Heinrich Mann. The main milestones of the creative path

“We honor in Heinrich Mann a great German writer whose work has been - and will forever remain - an important part of our national cultural wealth ... a staunch democrat and a tireless fighter for the cause of progress ... a staunch supporter of our just struggle for a socialist social system ... a kind and loving person whose my heart beat for the outcasts and the destitute, who, with their work and their lives, as a true “teacher of democracy”, facilitated their path to a better future.” These words of Wilhelm Pieck, from his speech dedicated to the memory of Heinrich Mann, precisely determine the place of the great German writer in the history of German national culture, the significance of his life's work for all progressive mankind.

Coeval of the German Empire (dates of the writer's life 1871–1950), which arose as a result of the victory of Prussia over Napoleon III's France in the Franco-Prussian War, Heinrich Mann throughout his life, whether it was the years of the Wilhelmian monarchy, or the Weimar Republic, or Hitler's "Third Reich", persistently and passionately fought for the democratic development of his homeland.

A characteristic feature of the creative image of Heinrich Mann, the greatest artist and one of the most remarkable masters of the word in German literature, was a constant desire to resolve political issues. And, of course, it is no coincidence that journalism occupies such an extensive place in the rich creative heritage of the writer.

Heinrich Mapn himself considered the beginning of his career in 1900, when his first significant novel, The Promised Land, was published. And in 1910, when, according to him, "the Kaiser's empire was in full bloom and power", he began his active journalistic activity with a programmatic article with the remarkable title "Spirit and Action". Sharply criticizing the spiritual and political atmosphere of Germany at that time, G. Mann defends in this article the idea of ​​a synthesis of spirit and action, bearing in mind, first of all, the political aspect of this synthesis. And further, in the well-known essay about Zola, written at the beginning of the First World War (in 1915), the writer clearly and concisely formulates his aesthetic credo: “Literature and politics have the same object, the same goal, and in order not to degenerate, they must penetrate each other.

Coming from a burgher-patrician environment, H. Mann for a long time retained faith in the vitality of the principles of bourgeois democracy, and from these positions he fought in the last years of the Weimar Republic against the impending Nazi dictatorship. But, despite the misconceptions and mistakes associated with these positions, the very desire to be consistently true to these principles inevitably opened his eyes to their limitations and archaism in the conditions of modern socio-political struggle. Thus he becomes a convinced supporter of socialism, an ally of the proletariat, a friend of the Soviet Union. In one of the articles of 1924, he publicly and unequivocally declared his sympathies for the Soviet Union and its creator V. I. Lenin: “Paying tribute to Lenin, I cannot but recognize his intransigence. It became easier for me to do this after I became convinced of his ability to subordinate his business to the urgent needs of people. So he loved people as much as business, and that's why he acted like a great man." The October Revolution in Russia for the author of this article is a “great event”, and the influence of this event was so strong on him that, in sharp contradiction with his convictions as a bourgeois democrat, he expresses confidence in the doom of the bourgeoisie after the Russian revolution and declares that the bourgeois "the ideal of civil liberty" has long been retired."

Sharp political flair and foresight, which rarely betrayed G. Mann, were combined with great historical optimism, which did not leave him even during the time of Hitler's domination, in the time of bitter disasters of emigration, which were especially difficult for the aged writer during his stay in California at the end of his life path. . Lion Feuchtwanger, like G. Mann, who tasted the bitter bread of the American emigration, wrote at that time in one of the periodical emigrant publications of German writers: embryo, long before they became reality. When the great horror subsequently struck and everything changed so much ... many of us became confused and panicked ... Heinrich Mann did not let himself be deceived.

Literature in Germany after the revolution of 1848, due to a number of socio-political reasons - primarily because of the treacherous role of the German bourgeoisie in this revolution, because of the weakness of the bourgeois-democratic strata of the fragmented nation - for a long time loses the world significance that it had in the era Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, romantics and Heine. Heinrich Mann, along with his brother Thomas, is credited with the great merit in the development of German national culture, that they once again brought German literature onto the broad world highway. While the literature of England and France in the 19th century gave the greatest examples of the European novel and short story, embodying the principles of critical realism, German literature, although it put forward a number of significant phenomena in the 70-80s (such as the work of Theodore Fontane) , nevertheless continued to remain on the periphery of this most important socio-aesthetic process. The Mann brothers, relying on the experience of the leading literatures of Europe, including Russian, and at the same time using the national realistic tradition, for the first time raised the German novel of critical realism to the level of the best examples of this genre.

The path of Heinrich Mann, an artist and publicist, a public figure, is marked by complex ideological and aesthetic searches. Being a true German patriot, he contrasted Kaiser's Germany with the dream of such a state structure for his homeland, in which every human person, in conditions of true freedom, would achieve harmonious development, and culture would flourish. He called this ideal society "democracy of the spirit", contrasting it with modern bourgeois democracy. The writer was ready to recognize the revolutionary overthrow of the Wilhelmian monarchy as the path to just social relations. But in contemporary Germany he saw only the spontaneous protest of the popular masses against Prussian imperialism and the conciliatory policy of the Right Social Democracy. Hence his disbelief in the revolutionary reorganization of the social system and his opposition to the "revolution of the spirit", that is, the gradual transformation of society through the education of the masses by individual enlightened personalities - humanists who hate the imperialist bourgeoisie and Prussianism. Such a social utopia in many respects contributed to the establishment of the writer on the positions of individualism, which were often quite strongly reflected in his work.

Already at an early stage of his career, developing as a realist artist, developing the genre of the social novel, G. Mann wages a persistent struggle against the aesthetic and decadent trends in art, which were greatly developed in Germany (as well as in other European countries) at the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. And although he himself paid a certain tribute to these aesthetic tendencies, he soon subjected them to a brilliant satirical debunking in the novel Teacher Gnus (1905). Of his early novels, Heinrich Mann said that he "went in them from the affirmation of individualism to the veneration of democracy." Already in these works, with some elements of his creative manner (a grotesque image-mask), G. Mann declared himself as a forerunner of expressionism, a literary and artistic trend that arose in Germany in the early 10s and had a significant impact on the development of German art and, in particular, , literature until the mid-20s. Some closeness to expressionism is also found in the later work of the writer (the novel The Head, 1925, and the novella Kobes, 1923, ideologically and artistically connected with it).

In shaping both the spiritual image of G. Mann and his creative manner, the socio-political and cultural traditions of France played an important role. Being a militant humanist, he saw that the historical connection between bourgeois humanism and bourgeois revolutionism was more clearly expressed not in German, but in French bourgeois ideology. The writer keenly felt the dominance of reaction and the weakness of the progressive forces of German society at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. That is why he seeks support and inspiration in the humanistic ideals of the French Enlightenment, in the revolution of 1789-1794 and in French critical realism from Balzac to Zola and France. The plots of the French Revolution appear in a number of dramatic works (the most significant of them is the drama Madame Legros, 1913). G. Mann always considered this revolution to be a significant milestone in the spiritual and political development of mankind. In addition to the experience of French critical realism, the contribution to world literature made by the great Russian realists of the second half of the 19th century, to whom he always paid tribute, also played a significant role in the creative practice of G. Mann. However, these literary influences do not in the least detract from the indisputable fact that already in his youth, H. Mann appears as an artist endowed with a bright and original talent. From the writers of France, he learned not the techniques of literary skill, but the creation of such literature, which, depicting the private life of the characters, their inner, spiritual world, would reflect the social laws of their era, its political struggles, that is, the creation of the genre of the social novel, which lacked the then German literature. The social, civic purpose of art is what G. Mann first of all perceived from the French and Russian critical realists. At the same time, no matter how significant foreign literary influences on H. Mann, they do not give the slightest reason to deny the deep national roots of his work. The example of the French critical realists did not obscure the greatest achievements of progressive German literature before H. Mann. This, in particular, is evidenced by his articles on Lessing, Goethe, Heine. Among G. Mann's unpublished works, there is a small short story "The Great Contemporary", which recreates the image of the dying Heine. In it, the writer pays tribute to the courage and fortitude of the sick and old poet, who lived a wonderful life full of poetry, love and struggle. The satirical line of his work G. Mann largely continued and developed the traditions of Heine's sharpest public satire.

G. Mann was born in 1871 in the ancient Baltic city of Lübeck, which once headed the Hansa - the trade and political union of the northern coastal cities of Germany, where the spirit of separatism and independence in relation to Prussia was preserved for a long time. The writer's father, the owner of a grain wholesale company, shipowner, consul and senator, belonged to the wealthy burgher-patrician elite of the city. Heinrich was the eldest son. In addition to him, the family had two sisters and two brothers. Thomas Mann in the novel "Buddenbrooks", written in the genre of a family chronicle of four generations of a wealthy merchant family, recreated the atmosphere of his home in Lübeck.

The writer's mother, Julia da Silva Bruns, a native of Brazil, the daughter of a Creole and a German, was an enlightened woman. She devoted herself entirely to raising children, trying to give them a broad liberal education. The moderately conservative spirit that reigned in the "house of Buddenbrooks" was combined with admiration for the culture of the Enlightenment with its freethinking and criticism. The wealthy Lübeck bourgeoisie, whose commercial interests were much more closely connected with other European countries than with Hohenzollern's Prussia, had a clear dislike for the newly emerged Wilhelmian empire, which was depriving them of the last privileges of the former free city. This circumstance could not but influence the formation of the social consciousness of the young man. After graduating from the gymnasium in 1889, G. Mann lives in Dresden and Berlin, where he studies bookselling, and listens to lecture courses on history and philology at the University of Berlin. Observations on the life of the citadel of Prussianism, which became the capital of the growing Second Reich, were very fruitful for the novice writer (his first attempts at writing date back to the last year of his stay at the gymnasium). In 1891, after the death of his father and the liquidation of the company, the family moved to the capital of Bavaria - Munich. The independent financial situation, which provided G. Mann with his share of the inheritance (up to the strongest inflation that erupted after the First World War), allowed him to choose the path of a free writer and join the advanced German intelligentsia. The writer only visits Munich, gets acquainted with France, for a long time chooses Italy as a permanent place of residence, the culture of which contributed to the flowering of his creative talent. These years for G. Mann are a time of hard and persistent work, careful observation of the development of social and political life in Germany and Europe, tireless study of cultural heritage, especially the history and literature of France.

Before the collapse of Germany in the First World War and the creation of the Weimar Republic in 1918, G. Mann published about ten novels, two collections of short stories and several dramas. Rejecting the principles of decadent aesthetics, he formed mainly as a satirist writer. His work of this period is significant above all by the enormous power of negation. Heinrich Mann becomes a denunciator of German imperialism, just as his older contemporary Anatole France became an denunciator of French imperialism. However, the writer's work in later years - during the period of the Weimar Republic and emigration - is marked by a persistent and largely fruitful search for a positive ideal and its artistic embodiment, an ideal that, as a rule, is either completely absent or very poorly outlined in early works.

In the pre-Weimar period, G. Mann reaches the heights of satirical skill with his two novels "Teacher Gnus" and "Loyal Subject".

The searches that led the writer to these achievements were meaningful and complex. A significant milestone in his evolution was the novel-trilogy "Goddesses, or Three Novels of the Duchess of Assy" (1903). Already here one can clearly feel the internally contradictory process of overcoming individualistic decadent aesthetics: its known influence on the writer and - at the same time - the struggle against it, sometimes sharply critical elucidation of it.

The beginning of the satirical line in the work of Heinrich Mann should be considered the first significant work of the writer - the novel The Promised Land (1900), whose very name is based on the satirical traditions of old German literature of the 16th-18th centuries. Using here the experience of Balzac and especially Maupassant (the novel "Dear Friend"), G. Mann tells how a poor young provincial Andreas Zumsee, a typical German tradesman, finds himself in a "fairy-tale land" - surrounded by businessmen and speculators who dominate all spheres of public life in Berlin in the 90s, with its commercial hype, which gave rise to a new social type of capitalist predator for Germany at that time, controlling the press, art, politics, and, of course, finances. This is how G. Mann saw Berlin, this is how he reflected it by means of a sharp satirical grotesque in his novel.

The most important stage in the formation of the writer's satirical talent was his even brighter novel Professor Unrat, 1905. largely influenced by the Russian Revolution of 1905. The compositional and ideological core of the novel is the image of Gnus, a gymnasium teacher in a small German town, disgusting in appearance and disgusting inwardly. Putting this dirty misanthrope, a petty tyrant who claims to be an anarchist "superman" in comically grotesque situations, H. Mann not only debunks the Nietzschean "blond beast", but also sharply polemicizes with the official propaganda of German imperialism.

