May 2019

Born in the United States, Frido Mann sensed the democratic creed of his parents and grandparents from childhood on. They had managed to leave Europe for the U.S. just in time before the outbreak of WWII. During his extended lecture tours, Thomas Mann, Frido's grandfather, addressed his American audiences with his speech “The Coming Victory of Democracy” warning of the dangers of fascism for a liberal democracy: “The social renewal of democracy is the presupposition and the guarantee of its victory.”

Following in his grandfather's tracks, Frido Mann is going to give lectures in more than a dozen cities in the United States and Canada. He will address the current crises in the American and European democracies and the need for their restoration, on the basis of a transatlantic dialogue as initiated by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. The evening at the residence of the German Consul General in Los Angeles is going to be the prelude to the lecture tour.

Frido Mann was born in 1940 in Monterey/California. He studied music, catholic theology, and psychology and worked as a clinical psychologist in in Münster, Leipzig and Prague. He now lives in Munich and works as a freelance writer. His recent publications are "An die Musik. Ein autobiographischer Essay" (Ode to Music: An Autobiographical Essay) and -together with Christine Mann -"Es werde Licht. Die Einheit von Geist und Materie in der Quantenphysik" (Let there be Light: The Union of Spirit and Matter in Quantum Physics). In August 2018, S. Fischer published "Das Weiße Haus des Exils" (The White House of Exile) about the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles.

On May 10, 1933 students at several German universities burned books by authors deemed politically suspect. Vast crowds watched enthusiastically, as the writings of Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Aldous Huxley, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Franz Werfel and others were thrown onto bonfires. In Berlin, some 40,000 people gathered to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a speech condemning Jewish literature and propagating „reliability and commitment to the German spirit“. The book burnings in Germany elicited worldwide protests and triggered counter-demonstrations in many American cities.

Thomas Mann’s grandson Frido Mann will mark the 86th anniversary of the book burning with a reading from the works of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Oskar Maria Graf, Bertolt Brecht, and Erich Kästner. Frido Mann was born in Monterey, California in 1940. He studied Catholic theology and psychology and worked as a clinical psychologist in Münster, Leipzig, and Prague. Today, Frido Mann resides in Munich as a freelance author. In August 2018, he published “Das Weiße Haus des Exils" (“The White House of Exile”, S. Fischer) about the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles, where he is currently staying as an Honorary Fellow.

Prof. Mann will be accompanied by violinist Alena Hove (Colbourn School).