No Fun

David Blackbourn

• Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900-49 edited by Hans Wysling, translated by Don Reneau
  California, 444 pp, £40.00, March 1998, ISBN 0 520 07278 2

Twenty years ago Nigel Hamilton wrote a double biography of the literary Brothers Mann, giving equal billing to the celebrated Thomas and the neglected Heinrich. It was certainly time to look again at Heinrich, whose importance as a public and literary figure had been taken for granted by an earlier generation of writers. Gottfried Benn called him ‘one of my gods’; Lion Feuchtwanger thought him the greatest of the writers who had set out not only to depict the 20th century but to change it. Hamilton made a strong case that Heinrich Mann deserved to be remembered as more than just the author of the book on which The Blue Angel was based.