The humanist writer, passionately defending the virtues of the human mind, was disgusted by the Prussian ideal of the unreasoning soldier and official, blindly obeying orders from above. Therefore, the school system that brought up such obedient slaves was also unacceptable to him. The then official press in every way praised the Prussian school and the Prussian teachers, who allegedly inherited the traditions of the German Enlightenment. German nationalist historians argued that the wars with Austria (1866) and France (1870–1871) were won by a Prussian teacher who allegedly brought up a type of person of a higher culture than the French and Austrians. G. Mann's novel shows what the Prussian school and the Prussian teacher really were. Gnus, a narrow-minded pedant, stupid and vicious (the German version of Unter Prishibeev), reigns supreme in the gymnasium, which is a kind of Prussian barracks. The goal of Gnus - and the German gymnasium in general - is to kill any ability to think freely in students, to turn them into loyal subjects. Gnus himself, although he stands on a low rung of the Prussian social hierarchy, recognizes himself as an important particle of the state organism. Indeed, in many ways he embodies the spirit of the Prussian state system. A morally ugly bearer of Nietzsche's ideas, Gnus appears in the novel in two completely different and, it would seem, hardly compatible hypostases. At the beginning, the vicious and vindictive old man, disgustingly comical in his claims to unlimited power, manifests himself primarily as a vigilant zealot of the existing state and social foundations. Everywhere he sees a “rebellion”, which supposedly it is he who is called upon to suppress. He is a staunch enemy of the labor movement, he sees in every high school student a potential rebel. Quite natural boyish mischief and prank, and even more so any free manifestation of thought, for Gnus is a rebellion. That is why he most of all hates the graceful, free-thinking and not giving any external reason to "catch himself red-handed" high school student Loman, who tries to imitate Heine in his poems. Moreover: in the exaggerated conceit of the tyrant Gnus imagines himself the ruler of the entire town on the grounds that many of the townspeople were formerly his students.

Both the central image of Gnus and the whole novel as a whole are built on the techniques of satirical hyperbole. Hyperbolic - both in the deliberate disgust of appearance, and in the sharp psychological characterization - Gnus with his small, but exorbitantly ugly passions. The very plot of the novel is also hyperbolic; a pedantic guardian of moral principles, Gnus, in his irrepressible zeal to protect these foundations, finds himself in a dirty institution - a half-tavern, a half-brothel with an openly mocking name "Blue Angel", where a young pretty whore reigns - a voiceless singer Frelich, whom Gnus pompously calls "artist Frelich". And now this old bachelor, who has been instructing his students in the rules of strict morality for many years, having fallen in love with a chansonette, becomes a regular in a dirty brothel. In the community with the "artist Frelich", whose faithful companion and cohabitant he becomes, Gnus finds new and even wider opportunities to satisfy his misanthropic inclinations and comically grotesque thirst for power. In venomous gloating, using his concubine as bait, he corrupts the entire city. Prominent citizens, respectable wealthy burghers, "fathers of the city" by the efforts of Gnus become embezzlers, swindlers, debauchees. But this second Gnus - an anarchist who shakes the moral foundations - does not at all contradict the tyrannical guardian of the same foundations. Destroying them now, he, as before, imagines himself to be a chosen person, a superman, for whom there is no philistine morality. He clearly declares his “philosophy” on this subject in front of the “artist Frelich”, stating that the so-called morality is the lot of only slave souls, while he himself, in his opinion, belongs to those circles that are guided by completely different moral laws. He, Gnus, "adhered to these moral traditions of philistinism" only because he had "no reason to break with them." Mr. Mann unambiguously makes it clear how illusory and shaky the ostentatious morality of the German philistinism is, if Gnus so easily manages to draw the townspeople with the most impeccable reputation into the maelstrom of vice.

This novel convincingly testifies to a significant expansion of the writer's creative palette. The technique of the grotesque image-mask, already used in the novel The Promised Land, remains here, but at the same time it is saturated with a much more developed psychological content. The secondary characters are drawn more clearly and in depth. Details are selected more purposefully when describing situations and images - in the description of costumes, the realities of the interior, place and time. In general, the novel is an important step in the creative path of the writer. Satire sounded in the previous novels of G. Mann, but it was directed mainly to private objects - individual capitalist businessmen and financial tycoons, petty-bourgeois morals. In the same novel, the writer illuminates the foundations of the Wilhelmian monarchy as a whole with the sharp light of a satirical searchlight. The deepening and expansion of the tasks of satire is typical for the novel "The Loyal Subject", which artistically and ideologically develops the aesthetic principles of the novel "Teacher Gnus".

"The Loyal Subject" is the first novel in the "Empire" trilogy - the most significant creative achievement of G. Mann before the start of emigration. The idea of ​​the trilogy was not planned in advance, but was formed gradually, as the author worked on its individual parts. Like the grandiose The Human Comedy by Balzac and the multi-volume series of novels by Zola Rougon-Macquart, which depicted the private and socio-political life of France in various aspects, H. Mann set himself the task of giving a general picture of the Wilhelmian empire in this trilogy. The first novel of the trilogy "The Loyal Subject" (1914), by the definition of G. Mann himself, is devoted to the depiction of the bourgeoisie, the second - "The Poor" (1917) - the proletariat, the third - "The Head" (1925) - the ways of the intelligentsia. Although the individual parts of the trilogy are unequal, it occupies an important place in the writer's legacy, in particular because in it he seeks for the first time to comprehend the main contradiction of his era - the class struggle of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The most perfect part of the trilogy is the novel "The Loyal Subject", on which the author worked from 1912 to 1914. A ban was imposed on its publication, and only in 1918 was it published in Germany. During the period of intensive preparations for the First World War, rampant reaction and chauvinism, and the brewing of an acute political crisis in Germany, H. Mann creates his most accusatory work, one of the best novels of German critical realism.

The central character of the novel, Diederich Gesling, is a generalized and typical embodiment of the national traits of the German bourgeoisie. Focusing on revealing the essence of this social type, G. Mann shows it in a variety of social relations, thereby expanding the social framework of the novel to the broad picture of the Kaiser empire - that socio-political structure that was based on the alliance of the bourgeoisie and the Junkers, the alliance , objectively supported by the treacherous leadership of the German Social Democracy. In creating the image of Gesling, G. Mann relied not only on the experience of his own satirical work, but also continued the best traditions of social satire in German literature. Disgusting, but also terrible in its mass character, the German bourgeois loyalist Gösling G. Mann has his direct, albeit distant literary ancestors in the Hoffmannian philistine - Murr's cat and Heine's radical bourgeois, also embodied in the animalistic character - the bear Atta Troll. On the other hand, does not this Gesling, whose immediate descendants became the backbone of the Hitlerite dictatorship, and continue to be a social and political danger in West Germany, not remain relevant for our time?

Formally, the action of the novel is related to the 90s of the last century (more precisely, from 1890 to 1897), but, in essence, it depicts Germany up to the eve of the First World War.

In studies of this novel, its compositional harmony has been noted more than once, which in this sense distinguishes The Loyal Subject from G. Mann's previous novels, in particular from The Teacher Gnus. It would hardly be correct to seek an explanation for this circumstance only in the increased formal skill of the writer. Compositional completeness reflects a clear ideological concept - the deep penetration of the writer into the essence of the social phenomenon that is embodied in the image of Gesling. In passing, we note that the lack of an equally clear understanding of other social forces of the Wilhelmian empire largely determined some of the weaknesses - including compositional ones - of the last two parts of the trilogy.

The novel consists of six chapters. The first two are written in the traditions of the German "novel of education", or rather, they parody these traditions. As the Soviet researcher O. V. Yegorov aptly noted, the novel of upbringing (“Bildungsroman”) here turns into a “novel of decay”. G. Mann consistently shows how, in the conditions of a burgher German family, school, student environment, military service, and, finally, the entire social atmosphere in Germany, a social type similar to Gesling is formed. Gosling Sr., a small manufacturer, teaches little Didel to bow before power and authority. Mother - a typical sentimental bourgeois - contributes to the development of hypocrisy, deceit and meanness in his character. The school educates him in the same direction. Here Diederich is no longer simply conscious, but also "principled". He quickly becomes the first student, but also the first informer. Here, in the classroom, he learns to tremble before authority and slavishly worship it. Further, becoming a student, he receives the so-called Christian-German education in the New Teutonia student corporation, where he fully assimilates an extensive, but simple complex of reactionary-chauvinistic ideas. Participation in noisy corporant drinking parties and rapier duels gives him traits of arrogance, fanfare and the ability to cover up his dirty deeds with grandiloquent phrases and outwardly plausible forms. In this atmosphere, the falsity and duplicity of Gesling are quickly revealed and "improved". Immensely cowardly, with a mercenary soul, he pretends to be a champion of knightly honor, a militant hero, and G. Mann, masterfully exposing this pretentiousness of Diderich, often puts him in such grotesque situations that would be sharply comic if they did not reveal moral disgust and social danger of this character. In the atmosphere of reactionary social and political movements, in which the "new-Teutonian" Diederich takes an active part, he quickly develops a stable vulgar utilitarian thinking. In his dreams, inspired by the vapors of beer alcohol during student binges, he imagines himself the owner of "a large factory of art postcards or toilet paper", and he declares to Agnese Gepel that the window of a sausage shop is the best form of aesthetic pleasure for him.

The unseemliness of Gesling's moral character is especially evident in his relationship with Agnes Hepel, described in the novel sympathetically, in soft pastel colors. Communication with Agnes was for Diderich the last and only glimpse of light, which he himself trampled.

After the death of his father, Diederich becomes the owner of the factory and, having left Berlin, begins business and political activities in his hometown of Netzig. The whole novel is a political work through and through, but in the first two chapters, in an effort to show the character of the hero in development, G. Mann reveals it mainly in a moral and ethical sense. In the last chapters (3-6), Diderich's character, without being replenished with some fundamentally new moral strokes, appears before the reader in its other and main aspects - social and political. Now all his actions and actions are determined by the fact that he is an entrepreneur - the owner of a paper factory - and at the same time an active political figure of an ultra-reactionary monarchist orientation. And in these class-political qualities, Diederich, in turn, is not shown statically. After the first uncertain and not always successful steps in the political field, he becomes the head of the monarchist party in Netzig. Thanks to impudence and deceit, and mainly political blackmail against his main competitor, he becomes the all-powerful owner of a huge enterprise. At the same time, Gesling is hopelessly stupid, but cunning and meanness, combined with cynical political demagogy and the ability to use the political situation, make him the main face of Netzig.

It is easy to see that the compositional structure of The Loyal Subject is, in essence, subordinated to the main task - to reveal the evolution of Gesling. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the first two chapters, or that “roman of decay” that we spoke about above, are a very compressed and dynamic exposition, and the main ideological content of the book and, therefore, the main essence of Gesling’s character are revealed in the last four chapters. Moreover, from the third to the sixth, each chapter exceeds the previous one in volume, and the third - sixth chapters together exceed the first two by more than four times. Showing the socio-political panorama of the entire Wilhelmine empire, G. Mann solves this problem by not quite ordinary artistic means. Although the main action of the novel is concentrated not in the capital, but in a small provincial town, at the same time it is undoubtedly a novel about the whole of Germany. It is in little Netzig, where, as in any backwoods, everything is in plain sight, political passions and social conflicts are especially eloquently exposed, which, however, take place on a scale that is immeasurably smaller compared to the national and metropolitan ones. Data in a sharp reduction, devoid of a halo of grandiosity, they often take on the shade of an acutely comic farce. Thanks to this skillful device, the imaginary greatness of Emperor Wilhelm as a crowned person is debunked, for, transforming in his double Gesling, he appears in the naked insignificance of his essence. Gesling seeks to imitate his adored monarch in everything - in appearance, gestures, manner of speaking. This similarity even acquires a certain - satirically given - mystical connotation, when Diderich literally anticipates those speeches that the Kaiser himself will later make.

With the move of the main scene to Netzig, the social range of the narrative is significantly expanded. In accordance with his new position as an entrepreneur, who, moreover, embarked on political machinations, Diederich comes into close contact with the workers, the local bourgeoisie, the bureaucratic-aristocratic elite and those political groups behind which these social forces stand.

Although "The Loyal Subject" was called by G. Mann himself a novel about the bourgeoisie, the theme of the working class is widely represented in it. The latter circumstance testified to the fruitfulness of the writer's aspirations to comprehend the class structure of modern society, for he portrays the bourgeoisie in its social ties with the aristocracy, and, in particular, with the proletariat. In all plot conflicts involving workers, the author's sympathies are always on their side. Experiencing a zoological hatred of the revolutionary workers (“We should shoot at them with cannons!”), Diederich nevertheless remains in constant fear of them. H. Mann, who believed that a just social order could be achieved by the forces of the "aristocracy of the spirit", did not understand the promising role of that part of the German proletariat that followed Bebel, Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. In the understanding of G. Mann, the working class itself is deprived of political power, it is only an object of social oppression worthy of all support and compassion. At the same time, H. Mann was one of the first critical German realists who noticed the process of bourgeoisization of the German Social Democracy. The workers in the novel act as a general mass, their individual representatives are only episodic, little individualized figures. The exception is the Gesling factory mechanic Napoleon Fischer, who plays a big role in the next part of the trilogy. With external antagonism between Gesling and his mechanic, they are, in essence, allies. Fischer is a typical traitor of his class, helping Gesling to exploit the workers, for which he receives his support in the elections to the Reichstag.

It was not easy for the writer to part with the ideals of bourgeois democracy. The complexity and inconsistency of this process of "reckoning with the past" is reflected in the novel. The main political force in Netzig upon Goesling's return there is the party of the liberal bourgeoisie, the "party of the people", led by the venerable and respected in the city old Buk, a veteran of the revolution of 1848, for participation in which he was sentenced to death. With the advent of Gesling in the city, representing, in his words, a "nest of liberals", the political struggle between the "People's Party" and the "Kaiser's Party", headed by Gosling, soon becomes more active there. All the traits of character that were formed in him in the process of "education" are now fully revealed in the arena of practical activity. And it, in turn, develops as a continuous chain of cruelty, sycophancy, meanness, boasting, denunciations and suspicious political and commercial machinations.

