The Hesse/Mann Letters – Comment

 

Reading any letters from the past, at times in a magical way, gives the reader a greater and visceral insight into history. The Hesse/Man Letters are a correspondence between two greats of German literature and modern literature of the 20th century. Both men lived through two world wars. Both writers’ works are significantly different in style and content.

Mann’s work is an ironic view of bourgeois 19th century politics and middleclass values. In Germany. Buddenbrooks, written at an early age, captured the hypocrisy and stuffy bureaucratic machinations of the wealthy German class of the time. Hesse, however, wrote of the young German exploration of individuality and the pursuit of spirituality against the backdrop of a growing dangerous and crueler world.

The growing German fascism in the 30’s, both writers commented on their fears and trepidation of the Nazis censorship of writers, artists, and intellectuals who stood against their barbaric ideology. Many of their friends who decided to remain in the fatherland and continue their criticism were placed in concentration camps or executed.  

 

Mann remained as apolitical as possible to ensure his books did not become banned or burned. Interestingly, Hesse’s books were overlooked by the regime, negatively commented on by Nazi critics but never totally banned. 

 

Hesse was a self-proclaimed pacifist and had been throughout WWI.  

 

Once Mann had to flee his beloved Germany, barely escaping Europe before the Nazis arrested him and his family, Mann’s American connections got him over the border into Switzerland and eventually the United States. It was in America that he authored many essays and lectured against the Nazis.  

 

Throughout Mann’s constant travelling and many dwellings, he managed to maintain consistent correspondence with Hesse. Mann proposed Hesse for the Nobel Prize for literature, which he received in November 1946.  

 

The actions of the Nazis in the 30’s and 40’s, remind me of our modern world of cancelling and censorship. This suppression of free speech in Nazi Germany is worth mentioning because it is becoming close to identical in the 21st century.  

Their letters become more congratulatory and heartfelt in their old age. As old men do, both wrote about their various illnesses, and Hesse’s visits to sanatoriums throughout his life. What I found most profound is despite their varied illnesses (Hesse’s sciatica and bad eyesight, Mann’s lung problems) both continued to write to produce what we consider “classics” today.  

 

When reading these letters, we are thrown into this tumultuous time, envisioning the planet from their eyes, their astute observations, and their creation of extraordinary works of art.  

Both men, like their contemporaries, Einstein, Schwitzer, Zwieg and Russell (to name a few) believed in Humanism; that peace will enable creative human beings to move forward without constrained and authoritarian ideologies.  

An insightful, and educational view into the 20th century.