Heinrich Mann

Independent activity Social democracy 1871–1950 ○ Died in exile in the United States

Novelist who satirised Wilhelmine Germany in Der Untertan and led the German Popular Front effort in exile

German novelist, born in 1871 into a wealthy grain-merchant family in Lübeck, and the elder brother of Thomas Mann. Professor Unrat (1905) and Der Untertan (1918), satires of the servility and nationalism of the Wilhelmine middle class, made his name, and he opposed the First World War from the start. He presided over the literature section of the Prussian Academy of Arts and in 1932 and 1933 signed the Urgent Call for joint action of the Communist and Social Democratic parties against the Nazis. He left Germany in February 1933, was expelled from the Academy and in August was stripped of his citizenship. At the book burning of 10 May his writings were thrown into the flames with the cry "Against decadence and moral decline!" In French exile he chaired the preparatory committee of the German Popular Front; in 1940 he escaped to the United States and died in Santa Monica in 1950.

Also known as: Luiz Heinrich Mann