The depiction of the Netzig liberals in the novel definitely indicates that the writer knew quite well the value of the German liberal bourgeoisie, who claimed to be the opposition to the Wilhelmian regime. Sometimes G. Mann brings the image of their spinelessness, unscrupulousness to a sharp grotesque (Burgomaster Scheffelweis), he clearly sees their helplessness in resolving social conflicts (manufacturer Lauer, old Buk), cowardice and half-heartedness of liberal phrase-mongers, their readiness to compromise with reactionaries (Dr. , Lauer, editor of the local liberal newspaper Notgroschen). And at the same time, many liberals are depicted with a clear share of the author's sympathy. The image of the elder Buk is especially significant in the novel. He is, in essence, opposed to Dideric. This antithesis testifies to the well-known retrospectiveness and vagueness of the author's positive political ideals. The elder Beech, with all his weaknesses, is depicted in elegiac, sympathetic tones. However, it is clear to both the author and the reader that this character, not only because of his advanced age, but primarily because of his socio-political convictions, is completely in the past, that his ideals have become utterly dilapidated and turned into an empty, albeit beautiful phrase.

The author of "The Loyal Subject" is highly inherent in a sense of historicism, which manifested itself, in particular, in a clear reflection of the process of degradation of the liberal bourgeoisie, two generations of which are represented in the novel in the person of Buk Sr. and his son, the lawyer Wolfgang. With a certain mind, a certain talent and dislike for political reaction, the younger Buk is not only completely incapable of political activity, but cannot even determine his place in life.

The final scene of the novel symbolically expresses G. Mann's confidence in the collapse of the Wilhelmine empire. Splendidly dressed up to know, officials, burghers, officers of all ranks in full dress uniforms, high-society whores - representatives of the entire estate hierarchy of then Germany gathered for the celebration of the opening of the monument to Wilhelm I. This magnificent ceremony should be at the same time a triumph for Gesling. But suddenly a violent thunderstorm breaks out, turning this motley crowd into a stampede. The triumph of Gesling did not take place either, although the raging elements only slightly patted him. He has not lost his strength and power. Thus, the writer, as it were, warns of the formidable social danger lurking in this type of loyal subject. The novel ends again with the symbolic scene of the death of old man Buk. A triumphant Gesling appears at the bedside of the dying man, who has long since become the owner of all his property.

Heinrich Mann, a passionate fighter against the Wilhelmian monarchy, is unclear about the positive program. Not social upheavals, but the spontaneous wrath of nature fell upon this social structure. But the writer believes in a bright future for Germany, although its contours are very vague. At the end of the novel, having lost his fortune, thrown out of public life by the machinations of the reactionaries gaining strength, the despised old Buk sometimes, however, meets young high school students on the streets, respectfully baring their heads in front of him. Both Buk, and with him, obviously, G. Mann see in these young people hope for the future.

The artistic method of the author of "Vernopoddapiy" can be defined as a realistic grotesque. In the portraits of the characters, in the description of their manners and habits, G. Mann thickens and exaggerates the social features of the German nationalist bourgeois, Junker, liberal and social traitor. He creates their generalizing typical masks. At the same time, it emphasizes in every possible way everything ugly, disgusting and inhuman in their social appearance. The images of the bourgeois Gesling and the junker Vulkov often take on downright animal features - feline in Gesling and wolf in Vulkov. Hyperbolization closely accompanies the reception of contrast in the novel. Inner immorality, emptiness and insignificance of Gesling appear in a magnificent attire of boasting, loud speeches, theatrical gestures, meaningful facial expressions. The whore appears in the guise of a modest pastor's daughter. A sharp, caustic weapon of satirical ridicule for the author of "The Loyal Subject" is the way of spiritual overcoming of Wilhelm's Germany.

H. Mann did not change his anti-imperialist positions even during the outbreak of the First World War. Unlike most German writers, he did not succumb to the frenzy of militaristic propaganda and chauvinism. His passionate journalistic essay Zola (1915), in the conditions of severe wartime censorship, was not only an aesthetic manifesto that glorified the ideal of a citizen writer actively fighting for social progress, but also a resolute protest against war and rampant militarism. This essay caused, although temporary, but deep differences between the Mann brothers - Heinrich and Thomas. During the war, the latter came out with a number of articles that objectively justified the position of the ruling classes of Germany in this war. Therefore, not without reason, he took at his own expense the speech of his brother in his essay against German writers glorifying German militarism. In the book Meditations of an Apolitical Man (1918), Thomas Mani contrasted the positions of his brother Heinrich with the position of an “apolitical” writer, defending German culture and civilization, as opposed to the corrupting influence of “Latin” civilization and culture.

Developing the democratic trend of his work, G. Mann makes the clash between workers and the bourgeoisie the central conflict of the novel The Poor, and the main positive hero of the worker Karl Balrich. The laws of modern social development are not yet completely clear to the writer, and the social sphere that he placed at the center of the novel, the proletariat, is little known to him. Hence the many shortcomings of the novel. The struggle of the workers is interpreted by G. Mann as a manifestation of spontaneous protest, and not as an organized class movement. The intrigue underlying the plot is also hardly plausible - the workers, in essence, are fighting not for their class rights, but on a random occasion - for a fair assertion of the right to inheritance (Gesling's factory was built with money stolen by him from one of the workers, and on this workers want to become owners of the factory). Nevertheless, the novel defends the idea of ​​an active struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

The last part of the trilogy - the novel "Head", in essence, historical. Its action unfolds approximately in the same chronological limits as in the novel "The Loyal Subject" - from the end of the 19th century until about 1916. "Head" - a novel about the highest circles of officials, officers, industrialists, nobility, a novel about the fate of the bourgeois intelligentsia. As in the first novels of the trilogy, H. Mann also acts here as an irreconcilable denouncer of German imperialism, in many ways deepening this topic on the experience of the imperialist war and the social practice of German industrial magnates already in the years of the Weimar Republic. However, in general, the last part of the trilogy was a clear step backwards compared to the previous ones, both in ideological and artistic terms. The main reason for this was, in essence, the complete removal from the novel of the problem of the people, the problem of the proletariat. Hence the pessimistic tone of the novel as a whole. Concentrating the search for positive social and political forces on the "knights of the spirit", on rebels from among the bourgeois intelligentsia, H. Mann unequivocally states their impotence before the imperialist circles of Kaiser Germany. Disappointed, therefore, in his concept of the "dictatorship of reason", the writer does not find any alternative to it. Ideological fuzziness largely determined the weaknesses of the artistic structure and structure of the novel, which experienced little fruitful influence of the poetics of expressionism.

The collapse of the Wilhelmian monarchy at the beginning of 1918 and the establishment of the bourgeois-democratic Weimar Republic were greeted with enthusiasm by H. Mann. These events caused a revival and strengthening of the writer's bourgeois-democratic illusions. And although as the Weimar Republic developed, which exposed its contradictions - a firm assertion of the power of monopoly capital instead of the establishment of the power of people's deputies expected by G. Mann - the writer's attitude to the new republic becomes more and more critical, he retains naive illusions in the possibility of its improvement. An eloquent manifestation of these illusions was the writer's address in 1923 to the then Reich Chancellor Stresemann under the remarkable title "The Dictatorship of Reason".

The experience of the October Revolution in Russia and the revolutionary battles of 1919-1923 in Germany forced H. Mann to often come into conflict with his own pacifist convictions, according to which he denied any, including revolutionary, violence. Imbued with ever greater sympathy for the Soviet Union, highly appreciating the activities of V. I. Lenin, he often comes to the conclusion that violent actions are necessary to curb the power of the monopolies. In his numerous articles and speeches of that time (they were included in the collections Seven Years, 1929 and Public Life, 1932), H. Mann persistently warns against the danger of a new war, calls for vigilance in the face of a maturing fascist dictatorship. Already at this time, the writer's anti-fascist convictions were taking shape.

During the years of the Weimar Republic, G. Mann created a number of novels and short stories. Most of these works reflected the ideological errors of the writer: at the time of the decomposition of the republic, the sharp delimitation of political forces in the country on the eve of the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, he still seeks to criticize the Weimar Republic from the standpoint of bourgeois democracy. The most significant works of this time are the novels "The Big Deal" (1930 ) and The Serious Life (1932). The first of these, which raises the question of the fate of the younger generation in Germany, is again a social satire directed against the country's imperialist circles. The novel is also remarkable as one of the writer's early speeches against fascism. But the paths of struggle that H. Mann outlines in it boil down only to the moral overcoming of the imperialist forces hostile to humanism. The novel "A Serious Life" affirms a high humanistic ideal, embodied in a simple woman from the people. But here, too, abstract moral values ​​are again opposed to the gloomy atmosphere of impending fascism.

Already by his struggle against the Wilhelmian monarchy, H. Mann acquires great prestige in the democratic circles of Germany. During the years of the Weimar Republic, this authority grows even more. The writer takes an active part in the political life of the country. He demands an amnesty for participants in the revolutionary struggle of 1919, defends the Viennese workers who opposed the reactionary policies of his government, and raises his voice against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. In 1921, G. Mann was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, and in 1931 he became chairman of the Academy's fiction section.

The Weimar Republic was rapidly moving towards its end. Using the means of social and political demagogy in the conditions of a severe economic crisis, the Hitlerite party becomes a serious political force, but it is opposed by the KKE, which collected six million votes in the November 1932 elections to the Reichstag. The German Communists, who have mobilized broad strata of the people to fight fascism, are noticeably weakening its influence. But behind the swastika are the industrial magnates who support it. Relying on the treacherous policy of the social democratic elite and the right trade unions, on January 30, 1933, they escort Hitler to the post of Reich Chancellor. Shortly before this, H. Mann, together with Albert Einstein and the outstanding progressive artist Kathe Kollwitz, published an open letter calling for the unity of the Social Democrats and Communists in the fight against the threat of the Nazi dictatorship. Soon the writer was expelled from the Academy, and then, in the sixty-second year of his life, he secretly left Germany and settled in France.

With the beginning of emigration, a new period opens in the work of G. Mann. Until 1945, the fight against fascism became the main theme of his work, the main business of his life. He re-evaluates many of his former views, draws closer to the writers of socialist realism, and the work of I. Becher becomes especially close to him. In 1933, the German Writers' Union resumed its activities abroad. He elects G. Mann as his chairman. In 1936, G. Mann headed the Committee of the German Popular Front and, in this post, directing active efforts to consolidate the anti-fascist democratic camp, established contacts with the leaders of the KKE and many of its ordinary members. Noting the great merits of G. Mann in this regard, I. Becher wrote in 1937 that in the fight against fascism he represents "the conscience of all honest Germans."

Of great importance, G. Mann's extensive social and political activities of these years were reflected in his bright and passionate journalistic trilogy, which represents the best part of his journalistic heritage - "Hatred", 1933, "The Day Will Come", 1936 and "Courage", 1939. The first collection is dedicated to and a characterization of German fascism, and an analysis of the events leading up to 1933. This is how the meaning of the subtitle "Modern German History" is revealed. Unlike many of his fellow writers, H. Mann did not consider the coming of the Nazis to power in Germany an accidental phenomenon. He considered it as a logical outcome of the entire historical development of the country. For the first time, he radically changes his previous assessment of the Weimar Republic. He rightly believes that during these years Germany continued the aggressive foreign policy of the Kaiser Empire, inflaming enmity with France, that the Weimar Republic refused to carry out social reforms, supporting the reactionary forces within the country in every possible way, and thus prepared the way for Hitler to come to power. Presenting pictures of Germany under the rule of the Nazis, he sees in this dictatorship the manifestation of the most brutal instincts and misanthropy. He connects his hopes with the unification of the German working class, with the Marxist doctrine. If the main task of the book "Hatred" was an angry denunciation of fascism, then in the last two collections of the trilogy, the emphasis is on the development of positive social ideals. At the same time, the writer deepens his criticism of fascism. Exposing fascism in the book "Hatred" mainly in moral and ethical terms, H. Mann now seeks to clarify its social roots. A large place in these books is occupied by the heroic theme. G. Mann creates a whole gallery of images of the heroes of the German anti-fascist Resistance, among which the main place is occupied by portraits of communists - Ernst Thalmann, Rudolf Klaus, Edgar Andre and others. “These people did not resign themselves, were not afraid of repression, but became even more courageous,” he wrote about the communists. "They are Germans, and this is one of those rare occasions when the word 'German' deserves to be spoken with love." H. Mann declares his ardent solidarity with the anti-fascist fighters in Spain. He deeply regrets that only age does not allow him to take up arms and fight for freedom on Spanish soil in the same ranks with many of his compatriots - German writers. The most important place in H. Mann's journalism is now occupied by the theme of the Soviet Union, whose consistent peace-loving policy he contrasts with the connivance and actual support of Hitler on the part of England and France. He calls on the intelligentsia of all countries to strengthen the friendship of their peoples with the USSR, for that country is now, in his words, "the only hope of the world." It was at this time that the writer abandons his previous idea, which was already voiced in the book "Hatred", about the leading role of the bourgeois intelligentsia in the liberation struggle of the German people. He comes to the conclusion that the main promising force in modern society is the proletariat and its vanguard, the communist party. In this regard, the writer quite logically parted with his former pacifist convictions. He formed the concept of active, militant humanism. “True humanists,” G. Mann now believes, “are only those who not only think, but also fight.” Moreover, he is convinced that the new humanism will be only socialist.

