer: Thomas Mann and Judaism

Thomas Mann wrote the conservative “Reflections of an Unpolitical Man” to distance himself from his brother Heinrich, thereby supporting German war policy. A few years later, he recanted the text and, in his 1922 speech “On the German Republic,” made a decisive commitment to democracy. From then on, he engaged with Judaism more intensively than almost any other German author of his time: His Jewish characters bear the marks of their time, but in many ways also point significantly beyond it.


Dieter Borchmeyer, born in 1941, is professor emeritus at the University of Heidelberg, was president of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and continues to teach at the University of Heidelberg as part of the endowed lectureship “Heidelberg Lectures on Cultural Theory.” Borchmeyer's field of work primarily encompasses German literature from the 18th to the 20th century as well as musical theater, with monographs on Goethe, Schiller, Mozart, Wagner, and Nietzsche. Conversation with Thomas Sparr.



(IN GERMAN)