HEIDI URI3AHN J)EjAURECUI
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decay that reached its nadir in Hitler's fascist Germany:
Doktor Faustus.
Who, if not Tholl1as Mann, has the authority to warn us today in the year
of Earl Ji.inger's centennial, that "aestheticisll1 paves the way to barbarism
in the human soul"? In the end he pinpoints one of the greatest errors in
Nietzschean thought, that it tries to rescue instinct fj-OIl1 intellect: "As
though it were necessary to defend life fi-om the mind! As though the
slightest danger exists that the earth could become too intellectual!"
And one ll1ight add: as though it were necessary today to pull the
greats frolll their pedestals- Thomas Mann, for example. We emptied the
pedestals long ago-we stand helpless before any form of mastery.
Thomas Mann never hesitated to admire or praise. Of course, this
requires a large measure of self-esteem. Already as a student in secondary
school he defends Heine when a tea cher wanted to honor the poet by
extolling his goodness: "Heinrich Heine, my dear doctor, admired
Napoleon although he was born a Gerll1an, and he admired Luther
although he wasn't a Protestant." He concludes by saying, " No, Heinrich
Heine was not a good Illan , he was only a great man ."
Thomas Mann responded wi th tirel ess patience to inquiries and Ietters
from young and old , provided information and did not shrink from grant–
ing the highest praise. To the twenty year old Peter Hacks, then a student
in Munich, he writes that it seems to him " that your dissertation [on the
use of style in
Lotte
ill vf;hlll(1rJ
is probably the cleverest thing I have read
about the book." l3ut, he also responded politely to the most na'ive queries,
regardless of their source and expresses his surprise in his diary at his fj-iend
Hesse's "severity in his dealings with the people." On one of his birthdays
he acknowledges that he, unlike Illany "public" people, doesn't retreat
from a celebration: " ... 1 believe one should acquiesce to life and do one's
duty in it and celebrate festivities as they come." l3ut he also could be sus–
picious of the cOllllllunicative, worldly-wise and world-obsessed side of his
genius. At seventy-five, after reading a biography of Luther, he rell1arks,
"Erasll1us; I fear that his role-dazzling, but satisfying no one-is akin to
Illy own." Shortly thereafter he concl udes "that the greatness of nei ther
was an entirely happy greatness, neither Luther's nor that of Erasmus ." And
he adds, "I see the happy, the absolutely endearing ill Goethe, who was
both Luther and Erasmus at once." If he was a successor to Goethe, he was
one who knew his limits.
The end wasn't without some bitterness. Speaking through his alter
ego, Tonio Kroger, he says that a good work emerges "only under the pres–
sure of an awful life," that "he who lives, doesn't work." When one
considers his existence, it seems that his theme of "art and life" often more
closely resembled "art or life." As an old man he still demanded the utmost
of himself, even if it was with an increasing lack of creative energy. Even