In line with such a fundamental evolution of his social views, the writer creates a historical dilogy about the French King Henry IV - the novels The Youth of King Henry IV (1935) and The Mature Years of King Henry IV (1938). The historical novel was at that time a favorite genre of writers of the German emigration. Thomas Mann (“Joseph and his brothers”, “Lotta in Weimar”), and Lion Feuchtwanger (“False Nero”, “Jewish War”, etc.), and Stefan Zweig (“Mary Stuart”, “ Erasmus of Rotterdam”, “Magellan”), the communist writers A. Segers, V. Bredel, F. Wolf are also developing the historical theme. Many German writers of that time turn to the Renaissance (Stefan Zweig, Bruno Frank). In the history of the past, they rely on great humanistic traditions, opposing them to modern fascist barbarism; with their historical concepts, they seek to refute the falsification of history by the Nazi ideologists. In their works devoted to history, the critical beginning is combined with the affirmation of the humanistic ideal, with close attention to the people, to the problem of connecting with them a separate outstanding personality - a humanist. Thus, for the most part, the historical novel of the German emigration was closely connected with the present, responding to its actual problems.

It was characteristic for G. Mann that he turned to the era of the French Renaissance. This again showed his deep respect for the French humanist tradition. The action of the dilogy takes place approximately from the beginning of the 50s of the 16th century until 1610, that is, in the era of the late Renaissance. That was the time of active popular movements, a sharp clash of the feudal-medieval way of life with the forces of the new emerging bourgeois society. It was a period of almost unabated religious wars, the time of the struggle of humanists with church scholasticism and obscurantism. At the same time, in a fierce struggle against the feudal freemen, the centralized royal power was gaining strength. Of all these interrelated political and ideological processes, G. Mann focuses on the religious wars, in the form of which the main socio-political conflicts were clothed at that time, and on the process of the formation of absolutism.

In the novels about Henry IV, the writer quite successfully solves a very complex and contradictory task: it is at the same time a story about the 16th century in France, historically truthfully recreating the picture of the confrontation between the main social and political forces of that time, the whole atmosphere of that era, and at the same time this work, posing in an allegorical form the problem of the fight against fascism of the 30s of our century.

In the ideological context of the dilogy, the question of the relationship between the progressive personality and the people comes to the fore, and G. Mann resolves it more successfully than the bourgeois-liberal novelists who turned to the historical theme. The people in his novels are a powerful support in the progressive activity of the humanist. Spiritual unity with the people allows Henry IV to defeat the dark forces of religious fanaticism and the feudal Middle Ages. All the deeds of Henry IV are aimed at the benefit of the state and people of France. The hero of G. Mann himself is not an armchair contemplative with the features of a philistine, like Erasmus in Zweig. This is a humanist-fighter, with a weapon in his hands opposing the reaction for the triumph of his ideals. Henry's friends - the greatest writers, humanist philosophers of the Renaissance - Montaigne, D "Aubigne, du Bart and others - are just as active and full of fighting spirit as he is. They defend the advanced moral and social ideals of the era with pen and sword. Images humanists in these novels had the meaning of an appeal addressed to the Western European intelligentsia to take an active part in the political struggle of the people and fight for its cause with word and weapons.

The political relevance of H. Mann's novels did not mean, however, that history undergoes modernization in them, as, for example, in the novels of Feuchtwanger, who even used modern terminology. G. Mann nowhere deviates from the historical color of the era, sometimes even subtly stylizes the manner of narration in the language of old French chronicles, and ends each chapter of the first novel with a morality (moralization) in French. But at the same time, behind the depiction of some historical conflicts and events, the events and facts of the time when the novels were written are clearly guessed.

The historical veracity of the novels about Henry IV does not mean, however, that H. Mann did not use the right of the artist not always to follow the facts exactly in the creative reconstruction of history. And in some cases he does not adhere to them, retreating, however, from real events only in some minor moments. The main thing here is that the image of the French King Henry IV, of course, is clearly elevated above its real historical prototype. The historical Henry IV was far from being the king of the people as he is presented in the novel. But this idealization is justified by the task that H. Mann set himself - to oppose modern fascism with the image of an outstanding, militant humanist who relied on the masses in the struggle against fanaticism and medieval barbarism. And therefore, in its main features, the image of the king of France, created by the writer, remained quite historical. His Henry is shown in many respects realistically truthfully, as a man of the 16th century, endowed with the characteristic features of his class and his era.

G. Mann's concepts of history could be reproached - as was done more than once in Soviet criticism - for not depicting the masses as the main driving force of history. Indeed, in the dilogy, not only are popular movements not depicted, but the people themselves from the people in it are only episodic figures. But it is unlikely that the main conflicts of a particular era can be displayed only by placing the masses in the center of the work. It is important that G. Mann's hero is a "people's king" in the sense that the source of his strength is his connection with the people. Of course, the very idea of ​​exalting the humanist in the dilogy bears the imprint of the author's former concept of the leading role of the intellectual elite in social development - the people in the novels about Henry achieve prosperity, fame and power only when they are led by bright heads like Henry IV; bad when he falls under the rule of obscurantists like Guise and Philip II of Spain. But in this understanding of the role of the masses, the writer's observations on the course of modern German history were also reflected: the German popular movement, led by revolutionaries, was defeated in 1918-1923, and the broad masses were deceived by the demagogue Hitler. G. Mann firmly believed that this was only a temporary clouding of the people's consciousness, and he put his faith in the image of Henry IV, who manages to wrest the people from the power of obscurantists and lead them along the path of progress. The roots of some real contradictions of the historical concept of G. Mann in the dilogy, which occasionally appear in it, should be sought elsewhere. The scientific idea of ​​history as a struggle of classes with certain economic and political interests, which dominates in the dilogy, is sometimes pushed aside by an abstract-idealistic interpretation of history as a struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, Reason and Stupidity, embodied in individuals. It is precisely this concept that underlies the historical novels of most German émigré writers, bourgeois liberals in their social positions. H. Mann, a revolutionary democrat, succeeded in the main in overcoming this bourgeois-liberal narrow-mindedness.

Novels about Henry IV were a qualitatively new phenomenon in the writer's work. At the same time, they, of course, retained many of the features characteristic of his former creative manner. First of all, it should be noted here that although the dramatic works of G. Mann belong to the periphery of his writing activity, he worked with great interest in this area, considering drama to be a very important genre of literature. This circumstance, obviously, contributed to the establishment of one characteristic feature in the artistic structure of the dilogy, which was also characteristic of many of his previous novels (both "Teacher Gnus" and "Loyal Subject" can be called here) - a large place for dialogue in the narrative. The new moments in the creative manner of the writer are due to completely different tasks set in these novels, their completely different orientation. And the very narrative of a distant era, of course, required other forms of artistic expression than novels about modernity. It cannot be said that all the previous works of G. Mann were purely satirical and that they lacked the search for a positive hero. But nevertheless, the satirical beginning was the leading one, and the artistically most perfect works created before the beginning of the 30s are satirical. The positive hero nowhere had such a generalizing social, ideological and artistic scale as in the novels about Henry IV. With an abundance of negative characters in the dilogy, the satirical beginning in it is muted by the general aspiration of the novels to affirm positive humanistic ideas. Confidence in the triumph of these ideas, in the victory of the forces of progress, gives the novels a philosophically enlightened tone, caustic satire gives way to the light and subtle irony of the writer, wise with great life and political experience. It is in this vein that the forces opposing Henry are portrayed. A calm and unhurried story about the intrigues and other unsightly actions of Catherine de Medici, the Guises and their henchmen is conducted in a dispassionate manner, with a touch of irony, which convinces us of their disgust and moral baseness no less than the sharply grotesque manner of the author of The Teacher Gnus and "Loyalty". The descriptive element is kept to a minimum in the novels. G. Mann clearly prefers to give an assessment of a situation or a character by the power of the artistic image itself, and not to inspire the reader with his attitude towards them by the author's digressions. But the novels are at the same time sharply publicistic - primarily due to their connection with modernity, the fact that they are addressed to it. The morality that completes each chapter of Youth also performs a journalistic function, which does not sound at all like the author's edification, but sums up a certain stage in the development of the character of the protagonist, reveals the main ideological and historical meaning in that large chain of events through which Heinrich passes. Having thoroughly studied the era, the writer colorfully and multifacetedly recreates the historical background against which a sharply dynamic intrigue develops. The eventful dynamism of "The Youth of King Henry IV" corresponds to short chapters, a clear lapidary style. In some scenes, G. Mann, the finest stylist and high master of the German literary language, finds a penetrating poetic style of narration (for example, in the love story of Heinrich for Fleurette).

The story about the events of the past is notable in G. Mann's dilogy by one specific stylistic device, largely related to the already noted tone of philosophical reflections on the events depicted, their correlation with the present. But although the author avoids direct intervention in the narrative, we constantly feel his presence in the novel, the distance that he maintains in relation to the object of the image. This is reflected both in the author's irony noted above, and in the fact that the author often refers to the future of his hero (a technique that could be called a projection of the present - in relation to the time of the novel - into the future). In other words, the story is told from the author, who knows the fate of his hero in the future. In this manner, G. Mann, as it were, combines both the artist-narrator, who builds a dynamic and fascinating plot intrigue, due to the specific historical atmosphere of the era, and the historian, who tells about the events of centuries ago, evaluating them from the height of a perspective projection into his own modernity. In general, the novels about Henry IV, which L. Feuchtwanger called "the triumph and glory of the German emigration", are the greatest achievement of German critical realism, the largest contribution to the development of the European novel.

When, following many other European countries, France also found itself in the spidery paws of Hitler's swastika, the writer, in his seventieth year of life, had to again look for a new refuge. With a small backpack on his shoulders, after walking thirty kilometers at night through the Pyrenees and further on a small motor boat, rounding the coast of Spain under the constant threat of being captured by German or Italian ships, he reached Lisbon. Departing from there on a Greek ship and swimming across the ocean, the writer landed in New York. The last ten years of his life, never seeing his homeland again, he spent, experiencing severe material deprivation, in California, where he died on March 12, 1950. It was the most bitter time of his life, the years of almost complete loneliness, especially difficult for a writer accustomed to violent social and political activities.

Shortly before his death, G. Mann accepts the post of president of the newly founded Academy of Arts in Berlin in the GDR. In March 1950, he was supposed to arrive in Gdynia on the Polish steamer Stefan Batory, on which he had already booked a cabin, and from there proceed to Berlin.

The works of G. Mann in recent years - the novels "Lidice" (1943), "Breath" (1949), "Reception in the Light" (published posthumously) - should be considered as a certain link in the process of new ideological and aesthetic searches of the writer, the search for new means of artistic expressiveness. This is the tendency towards the syncretism of the genre in the novel "Lidice", this is also an attempt to rethink the artistic possibilities of social satire in the novel "Reception in the Light", which in many respects goes back to the early satirical novel "The Promised Land", this is also an attempt to reuse the formal arsenal poetics of expressionism. At the same time, it should be noted that these latest novels are weaker than the best novels of previous years both in ideological and artistic terms, which can be explained both by the writer’s well-known disappointment in the revolutionary potential of the German people, and by the difficult conditions of the last years of his life.

The most valuable part of his work in recent years is journalism and, especially, the book Review of the Century (1946) of a semi-memoir, semi-publicistic nature. This book, highly appreciated, in particular by Thomas Mann, is a summing up of life by a great artist and public figure. In it, G. Mann talks about himself, shares his thoughts about events and people, whose contemporary he was. Anti-fascist humanistic pathos, criticism of the German reaction make it one of the most notable works of the German emigration. This book is also remarkable in that, most clearly expressing the final stage of the writer's ideological development, it testified to his complete recognition of the ideas of communism and the October Revolution.

The main genre in the work of G. Mann is the novel. It is through the novel that his creative image is most fully revealed. But along with journalism and drama, the short story occupies a prominent place in the creative heritage of the writer. G. Mann turned to this genre quite often and at different stages of his work.

It is quite natural that G. Mann, a novelist with an acutely social ideological orientation, develops topical socio-political themes in many of his short stories. Among the short stories of this plan, the reader of this volume will get acquainted, in particular, with the short story "Sterny", in a sharp dynamic plot, depicting a picture of moral decay, an atmosphere of speculation and commercial hype that gripped Germany defeated in the First World War. As in some novels of the "Weimar" period, G. Mann is interested in the fate of the younger generation. The young lieutenant Gerd Gotz Rakov, who returned from the front in 1918 and joined extremely reactionary political circles, in an atmosphere of speculative fever, takes the path of criminal offenses. Among the social novels, the short story "Kobes" is especially noteworthy, which is very close in ideological and aesthetic terms to the last novel of the "Empire" trilogy - "The Head". Using the artistic means of expressionism, G. Mann, in the image of the title character of the novel, gives a symbolic generalization of the total, all-consuming power of monopolies, crushing both people and the entire state machine. The whole short story, written in a tense expressionist style, is sustained in the tones of a gloomy grotesque. The exaggerated image of Kobes and the irresistible power of the capitalist Moloch that he embodies do not have any restraining or opposing forces in the short story. Therefore, the short story has a certain pessimistic coloring. But at its core, it reflects the social climate in Germany that really took shape at that time. For all its expressionistic abstractness and symbolism, Kobes G. Mann had his real prototype in the person of one of the largest German monopolists of that time, Hugo Stinnes.

