What do you think?
Rate this book
Three Essays
1929. Mann, German essayist, cultural critic, and novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Among Mann's most famous works are Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain. His novels usually explore the relationship between the exceptional individual and his or her environment, the environment of family, or of the world in general. Contents: Goethe and Tolstoy; Frederick the Great and the Grand Coalition; and An Experience in the Occult. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
Paperback
About the author
Thomas Mann
2,315 books5,716 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
See also:
Serbian: Tomas Man
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
See also:
Serbian: Tomas Man
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 27, 2025
Thomas Mann’s Three Essays has a deceptively uniform title. These pieces are utterly unlike each other to the extent that they might have been written by different authors. Covering literary criticism of a type, politics and contemporary society, these three occasional essays could not be more different. The first, dealing with an extended comparison of the writers Goethe and Tolstoy occupies half of the book. The second offers a portrait of Frederick The Great and is a tightly argued, historical analysis, while the third, shorter piece deals with author’s direct experience.
Goethe and Tolstoy came about, explains the author, as a result of the two men at opposite ends of their lives sharing a brief period of residency in Weimar. They never met, nor were conscious of their shared experience. In the essay about them, Thomas Mann clearly wanted to place on record his preference for the enlightenment rationality of Goethe in contrast to the Asiatic class-consciousness of Tolstoy and this was his opportunity. In a hundred pages or more, this contrast is revisited repeatedly and exhaustively. Goethe and Tolstoy could be a lot shorter and make the same point, but Thomas Mann almost revels in the opportunity to compare and contrast. The activity covers the writers' lives, works and social and historical contexts, but in no particular order. But basically, Mann respects Goethe’s Western European rationality, whereas he mistrusts Tolstoy’s Asiatic nobility. The fact that Mann is himself basically a rational thinker comes clear in his statement that with the right training, anyone can do anything, thus belittling birthright as a factor in the acquisition of genius. “With brains and sensibility anything can be made out of any life, out of any life a romantic existence can be made,” he writes and thus implicitly questions Tolstoy’s origins. Overall, the argument he employs, however, makes this piece for the reader a trudge through mud.
The contrast with Frederick The Great and the Grand Coalition could not be greater. Here we have a tightly argued analysis of the decisions that Frederick The Great made upon becoming the ruler in Prussia. He was the ruler that made Prussia great for the first time. His homeland, smaller than its imperial neighbours and potentially squeezed between their interests, needed steady political hands, and not a little guile to succeed. Frederick The Great, argues Mann, had both of these qualities plus the desire to lead Prussia throughout the years of warfare that were needed to achieve his end.
When reading this essay, however, we are reminded of the fact that in the 18th century - why be so specific? - politics and war were played out by ruling elites who, themselves, largely avoided the battlefield. And because these ruling families were often interrelated and inter-married, the wars they fought were merely family squabbles where others got killed.
An Experience in the Occult which concludes the volume is a strange piece of writing. Until Thomas Mann begins his off-the-wall speculation about organic material dematerialized, this could even be a short story. It presents a description of a seance, right down to the clawed hand lifting cape, with its decoration of fluorescent ribbons, in the darkness. An interesting point is that the author never questions why the lights had to be dimmed. We all know why. Thomas Mann says he is sceptical about what he experienced, but he then embarks upon a suggested explanation of what he had experienced without concluding that trickery was the most likely.
In the end these three essays make an interesting read. From the verbose to the precise to the journalistic, Thomas Mann reveals to his readers his complete mastery of writing.
Goethe and Tolstoy came about, explains the author, as a result of the two men at opposite ends of their lives sharing a brief period of residency in Weimar. They never met, nor were conscious of their shared experience. In the essay about them, Thomas Mann clearly wanted to place on record his preference for the enlightenment rationality of Goethe in contrast to the Asiatic class-consciousness of Tolstoy and this was his opportunity. In a hundred pages or more, this contrast is revisited repeatedly and exhaustively. Goethe and Tolstoy could be a lot shorter and make the same point, but Thomas Mann almost revels in the opportunity to compare and contrast. The activity covers the writers' lives, works and social and historical contexts, but in no particular order. But basically, Mann respects Goethe’s Western European rationality, whereas he mistrusts Tolstoy’s Asiatic nobility. The fact that Mann is himself basically a rational thinker comes clear in his statement that with the right training, anyone can do anything, thus belittling birthright as a factor in the acquisition of genius. “With brains and sensibility anything can be made out of any life, out of any life a romantic existence can be made,” he writes and thus implicitly questions Tolstoy’s origins. Overall, the argument he employs, however, makes this piece for the reader a trudge through mud.
The contrast with Frederick The Great and the Grand Coalition could not be greater. Here we have a tightly argued analysis of the decisions that Frederick The Great made upon becoming the ruler in Prussia. He was the ruler that made Prussia great for the first time. His homeland, smaller than its imperial neighbours and potentially squeezed between their interests, needed steady political hands, and not a little guile to succeed. Frederick The Great, argues Mann, had both of these qualities plus the desire to lead Prussia throughout the years of warfare that were needed to achieve his end.
When reading this essay, however, we are reminded of the fact that in the 18th century - why be so specific? - politics and war were played out by ruling elites who, themselves, largely avoided the battlefield. And because these ruling families were often interrelated and inter-married, the wars they fought were merely family squabbles where others got killed.
An Experience in the Occult which concludes the volume is a strange piece of writing. Until Thomas Mann begins his off-the-wall speculation about organic material dematerialized, this could even be a short story. It presents a description of a seance, right down to the clawed hand lifting cape, with its decoration of fluorescent ribbons, in the darkness. An interesting point is that the author never questions why the lights had to be dimmed. We all know why. Thomas Mann says he is sceptical about what he experienced, but he then embarks upon a suggested explanation of what he had experienced without concluding that trickery was the most likely.
In the end these three essays make an interesting read. From the verbose to the precise to the journalistic, Thomas Mann reveals to his readers his complete mastery of writing.
April 8, 2017
something different and unfairly less known from the Master.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews