Mann, Thomas Mann, Thomas (1875-1955), self-exiled German novelist and winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, lived in Princeton for two and a half years 1938-1941, and was formally associated with the University during the academic years 1938-1940. Mann had left Germany in 1933 when Hitler rose to power. After five years in Switzerland he was encouraged by friends to settle in this country, and President Dodds and Dean Gauss persuaded him to accept appointment as a lecturer in the University. While here Mann gave public lectures on Goethe, Wagner, and Freud and guest lectures in upperclass courses on the German romantic movement and the European novel. The University made him a Doctor of Letters honoris causa at a special convocation in Nassau Hall in May 1939. In a moving response Mann expressed gratitude for his new home in America and spoke of gratitude in general: ``To be grateful for all life's blessings, . . . is the best condition for a happy life. A joke, a good meal, a fine spring day, a work of art, a human personality, a voice, a glance but this is not all. For there is another kind of gratitude . . . the feeling that makes us thankful for suffering, for the hard and heavy things of life, for the deepening of our natures which perhaps only suffering can bring.'' During their stay in Princeton Mr. and Mrs. Mann lived in the red brick Georgian house at the corner of Stockton Street and Library Place. Here, working three or four hours every morning, seven days a week, he completed | |
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