Another series of short stories, although they are not devoid of social problems, to a greater extent can be attributed to psychological short stories. In the short stories "Heart", "Brother" and others, which are deep psychological studies, there is a clear emphasis on moral and ethical problems, although they are revealed in a very specific and sometimes very acute social context.

With a well-known compositional and plot incompleteness, G. Mann's short stories, like his novels, attract with the dynamism and sharpness of the action, the depth of the psychological development of images. Acquaintance with them significantly expands our understanding of the creative manner of this remarkable artist.

The creative path of Heinrich Mann, the great writer of Germany, the faithful son of his people, is a vivid example of how the best artists of the bourgeois-democratic type, the best writers of critical realism come to recognize the correctness of Marxist teaching and draw closer to the literature of socialist realism.

German writer, whose work is distinguished by a strong social orientation. His criticism of the authoritarian militaristic regime that prevailed in Germany (Germany) before the Second World War, led to the fact that in 1933 he had to leave his homeland and seek refuge first in Europe (Europe) and then in the United States (United States).

Louis Heinrich Mann, eldest son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, a respected merchant and local senator for economics and finance, and his wife Julia (Júlia da Silva Bruhns), was born on March 27, 1871 in Lübeck, the city of in northern Germany. He was followed by younger brother Thomas (Thomas Mann), a future Nobel laureate in literature, sisters Julia (Julia Löhr) and Carla (Carla Mann), and the youngest brother Viktor (Viktor Mann). Their father came from an old family of grain traders, their mother - from a family of Brazilian planters of Portuguese origin (her father was German).

The childhood of the older brothers was very happy. In 1889, Heinrich entered a bookstore in Dresden as an apprentice, and from 1890 to 1992 he worked at the publishing house "S. Fischer Verlag" in Berlin (Berlin) and at the same time studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin).

In 1892, he suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage and went to Wiesbaden (Wiesbaden) and Lausanne (Lausanne) for treatment. Alas, in 1891 their father died at the age of 51 from bladder cancer, and two years later the mother and children moved to Munich (Munich), where Heinrich began his writing career.

He traveled quite a lot, in particular, visited St. Petersburg (Saint Petersburg), and from 1899 until the outbreak of the First World War he lived in different places, especially often in the south, in Italy (Italy), whose hot climate was useful for his weak lungs.

or was criticized - it was actually banned, although subsequently it was repeatedly filmed. The most famous film adaptation was the film "The Blue Angel" (Der blaue Engel) with Marlene Dietrich.

In 1910, his 29-year-old sister Karla committed suicide, and this was a great shock for the writer, which was difficult to cope with.

In 1914, Henry married a Prague actress named Maria Canova (Maria Kanová), who was 15 years younger than him, and again settled in Munich, and two years later a daughter, Leonie Mann, appeared in the family.

After the publication in 1915 of Thomas Mann's book "Reflections of an Apolitical", in which he supported the outbreak of the First World War by Germany, Heinrich, who sympathized with the socialists, quarreled with his brother and did not communicate with him until 1922. After the war, he published his most successful book, Der Untertan (1918), which he tried to publish in a magazine in 1914, but was refused. The book sold out in its first two weeks with nearly 100,000 copies. "The Loyal" and Mann's essay on Emile Zola earned the author great respect during the Weimar Republic, despite the fact that the writer ridiculed German society and explained how the country's political system led to war.

In 1923 his mother died, and four years later his sister Julia committed suicide. Heinrich separated from his first wife, moved to Berlin in 1928, and they divorced in 1930. Maria and her daughter returned to Prague. Her fate was tragic - from 1940 to 1944 she was in the Terezín concentration camp and in 1947 she died from torture. Leoni, their daughter, survived and became

wife of the famous Czech writer and journalist Ludvik Ashkenazy (Ludvík Aškenazy). Meanwhile, Heinrich met his future second wife, Nelly Kröger Mann, in 1929.

Together with Albert Einstein and other celebrities, Mann signed an open letter to the New York Times condemning the assassination of Croatian scientist Milan Šufflay on February 18, 1931. Not surprisingly, Heinrich Mann became persona non grata in Nazi Germany and left before the Reichstag fire in 1933, when the Nazis stripped him of his German citizenship in August. During the infamous book burning of May 10, 1933, instigated by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Mann's books were also burned in the fires as "not in keeping with the German spirit."

The writer went to France (France), lived in Paris (Paris) and Nice (Nice), where he had a house, and during the German occupation he was able to get through Marseille (Marseille) to Spain (Spain) in 1940. Then through Portugal (Portugal) he emigrated to America (America).

In 1935-1938 he wrote a historical novel about the youth and mature years of King Henry IV (Henri Quatre).

In 1939 Mann married Nellie, but in 1944 she committed suicide in Los Angeles.

In exile, his literary career went downhill, and on March 11, 1950, Mann died in Santa Monica, California (Santa Monica, California), completely alone and without money - a month before the planned move to East Germany (East Germany), where he was offered the presidency of the Prussian Academy of Arts.

The name of Heinrich Mann became famous after the release of the novel Country of kissel shores(or Promised land) (1900), which describes the situation, traditional for the classic Western European novel of the 19th century, - a young man comes from the provinces to the capital, overwhelmed by an ambitious desire to break out into the people. The protagonist, Andreas Zumsee, is trying to succeed in the world of the German bourgeoisie, where everyone hates each other, although they cannot do without each other, being bound not only by material interests, but also by everyday relations, the confidence that everything in the world is for sale and is bought. The embodiment of all the vices and moral deformities of Schlaraffenland (Country of Kissel Shores) is the almighty banker magnate Turkheimer, who at the end of the novel, experiencing spiritual emptiness and depression, is carried away by a commoner girl ridiculing him.

The causticity and harshness of Heinrich Mann's manner were perceived ambiguously. In his early work, psychological analysis was supplanted by caricature. A conditional grotesque world arises, where a string of freaks, vile, predatory, hypocritical, depraved people operate. The writer creates an image according to the laws of caricature, outlining it with sharp strokes. He deliberately shifts lines and proportions, sharpening and exaggerating the characters, turning them into a string of frozen satirical masks. Time and again, passing the limits of the authentic, he strove for the accuracy of social diagnosis and for the reflection of the essence of the phenomenon.

A peculiar artistic result was given in the work of G. Mann by impressionistic techniques. It effectively and expressively conveys primary instantaneous visual impressions. However, the riot of colors in individual episodes of his novels and the pictorial detail serve him as a pointed expression of thought. The expressiveness of color becomes one of the ways to create a satirical image-mask that changes little in the course of the plot.

Trilogy Goddesses, or Three Novels of the Duchess of Assy(1903) reflects the author's individualistic and decadent passions. The writer moves away from satire, creating the image of the main character, the Duchess of Assy, who, according to the author's intention, is a happy, freely developing person. In its development, it goes through three stages - passion for politics (novel Diana), art ( Minerva), love ( Venus). And although the heroine is placed in ideal conditions for the free manifestation of her richly gifted nature, her life is a path that ultimately leads to extreme egocentrism and individualism.

In the novel Teacher Gnus or the End of a Tyrant(1905) Mann castigates the Prussian drill that permeated the entire system of youth education and the entire legal order of Wilhelm's Germany. The image of the teacher Gnus has become a household name in Germany - a petty misanthrope and a tyrant imagines himself to be the guardian of laws and morality, and the opportunity to humiliate gives him sadistic pleasure. Mann depicts the German school as a barracks, where individuality, talent, and living thought are suppressed in every possible way. However, a sharp turn takes place in the fate of Gnus - he falls in love with a singer performing in a cabaret, and falls into her complete submission. Having married, he becomes the owner of a house of dubious reputation, a den of debauchery and fraud.

The political conflict between the forces of bourgeois liberalism and reaction, which is being played out in the pan-European arena, the writer transfers in the novel Small city(1909) to a provincial Italian town. Everything that seems grandiose to the participants in the conflict turns out to be a ridiculous farce, the mouse fuss of the townsfolk, who play the role of arbiters of the fate of mankind. The novel is full of satire and humor.

Heinrich Mann's novels become bestsellers in Germany, but his name remains virtually unknown abroad, largely due to the general isolation of German culture due to the political situation before the First World War.

Since the beginning of the 1910s, the writer's publicistic and literary-critical activities have been unfolding. In an essay Voltaire-Goethe (1910), Spirit and Action(1910), pamphlet Reichstag(1911), he stands up for the social activity of literature, affirms the idea of ​​the inseparability of thought and action, the internal connection between realistic art and democracy. Article title Spirit and Action has a programmatic meaning for Heinrich Mann, expressing the cross-cutting idea of ​​his work. The contradiction between spirit and action is perceived by the writer as originally German. It is no coincidence that in the mid-1930s, in the dilogy about Henry IV, which removes this contradiction, the main character is taken from the history of France. The idea of ​​the need to combine culture and democracy formed the basis of the essay Zola (1915).

Heinrich Mann was one of the few German writers who opposed the First World War unleashed by Germany. He held liberal views, strongly condemning the war, and was subsequently critical of the Weimar Republic. In contrast, Brother Thomas, who eventually became one of the most famous German intellectuals, was, on the contrary, an ardent nationalist early in his life and supported Germany's participation in the war.

Heinrich Mann's novel brought worldwide fame loyal subject, which, together with novels Poor(1917) and Head(1925) entered into a trilogy Empire, which summed up the pre-war life of various sections of German society. The protagonist Diederich Gesling is a socio-psychological type formed by German imperialism, which later became the mainstay of fascism. At the end of the novel, a sudden thunderstorm sweeps away this audience from the main square, where they were going to open a monument to Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose double in appearance and in fact turns out to be Diederich Gesling.

Novel Poor marks a search for new, extra-bourgeois ideals. It is dedicated to the struggle of the worker Balrich with Gesling. The writer depicts in detail the moral torment that causes injustice, violation of human dignity, the inability to lead a normal human life. He tries to show the awakening of class consciousness, the spiritual and moral growth of a man from the people, defending his rights in an open conflict. This and other novels by Heinrich Mann, created before the early 1930s, are inferior in realistic clarity and depth to loyal subject, however, all of them are marked by sharp criticism of the essence of capitalist relations.

The artistic method of the author of The Loyal Subject can be defined as a realistic grotesque. In portraits of characters, in describing their manners and habits, G. Mann thickens, exaggerates the social features of the German nationalist bourgeois, Junker, liberal and social traitor. He creates their generalizing typical masks.

The internal properties of a person, as a rule, are emphasized by some external detail. But from the external grotesque characteristics in the "Land of Jelly Coasts" H. Mann passes to a great psychological motivation, retaining, however, the satirical, journalistic task in psychologism. Like the teacher Gnus, Gesling is a slave and a despot. At the heart of his psychology is cringing before the powers that be, which he very cleverly knows how to use to strengthen his position. The mechanics of interaction between a person and circumstances invariably occupies G. Mann.

Developing the democratic trend of his work, Heinrich Mann makes the clash of workers and the bourgeoisie the central conflict of the novel "The Poor", and the main positive character is the worker Karl Balrich. The laws of modern social development are not yet completely clear to the writer, and the social environment that he placed at the center of the novel, the proletariat, is unfamiliar to him. Hence the many shortcomings of the novel. Nevertheless, the writer defends in it the idea of ​​an active struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. H. Mann did not change his anti-imperialist positions even during the First World War. Unlike most German writers, he did not succumb to the frenzy of militaristic propaganda and chauvinism. His passionate journalistic essay "Zola" (1915), in the conditions of severe wartime censorship, was not only an aesthetic manifesto that glorified the ideal of a citizen writer actively fighting for social progress, but also a resolute protest against war and rampant militarism.

In the same vein, Mann's journalism of the 1920s and early 1930s is developing. The writer's disappointment in the ability of the bourgeois republic to change social life in the spirit of genuine democracy leads him to understand the historical role of socialism. He is asserting himself on the positions of militant humanism, he realizes in a new way the historical role of the proletariat. Not accepting the power of the National Socialists, Heinrich Mann emigrated to France in 1933, from 1936 he was chairman of the German Popular Front, created in France. Collections of articles directed against Nazism were written here Hatred(1933), The day will come (1936),Courage(1939). Created in these years, the dilogy about Henry IV - Youth of Henry IV(1935) and Maturity of Henry IV(1938) - the pinnacle of Mann's late artistic output. The historical background of the dilogy is the French Renaissance. The protagonist of the novel - Henry IV, "a humanist on horseback, with a sword in his hand", is presented as the bearer of historical progress. There are many direct parallels with the present in the novel. We will turn to the analysis of this novel in the third chapter.

In 1940 Mann emigrates to the USA and lives in Los Angeles. There, his books are practically not sold, he is in need and feels excluded from participation in German public life. The internal crisis intensifies after the suicide of his wife Nelly, forced to work as a waitress in a nightclub. During this period, his brother Thomas, who by that time was becoming a wealthy man and with whom he did not maintain relations for many years due to political differences, supported him and saved him from complete need.

The latest novels by G. Mann, written in the USA, are Lidice(1943), Breath (1949), Reception in the light(published in 1956), The sad story of Frederick the Great(fragments published in the GDR in 1958-1960) are marked by sharp social criticism and, at the same time, by a significant sophistication of the literary manner.

In the US, Mann continues to engage in anti-fascist activities. He became close to the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany and in the post-war years maintained close ties with the GDR. The result of Heinrich Mann's journalism - book Review of the century(1946), - combined the genres of memoir literature, political chronicle, autobiography. Giving a critical assessment of the era, the writer notes the decisive impact on world events of the 20th century. socialist revolution in Russia and the very existence of the USSR.

In 1949 he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR and elected the first president of the German Academy of Arts in Berlin. His impending move to the GDR was thwarted by death.

Heinrich Mann belongs to those masters of realism of the 20th century, whose work is marked by the sharpest political tendentiousness associated with the writer's conscious involvement in the acute political struggle against imperialism and Nazism. His work, as well as his tragic personal fate with its contradictions and crises, reflected the search for the realization of their ideals by representatives of the German intelligentsia of the early 20th century. Their protest was directed primarily against the rigid system of subordination and hierarchy of power that fettered all living things that existed in Kaiser Germany, and in the 1930s Nazism became the object of merciless criticism, the social roots of which they explored in their works and works. The socially accusatory novels of Heinrich Mann are included in the classics of political satire of the 20th century, being a natural continuation of the traditions of German satirical literature.

After analyzing the critical literature on the topic of our study, having studied the main stages of the work of Heinrich Mann, we will try to highlight its main features:

1. One of the central places in the work of Heinrich Mann is occupied by sharp satire, a kind of grotesque world in which Mann deliberately exaggerates the characters, endowing them with frozen satirical masks.

• 2. The fight against fascism becomes the main theme of his work.
• 3. A special reflection in the writer's work is his social and political activities.

Biography

MANN, HEINRICH (Mann, Heinrich) (1871-1950) - German writer and public figure. The author of socially incriminating novels that castigate the capitalist order, having gone from the liberal ideas of bourgeois democracy to the adoption of socialism and an active anti-fascist position.

Heinrich Mann was born on March 27, 1871 into a wealthy family of a senator in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, belonging to the circle of wealthy businessmen. In addition to him, the family had three more children - the younger brother Thomas and two sisters Lula and Carla. After the death of his father in 1891 (it was suspected that it was a suicide), his widow, Julia da Silva-Bruns, who, in addition to German, Creole and Portuguese roots, becomes the center of Lübeck's social life.

Children from the Mann family later became writers or were fond of art (Thomas is a writer, Nobel Prize winner, Karla is an actress). Subsequently, the Mann brothers and sisters had a difficult, contradictory relationship, full of both mutual sympathy and claims. The scourge of the Mann family, outwardly cheerful and witty people - suicidal tendencies, addiction to drugs, sexual deviations, sharp demonstrative antics - reflected the crisis of the bourgeois family in the transitional era.

In 1881-1991, Heinrich studied at the Gymnasium Lübeck. After graduation, he entered the University of Berlin, but did not finish it. From his gymnasium years, he was attracted by the literary field, in particular, the genre of political satire, which has centuries-old traditions in German literature, but at the end of the 19th century. no longer met.

The name of Heinrich Mann became famous after the release of the novel Land of Jelly Shores (or the Promised Land) (1900), which describes a situation that is traditional for a classic Western European novel of the 19th century - a young man comes from the provinces to the capital, overwhelmed by an ambitious desire to break out into the people. The protagonist, Andreas Zumsee, is trying to succeed in the world of the German bourgeoisie, where everyone hates each other, although they cannot do without each other, being bound not only by material interests, but also by everyday relations, the confidence that everything in the world is for sale and is bought. The embodiment of all the vices and moral deformities of Schlaraffenland (Country of Kissel Coasts) is the almighty banker magnate Turkheimer, who at the end of the novel, experiencing spiritual emptiness and depression, is carried away by a commoner girl ridiculing him.

The causticity and harshness of Heinrich Mann's manner were perceived ambiguously. In his early work, psychological analysis was supplanted by caricature. A conditional grotesque world arises, where a string of freaks, vile, predatory, hypocritical, depraved people operate. The writer creates an image according to the laws of caricature, outlining it with sharp strokes. He deliberately shifts lines and proportions, sharpening and exaggerating the characters, turning them into a string of frozen satirical masks. Time and again, passing the limits of the authentic, he strove for the accuracy of social diagnosis and for the reflection of the essence of the phenomenon.

The Goddess Trilogy, or The Three Novels of the Duchess of Assy (1903) reflects the author's individualistic and decadent preoccupations. The writer moves away from satire, creating the image of the main character, the Duchess of Assy, who, according to the author's intention, is a happy, freely developing person. In her development, she goes through three stages - a passion for politics (Diana's novel), art (Minerva), love (Venus). And although the heroine is placed in ideal conditions for the free manifestation of her richly gifted nature, her life is a path that ultimately leads to extreme egocentrism and individualism.

In the novel Teacher Gnus, or the End of a Tyrant (1905), Mann castigates the Prussian drill that permeated the entire system of educating young people and the entire legal order of Wilhelm's Germany. The image of the teacher Gnus has become a household name in Germany - a petty misanthrope and a tyrant imagines himself to be the guardian of laws and morality, and the opportunity to humiliate gives him sadistic pleasure. Mann depicts the German school as a barracks, where individuality, talent, and living thought are suppressed in every possible way. However, a sharp turn takes place in the fate of Gnus - he falls in love with a singer performing in a cabaret, and falls into her complete submission. Having married, he becomes the owner of a house of dubious reputation, a den of debauchery and fraud.

The political conflict between the forces of bourgeois liberalism and reaction, which is playing out in the all-European arena, the writer transfers in the novel Little Town (1909) to a provincial Italian town. Everything that seems grandiose to the participants in the conflict turns out to be a ridiculous farce, the mouse fuss of the townsfolk, who play the role of arbiters of the fate of mankind. The novel is full of satire and humor.

Heinrich Mann's novels become bestsellers in Germany, but his name remains virtually unknown abroad, largely due to the general isolation of German culture due to the political situation before the First World War.

Since the beginning of the 1910s, the writer's publicistic and literary-critical activities have been unfolding. In the essay Voltaire - Goethe (1910), Spirit and Action (1910), the Reichstag pamphlet (1911), he stands up for the social activity of literature, affirms the idea of ​​the inseparability of thought and action, the internal connection between realistic art and democracy. The title of the article Spirit and Action has a programmatic meaning for Heinrich Mann, expressing a through idea of ​​his work. The contradiction between spirit and action is perceived by the writer as originally German. It is no coincidence that in the mid-1930s, in the dilogy about Henry IV, which removes this contradiction, the main character is taken from the history of France. The idea of ​​the need to combine culture and democracy formed the basis of Zola's essay (1915).

Heinrich Mann was one of the few German writers who opposed the First World War unleashed by Germany. He held liberal views, strongly condemning the war, and was subsequently critical of the Weimar Republic. In contrast, Brother Thomas, who eventually became one of the most famous German intellectuals, was, on the contrary, an ardent nationalist early in his life and supported Germany's participation in the war.

Heinrich Mann's novel The Loyal Subject brought world fame, which, together with the novels The Poor (1917) and the Head (1925), was included in the Empire trilogy, which summed up the pre-war life of various sections of German society. The protagonist Diederich Gesling is a socio-psychological type formed by German imperialism, which later became the mainstay of fascism. Loyalty itself, from childhood he bows before the authorities in the person of his father, teacher, policeman. At the university, Diederich joins a student corporation and selflessly dissolves in it. Service in the army, the factory that he headed after the death of his father, a profitable marriage, the fight against liberals - all these are the stages of his service to the idea of ​​​​power, where in every detail the main social attitude of Gosling is visible - the pose of either a subordinate or a ruler. Heinrich Mann presents the reader with a cross-section of the entire German society, from the Kaiser to the Social Democrats, who do not so much express the interests of the people as betray them. At the end of the novel, a sudden thunderstorm sweeps away this audience from the main square, where they were going to open a monument to Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose double in appearance and in fact turns out to be Diederich Gesling.

The novel Poor marks a search for new, extra-bourgeois ideals. It is dedicated to the struggle of the worker Balrich with Gesling. True, the image of the worker is not always reliable, since Heinrich Mann did not know the working environment well. The writer depicts in detail the moral torment that causes injustice, violation of human dignity, the inability to lead a normal human life. He tries to show the awakening of class consciousness, the spiritual and moral growth of a man from the people, defending his rights in an open conflict. This and other novels by Heinrich Mann, created before the early 1930s, are inferior in realistic clarity and depth to The Loyal Subject, but all of them are marked by sharp criticism of the essence of capitalist relations.

In the same vein, Mann's journalism develops in the 1920s - early 30s. The writer's disappointment in the ability of the bourgeois republic to change social life in the spirit of genuine democracy leads him to understand the historical role of socialism. He establishes himself on the positions of militant humanism, realizes in a new way the historical role of the proletariat (the article The Path of the German Workers).

Not accepting the power of the National Socialists, Heinrich Mann emigrated to France in 1933, from 1936 he was chairman of the German Popular Front, created in France. Collections of articles against Nazism were written here: Hatred (1933), The Day Will Come (1936), Courage (1939). Created during these years, the dilogy about Henry IV - The Youth of Henry IV (1935) and The Maturity of Henry IV (1938) - the pinnacle of Mann's late artistic work. The historical background of the dilogy is the French Renaissance. The protagonist of the novel, Henry IV, "a humanist on horseback, with a sword in his hand", is presented as the bearer of historical progress. There are many direct parallels with the present in the novel.

In 1940 Mann emigrates to the USA and lives in Los Angeles. There, his books are practically not sold, he is in need and feels excluded from participation in German public life. The internal crisis intensifies after the suicide of his wife Nelly, forced to work as a waitress in a nightclub. During this period, his brother Thomas, who by that time was becoming a wealthy man and with whom he did not maintain relations for many years due to political differences, supported him and saved him from complete need.

G. Mann's last novels written in the USA - Lidice (1943), Breathing (1949), Reception in the Light (published in 1956), The Sad History of Frederick the Great (fragments published in the GDR in 1958-1960) are marked by sharp social criticism and, together with the considerable complexity of the literary manner.

In the US, Mann continues to engage in anti-fascist activities. He became close to the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany and in the post-war years maintained close ties with the GDR. The result of Heinrich Mann's journalism - the book Review of the Century (1946) - combined the genres of memoir literature, political chronicle, autobiography. Giving a critical assessment of the era, the writer notes the decisive impact on world events of the 20th century. socialist revolution in Russia and the very existence of the USSR.

In 1949 he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR and elected the first president of the German Academy of Arts in Berlin. His impending move to the GDR was thwarted by death.

Heinrich Mann belongs to those masters of realism of the 20th century, whose work is marked by the sharpest political tendentiousness associated with the writer's conscious involvement in the acute political struggle against imperialism and Nazism. His work, as well as his tragic personal fate with its contradictions and crises, reflected the search for the realization of their ideals by representatives of the German intelligentsia of the early 20th century. Their protest was directed primarily against the rigid system of subordination and hierarchy of power that fettered all living things that existed in Kaiser Germany, and in the 1930s Nazism became the object of merciless criticism, the social roots of which they explored in their works and works. The socially accusatory novels of Heinrich Mann are included in the classics of political satire of the 20th century, being a natural continuation of the traditions of German satirical literature.

Irina Ermakova(http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/kultura_i_obrazovanie/literatura/MANN_GENRIH.html?page=0.2)

en.wikipedia.org

Heinrich (left) and Thomas Mann, circa 1900

Biography

Born into a patrician merchant family. His father, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, was elected senator of Lübeck for finance and economy in 1877. After Heinrich, four more children were born in the family - Thomas, Julia, Karla and Victor.

In 1884 Heinrich made a trip to St. Petersburg.

In 1889 he graduated from the gymnasium and moved to Dresden, where he worked for some time in the book trade. Then he moved to Berlin, worked in a publishing house and studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin. Since 1893, he repeatedly traveled to Munich, where by that time the family had moved after the death of his father, a senator.

During the Weimar Republic, from 1926 he was an academician of the department of literature of the Prussian Academy of Arts, and in 1931 he became chairman of the department.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, he was deprived of German citizenship. He emigrated first to Prague and then to France. He lived in Paris, Nice, then through Spain and Portugal he moved to the USA.

Since 1940, Heinrich Mann lived in Los Angeles, California. The writer died on March 11, 1950 in another California city, Santa Monica.

Since 1953, the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts has presented an annual Heinrich Mann Prize.

G. Mann's son-in-law is the famous Czech prose writer Ludwik Ashkenazy.

Compositions

* In the same family (In einer Familie) (1894)
* The Promised Land (Im Schlaraffenland) (1900)
* Goddesses, or Three novels of the Duchess of Assy (Die Gottinnen oder die drei Romane der Herzogin von Assy, trilogy) (1903)
* Teacher Gnus (Professor Unrat oder Das Ende eines Tyrannen) (1905)
* Between races (Zwischen den Rassen) 1907
* Small town (Die kleine Stadt) (1909)
* Poor (Die Armen) (1917)
* Loyal subject (Der Untertan) (1918)
* Young years of King Henry IV (Die Jugend des Konigs Henri Quatre) (1935)
* The Mature Years of King Henry IV (Die Vollendung des Konigs Henri Quatre) (1938)
* Lidice (1942)
* Essays of Spirit and Action (Essays Geist und Tat) (1931)
* Serious life (Ein ernstes Leben) (1932)

Bibliography

* Fritsche V., Satire on German militarism, in the book: German imperialism in literature, M., 1916;
* Mirimsky I.V. Heinrich Mann (1871-1950). [Essay on life and work]. //In the book: Mann G. Works. In 8 vols.T.1. M., 1957.-S.5-53
* Anisimov I., Heinrich Mann, in his book: Masters of Culture, 2nd ed., M., 1971;
* Serebrov N. N., Heinrich Mann. Essay on creative path, M., 1964;
* Znamenskaya G., Heinrich Mann, M., 1971;
* Pieck W., Ein unermudlicher Kampfer fur den Fortschritt, "Neues Deutschland", B., 1950, 15 Marz, ? 63;
* Abusch A., Uber Heinrich Mann, in his book: Literatur im Zeitalter des Sozialismus, B. - Weimar, 1967;
* Heinrich Mann 1871-1950, Werk und Leben in Dokumenten und Bildern, B. - Weimar, 1971;
* Herden W., Geistund Macht. Heinrich Manns Weg an die Seite der Arbeiterklasse, B. Weimar, 1971;
* Zenker E., Heinrich Mann - Bibliographie. Werke, B. - Weimar, 1967.
* Peter Stein: Heinrich Mann. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2002 (Sammlung Metzler; 340), ISBN 3-476-10340-4
* Walter Delabar/Walter Fahnders (Hg.): Heinrich Mann (1871-1950). Weidler: Berlin, 2005 (MEMORIA; 4), ISBN 3-89693-437-6

Biography(http://www.megabook.ru/Article.asp?AID=649329)

MANN (Mann) Heinrich (1871-1950), German writer. Brother T. Mann. Since 1933 in anti-fascist emigration, since 1940 in the USA. Socio-moral novels about Germany of the "burgher" (1914) era, including "Teacher Gnus" (1905) and "Loyal Subject" (1914), with expressionistic grotesque and sarcasm, denouncing the Kaiser's militarism and bourgeois lifestyle. The cult of the Nietzschean free personality in the Goddesses trilogy (1903). The image of the desired hero - the bearer of reason and the idea of ​​progress, "a humanist with a dream in his hand", in the dilogy "Youth and Maturity of King Henry IV" (1935-38). Democratic and socialist sympathies, resolute anti-fascism in literary criticism and journalism. Novels, plays.

MANN (Mann) Heinrich (March 27, 1871, Lübeck - March 12, 1950, Santa Monica, California), German novelist, essayist, author of short stories and plays. Brother T. Mann.

Witness and critic of his era

The life of Heinrich Mann is framed by two important events in national history - the unification of Germany, which occurred in the year of his birth, and the division of Germany into two states, which occurred a year before his death. Heinrich Mann, like no other of his colleagues, played the role of a witness, chronicler and critic of his era. Even before the First World War, of which he became a passionate opponent, Heinrich Mann came up with the idea of ​​the political responsibility of intellectual people there (essay "Spirit and Action", 1910). In 1915, he published the essay Zola in the anti-militarist magazine Die weissen Blaetter, published in Switzerland, in which he highly praised the French writer as a fighter against chauvinism (the Dreyfus affair) and the omnipotence of state power. The essay became the occasion for a years-long divergence from Thomas Mann, who until the early 1920s held a conservative position. Clearly aware of the danger of approaching fascism, the writer repeatedly called for the unification of the left forces. In February 1933 he emigrated to France, and after its occupation - to the United States.

Satirist

This difficult dramatic life was preceded by a peaceful childhood in the home of a Lübeck senator and head of a trading company, subsequently captured by Thomas Mann in the novel Buddenbrooks (1901). If the depiction of the burghers in their dignity and degradation occupied Thomas Mann par excellence in this novel, then for Heinrich Mann, interest in the class that gave birth to him did not dry up all his life. In his novels, he created a satirical portrait of the German bourgeoisie - from the middle bourgeoisie to the "sharks" of capitalism. But he also saved the dignity of the old burghers, recognizing its rebirth in active citizenship.

From extreme to extreme

The least independent early work of Heinrich Mann. But already in his first novel, The Country of Jelly Coasts (1900), the characters - exchange dealers, noble ladies, corrupt journalists and others - are completely dependent on the banker Turkheimer. Mann was interested not only in this environment, but - this is also a constant aspect for him - in the stereotypical mechanisms that control human behavior. F. Berto, one of the first researchers of Mann's work, rightly called his style "geometric": the writer was occupied with the typology of actions, the stereotype of reactions. In the trilogy "Goddesses, or Three Novels of the Duchess of Assy" (1903), written in a different style, under the clear influence of modernism of the turn of the century and some ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, the heroine, striving for the free manifestation of her personality in politics (the novel "Diana"), art (the novel "Minerva"), sensual love ("Venus"), eventually fails. But the author is no less interested in the instability and nervous reactivity of other characters, who are constantly ready to move from one extreme to another. In the novel Little Town (1909), Belotti's lawyer, who led the struggle for democracy and progress in the city, and, more precisely, for the staging of the opera Poor Tognetta by a visiting troupe, is now defiantly self-confident, then is shy and droops, for which he is derisively called balabolka. And in the novel The Big Deal (1930), the same instability is shown in connection with the real situation in Germany. The dying engineer Birk worries about the potential willingness of his adult children to do anything.

"Loyal"

Heinrich Mann believed that one of the main touchstones in the lives of his contemporaries was fear. In two of his best novels - "The Loyal Subject" (finished in 1914 and then published in Russia, in Germany came out after the end of the First World War in 1918) and the dilogy "Youth and Mature Years of King Henry IV" (1935-1938) - he clarified the course and mechanisms of possible socio-psychological reactions to the pressure of life.

The novel "Loyal Subject" is the first in the trilogy "Empire". The next two novels - The Poor (1917) and The Head (1925) - turned out to be much weaker. The action of "The Loyal Subject" takes place before the outbreak of the First World War in provincial Niezig, partly in Berlin and Italy, and begins with the childhood of Dietrich Gesling, a weak, dreamy boy. But lethargy, fearfulness, love for fairy-tale horror are combined in a child with servile obedience to his father and the desire to recoup, to get the better of someone even weaker. Each of the following episodes: Dietrich Goesling, obsequious to the teacher and mocking a Jewish classmate, later joins the nationalist student organization "New Teutonia"; Dietrich Goesling in the army, admiring the order, but dodging the hardships of service; Dietrich Gesling, not without success trying to cleanse his native Netzig of democratic trends and establish the spirit of militant patriotism - all this inadvertently leads the reader to the strangely identical reactions of the hero to strength and weakness. Mann draws the social type of his epoch - an epoch that gave birth to people who are jerks, capable of moving from one impulse to another in the face of danger, from one belief to a diametrically opposed one. Manna occupies the political and the social. Dietrich Gesling with the alternation of fear and arrogance in him is, as they say about him in the novel, a collective image, "combining in his face everything that is disgusting in everyone." Goesling tries to obscure his inner inferiority with love for the Kaiser. Like a madman, he rushes after Wilhelm, repeating his path, and this is twice in a short novel. If the content of the novel boiled down only to the fact that the author revealed through the hero the rootedness of loyalty in the German reality of the 20th century, that he was able to show in his loyal subject the emerging type, which in a few decades made up the majority of the nation, then even then the value of this book would be enormous. But Heinrich Mann did more. With honed skill, he showed in any episode, in any passing situation, in a portrait and gestures, the mechanism of social reactions in people of the type of Dietrich Gesling. Behind self-confidence in him lies emptiness, behind purposefulness - the absence of independent knowledge. Life then turns into a succession of actions, depending on the proposed circumstances. In all his actions, the hero proceeds from what an external force tells him. The loyalist does not know. He only hears and feels. To some extent, a close social type was drawn by the writer as early as 1905 in the novel Teacher Gnus, or the End of a Tyrant.

"The Youth and Mature Years of King Henry IV"

But Heinrich Mann also saw other human possibilities. Most vividly, he embodied them in the hero of his dilogy from the history of France in the 16th century, in the image of King Henry IV. Like many other German émigré writers, the genre of the historical novel was for Mann an opportunity to see parallels in the past in the present, an example of resistance to reaction and terror. The hero of Mann, who left a memory of himself as a just, kind king, is important for the author as an active fighter and figure, a humanist on horseback and with a sword in his hand. The first part of the dilogy describes how the hero, who grew up in the south of France in close proximity to the people, then learns intrigue and deceit at the court of Catherine de Medici. Having become the head of the Huguenots, he takes part in the struggle, which ended on St. Bartholomew's night with a massacre of his party. Heinrich lives as a hostage at the court of Catherine, marries - “a bloody wedding” - her daughter Margot, runs after many years of learning misfortune to his Huguenot friends, has conversations with Michel de Montaigne, whose thoughts are close to the author (the hero remembered his phrase about that violence is strong, but goodness is stronger).

The novel does not have that wide historical life, the main thing in the novel is its hero. It is through the hero that everything that the author wanted to say about the events of the past, and indirectly about the present and future, is said. At the same time, everything private, biographical and psychological is planned sparingly. The dilogy about Henry IV is just as “geometric” as “The Loyal Subject”: it also draws the correlations between the course of history and the reactions of ordinary people and outstanding personalities to it. But it is more difficult to discern these regularities in the dilogy, because the authenticity and lifelikeness have grown immeasurably. The whole history of Henry's burning relationship with the daughter of Catherine de Medici, and then Queen Margo, for example, also contains signals that, in modern terms, could be called the alignment of historical forces: hugging, the king of Navarre remembers that he is holding his daughter in his arms poisoner sent to him by a hostile camp.

Heinrich's actions in the novel have a long-term goal. They are not limited to military victories. As the novel once says, “The trust of strangers is of great importance. The ultimate goal - the unification of France in the hands of a reasonable ruler - is achieved in a chain of situations strung on a single thread, in which the future king in different ways achieves the confidence of his people. Henry in the novel does not accept the "settings" that his environment offers him, starting with the main "settings" of the era - the internecine war between the Huguenots and Catholics. In difficult times, he does not become infected with emotions. Does not accept the conditions offered to him. He does not respond to evil with what is expected of him. He does not rush from one saving opportunity to another. For a long time he did not even accept the throne of France, yielding it to another. He stands firm in his position, follows his own line of conduct, because he relies on his own mind. Heinrich in the novel is almost like a hero from a fairy tale. Throughout his journey, throughout the two-volume novel, the author cannot exhaust his joyful admiration for the hero. The opposite is true with regard to The Loyal Subject and the life reactions of Dietrich Gesling. The author presented a different model of behavior to his contemporaries.

Last years

Heinrich Mann wrote many novels. In the books he created in the last years of his life in an American refuge, criticism of loyalty was continued (the novel The Sad History of Frederick the Great, which remained unfinished, 1960, remained unfinished). "Old man's avant-gardism" called his last two novels - "Breath" and "Reception in the Light" - highly appreciated by Thomas Mann. The book of his memoirs Review of the Century (1945) paid tribute to the allies and their leaders who defeated fascism, and it was here that the writer lacked political insight to evaluate Stalin.

Biography(http://feb-web.ru/feb/ivl/vl8/vl8-3402.htm)

Among the early brilliant victories of realism of the XX century. include the best novels of Heinrich Mann, written in the 900-10s. He was born in 1871 into an old burgher family in northern Germany in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. Graduated from Berlin University. But he devoted most of his energies to literature. Among German writers, H. Mann was one of the most consistent adherents of democracy. Unlike his brother T. Mann, he sharply condemned the First World War, and subsequently was critical of the Weimar Republic. A passionate anti-fascist, G. Mann emigrated in 1933 to France. From there, he hardly moved to the United States, where he died in poverty in 1950. In 1949 he was awarded the National Prize of the GDR and elected the first president of its Academy of Arts.

Heinrich Mann (1871-1950) continued the age-old tradition of German satire. At the same time, like Weert and Heine, the writer experienced a significant impact of French social thought and literature. It was French literature that helped him master the genre of the socially accusatory novel, which acquired unique features from H. Mann. Later G. Mann discovered Russian literature. In Review of the Century (1946), the writer argued that the real great novels "penetrated into the depths of real life, moreover, they changed the world. The proof is the Russian Revolution: it follows a century of great novels that were revolutionary as the truth."

The name of G. Mann became widely known after the publication of the novel "The Land of Jelly Coasts" (1900). Its exposition is traditional for a classic Western European novel of the 19th century: a young man comes from the provinces to the capital, overwhelmed by an ambitious desire to break out into the people. A descendant of the heroes of Balzac and Stendhal, the protagonist of the Country of Jelly Coasts, Andreas Zumsee, however, is smaller, mediocre, and vulgar.

In the original, the novel is called "Im Schlaraffenland", which promises the reader an acquaintance with a fabulous country of prosperity. But this folklore name is deeply ironic. G. Mann introduces the reader to the world of the German bourgeoisie. In this world, everyone hates each other, although they cannot do without each other, being bound not only by material interests, but also by the nature of domestic relations, views, and the certainty that everything in the world is bought and sold. The embodiment of all the vices and moral deformities of the "Land of Kissel Shores", where "money is lying on the floor," is its all-powerful ruler banker Turkheimer. However, G. Mann seeks to show in his hero not only the triumphant bourgeois power, but also its instability.

At the end of the novel, the almighty magnate experiences mental depression and depression. He is ridiculous and pathetic in his passion for the girl Matska, who is characterized by common sense, inner freedom. She does not hesitate to ridicule Turkheimer, whose close associates say that "such a girl jokes and debunks the entire regime in the face of its crowned representative."

G. Mann creates an image according to the laws of caricature, deliberately shifting lines and proportions, sharpening and exaggerating the characteristics of the characters. His "geometric style" (F. Berto) is one of the variants of conventionality, so characteristic of the realism of the 20th century. The characters of G. Mann, depicted with sharp strokes, are characterized by the stiffness and immobility of the masks. A whole gallery of such satirical masks, freak people, vile, predatory, hypocritical, self-serving, depraved, has been created in the "Country of Jelly Coasts". As in his next novels, G. Mann now and then goes beyond the limits of authenticity. But his social flair and skill as a satirist do not allow the reader to doubt the exact reflection of the essence of the phenomenon. The creature is exposed, "brought out", itself becomes, as in a caricature or poster, the subject of direct artistic representation.

A peculiar artistic result was given in the work of G. Mann by impressionistic techniques. It effectively and expressively conveys primary instantaneous visual impressions. However, the riot of colors in individual episodes of his novels and the pictorial detail serve him as a pointed expression of thought. The expressiveness of color becomes one of the ways to create a satirical image-mask that changes little in the course of the plot.

In the early work of G. Mann, psychological analysis was supplanted by caricature. A conditional grotesque world appears, where a string of freaks operates. Throughout the novel about the "country of kissel shores" there is a theme of art, which is prostituted, like everything else. At the behest of Turkheimer, Andreas Zumsee is made into a writer, and imaginary merits are attributed to him. “Talent is what makes money” - this cynical thesis proclaimed by Andreas Zumsee is proved in the novel by many examples.

"The Country of Jelly Coasts" is a socially accusatory novel, which was not in German literature of the second half of the 19th century. G. Mann's causticity, open tendentiousness, harshness of manner became a new word in German literature.

Books that were created with a short break often turned out to be strikingly dissimilar in the work of G. Mann. In the trilogy "Goddesses, or Three Novels of the Duchess of Assy" (1903), the writer tries to move away from satire, creating the image of a free and happy, unhindered developing person, which, according to the author's intention, is the main character. The Duchess of Assy, as it were, goes through three stages in her development, corresponding to the novels of the trilogy - a passion for politics (Diana), art (Minerva), love (Venus).

The heroine is placed by the writer in ideal conditions, she is exalted above the hardships of everyday life, it would seem that everything is given to her for the free manifestation of a richly gifted nature. However, her life is a path leading to extreme egocentrism. Deprived of the opportunity to find in reality a free, happy person living a full life (and this very intention is very important for the author and will be repeated by him more than once - with much greater success - in the future), G. Mann artificially constructed such an image. However, the design turned out to be divorced from reality.

A new stage in the development of G. Mann is the novel "Teacher Gnus, or the End of a Tyrant" (1905). The image of the teacher Gnus, having absorbed a great historical and social content, has become a household name. A petty misanthrope and a maniac, an obscurantist and a tyrant, the teacher Gnus imagined himself to be the guardian of morality and laws. He hates the mind and talent, independence, spiritual breadth. The slightest deviation from official discipline causes him bouts of indignation. The Prussian system of education found in H. Mann a merciless accuser who portrays the German school as a kind of barracks, where individuality and living thought are suppressed in every possible way. The purpose of such a school is to educate law-abiding citizens.

Gnus is a tyrant and a slave at the same time. The opportunity to trample, humiliate a person gives him sadistic joy. Corrupted by his power over his students, he is confident in his own exclusivity. However, G. Mann forces Gnus to make a sharp turn. A pedant and guardian of morality, he falls in love with a singer performing in the Blue Angel tavern, and falls into complete submission. Having married, he becomes the owner of a house of dubious reputation, a den of debauchery and fraud.

The writer brings the actions of Gnus to the point of absurdity. Sharpness, exaggeration, eccentricity help to reveal the very essence of the character, as well as the reality that gave birth to it. This novel about a German gymnasium and teachers is far from the traditional descriptiveness of the novels of L. Thoma and E. Strauss devoted to the same topic.

Immediately after the end of "Teacher Gnus", the writer had an idea for the trilogy "Empire". But before its implementation, he managed to write two more novels - "Between the Races" (1907) and "Small Town" (1909).

The action of the novel "Little Town" takes place in Italy, a country, like France, beloved by the writer. Mischievous buffoonery and good-natured humor reign in this novel, which does not exclude satire. “Mann makes a bold, brilliantly successful experiment: the political conflict that is playing out on the pan-European arena - the struggle between the forces of bourgeois liberalism and the forces of reaction - he transfers to a provincial Italian town and shows it in such a way that everything that seems grandiose and tragically sublime to its participants turns out to be funny farce, miserable mouse fuss of the townsfolk, playing the role of arbiters of the fate of mankind and history,” wrote I. Mirimsky.

“...Looking back at the path I have traveled, at the six novels I have created,” G. Mann himself summed up, “I see that I went in them from the affirmation of individualism to the veneration of democracy. In The Duchess of Assy I erected a temple in honor of the three goddesses, in honor of the triune, free, beautiful, enjoying personality. On the contrary, I created the “Little City” in the name of the people, in the name of humanity.”

The people themselves do not take part in the fuss of politicians. He is trusting, simple-hearted, but blind, lacking initiative, and clever demagogues manage to lead him astray. Against the backdrop of the unprincipled squabbling of different political parties, adventurers, people without honor and conscience, demagogues and rogues appear, striving to seize power at any cost. Such is Savetso, a type psychologically close to the future fascists. No wonder G. Mann himself spoke of the "Little Town" that it was "Italy on the eve of fascism." Thus, behind the buffoonery and farce, the political meaning of the book is revealed.

In the 10s, G. Mann also acted as a publicist. His essays "Voltaire - Goethe" (1910), "Spirit and Action" (1910) stand up for the social activity of literature, affirm the idea of ​​the inseparability of thought and action, the internal connection between realistic art and democracy. The very title of the article "Spirit and Action" has a programmatic meaning for G. Mann, expressing the cross-cutting idea of ​​all his work. Acting, he was among the few German writers opposed to the First World War unleashed by Germany. The idea of ​​the need to combine culture and democracy formed the basis of his essay "Zola" (1915). The contradiction between spirit and action is perceived by the writer as originally German. It is no coincidence that in the mid-1930s, in the dilogy about Henry IV, which dialectically removes this contradiction, the main character will be taken from the history of France.

World fame brought G. Mann his novel "Loyal Subject", which was completed before the First World War. In 1916 it was printed in the amount of only ten copies; The general German public became acquainted with The Loyal Subject from the 1918 edition. And in Russia, the novel was published in 1915, being translated from the manuscript. The novel The Loyal Subject, along with the novels The Poor (1917) and The Head (1925), made up the Empire trilogy.

The title itself shows the scale of the writer's social generalizations. The creative task that G. Mann set for himself in the "Empire" was commensurate with the plans carried out by Balzac and Zola. The protagonist of The Loyal, Diedrich Gesling, has become a symbolic image. This is a socio-psychological type, formed by German imperialism, and later became the mainstay of fascism. Such political concreteness expresses the new quality of H. Mann's realism.

Gesling is not one of many: he is the very essence of loyalty, its essence embodied in a living character. The novel is built as a biography of a hero who, from childhood, bows to authority - a father, a teacher, a policeman. At the University of Berlin, he joins the student corporation "Novoteutonia" and selflessly dissolves in this corporation, which thought and wished for him. Service in the army, from which he soon managed to free himself, returning to his native city, the factory, which he headed after the death of his father, an advantageous marriage, the struggle with the liberal Buk, the leader of the "party of the people", a participant in the revolution of 1848 - all these pictures are needed to the author in order to emphasize again and again the main invariable properties of Gesling's nature. He is a spiritual relative of Gnus, but his field of activity is much wider.

The internal properties of a person, as a rule, are emphasized by some external detail. But from the external grotesque characteristics in the "Land of Jelly Coasts" G. Mann passes to a great psychological motivation, retaining, however, a satirical, journalistic task in psychologism. Like the teacher Gnus, Gesling is a slave and a despot. At the heart of his psychology is cringing before the powers that be, which he very cleverly knows how to use to strengthen his position. The mechanics of interaction between a person and circumstances invariably occupies G. Mann.

The story about Diedrich Gesling is, first of all, a fixation of his constantly changing social position (the same applies to many heroes in other novels by G. Mann). The writer is not interested in a consistent description of the hero's life, but Gosling's social attitude is visible in every detail - the posture and gesture of a subordinate or ruler, a desire to show strength or, on the contrary, hidden fear.

G. Mann presents the reader with a cross-section of the entire German society, all its social strata, from Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Social Democrats, who do not so much express the interests of the people as betray them, being able to profitably negotiate with the owners (Napoleon Fischer, hiding behind demagogic phraseology). One of the revealing moves of the novel is that G. Mann makes Gesling a double of Emperor Wilhelm II. Goesling blindly imitates the adored Kaiser. It turns out that Gesling is similar to the Kaiser both externally and in essence. They are kindred spirits. In this peculiar duplicity, both look like hypocrites, playing some kind of obscene farce. In the novel itself, the social life of the city of Netzig is called “vulgar clownery”, and these words give the key to how G. Mann himself understood what was depicted.

Very quickly, Gesling turns into an automatically operating robot. Society itself is just as mechanistic. In conversations, in reactions to what is happening, the stereotypical psychology of interdependent and interconnected people is revealed. The end of the novel is symbolic, describing the opening of the monument to William I with a large gathering of people. Ceremonial pomposity, pompous crackling speeches. But a sudden thunderstorm sweeps everyone off the square. The sky opened up "from horizon to horizon and with such fury that it was all like a long-contained explosion." Gosling, squatting in a puddle, hides under the oratory.

In the article “To My Soviet Readers,” published in Pravda on July 2, 1938, H. Mann wrote: “Now it is clear to everyone that my novel The Loyal Subject was neither an exaggeration nor a distortion ... The novel depicts the previous stage development of the type which then attained power.

In the second part of the Empire trilogy, the novel The Poor (1917), the author seeks to look at the surrounding reality through the eyes of workers. The "poor" signify the search for new, extra-bourgeois ideals. Gesling recedes into the background in this work, although the novel is dedicated to the struggle between Balrich and Gesling, during which the worker more than once makes his dodgy opponent tremble. True, the image of Balrich is not always reliable (H. Mann knew the working environment poorly), but on the whole the novel reflected in its own way the desire for active social action, characteristic of the masses in the last years of the world war.

In "The Poor" there are no details of the plight of the workers, hunger, physical suffering, but those moral torments that cause injustice, violation of human dignity, the impossibility of truly human life are depicted in detail. G. Mann tries to show (although far from reaching the expressiveness of the first novel of the trilogy) the awakening of class self-consciousness, the spiritual and moral growth of a man from the people, defending his rights in an open conflict. G. Mann belongs to those masters of realism of the 20th century, whose work is marked by the sharpest political tendentiousness.

- I! I raised both hands. Shurik, wiping away a tear, pragmatically figured that the tragedy could wait, but a free party at the expense of the mother's boyfriend could be covered. She figured it out and made the right decision - she extended her hand and, at the same time, extended Ankina for control.

So, it's unanimous. - Summed up Ruslan.

“I don’t agree, I’m against it,” my mother insisted.

“I assure you, dear mother-in-law, that it does not matter at all. If you get tired, the fastest taxi will bring you here in five minutes.

And we went. I don't remember such a New Year. Actually, I don’t remember much from this New Year either. Ruslan immediately upon arrival found some kind of restaurant worker, whom he bought out as a nanny to follow Shurka, Anyuta, and especially his mother. Then he began to give me all sorts of filth to drink, kiss and squeeze in dark corners. At twelve o'clock, with drunken fingers, straying, we dialed the numbers of all our acquaintances in a row and congratulated them. It seems that even Ruslan invited everyone to the wedding all the time, somehow forgetting that for order it is still necessary to wait for a divorce. The girls relaxed. Anyuta quickly ate all sorts of rubbish from the buffet and fell asleep in front of a huge LCD screen showing cartoons in the “until the roof completely flew off” mode. Maman sat sedately on the floor below, in an Italian restaurant, and the waitress we had bribed was asking her riddles, asking if Madame Galetto would like Al Mattone or Fattuccini Bolognese. Maman quietly went crazy from luxury, seized her emotions with valerian and told her neighbors at the table that at last her unlucky daughter was able to catch a normal man in a net by the age of forty. Shurik danced to the wild sounds of some unreal acid "chaos" until she wore out her shoes, got acquainted with DJs, and, it seems, even drank beer furtively from someone's bottle. I would certainly have scolded her if I had not behaved completely obscenely myself. However, the fact remains. By morning, Shurets looked at Ruslan much warmer than in the evening, when she heroically planned to endure him only for the sake of her mother's happiness. What about me? I was happy. The ugly scene arranged by my ex, hopefully, my husband, was erased from my memory with the first kisses and I flew into the arms of my only man, forgetting everything. A new, two thousand and three year has come. I don't know much about horoscopes and I don't know exactly the year of the Ox or the Monkey. Or maybe an Owl or a Fawn. But I am sure that this is our year, the year of Ruslan Prigorin and Olga Petrova.