Katia (1883-1980)
& Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
It was high culture that settled in Sanary in the summer of 1933 when Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, arrived with his wife Katia, of German Jewish origin, and two of their children. During their stay, they organised literary circles, either in the garden of the Villa Tranquille, or at Feuchtwanger’s or Schickele’s, where the elite of the intellectual emigrant community met to discuss and exchange ideas.
In autumn 1933, they went into exile in Switzerland, where they remained until their departure for the United States in 1938. Villa Tranquille was demolished in 1944 by the Nazis to make way for an anti-aircraft battery. It was rebuilt after the war.
The presence of Thomas Mann, the Dichterfürst (Prince of Poets), bestowed Sanary with its literary prestige, even though the Mann family only spent one summer at Villa La Tranquille.
Born into an old patrician family of merchants in Lübeck, Thomas Mann was a poor student in school and barely earned his secondary school certificate at the age of eighteen. However, he stood out early for his literary vocation. As early as 1892, he wrote several prose texts and, with other students, published his first journal, titled Frühlingssturm (Spring Storm). His first novel, Buddenbrooks, published in 1901, won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. It was, however, with his novel The Magic Mountain, published in 1924, that he gained international renown. After his father’s death in 1891, the family moved to Munich, where Thomas met Katharina — known as Katia—Pringsheim, the only daughter in a family of five children. The Pringsheims were a Jewish family considered one of the wealthiest in Bavaria. In February 1905, Thomas, already an established writer, married Katia, and they settled in a comfortable apartment furnished by the Pringsheims. They had six children, including the eldest, Erika (1905) and Klaus (1906), who became the couple’s enfants terribles. Both were eccentric yet very brave, becoming early anti-Nazi activists.
In February 1933, while Thomas Mann was on a lecture tour abroad, a controversy against him arose in Germany, preventing him from returning to his homeland. He first went into exile in Switzerland and then to the sunny Provence region. On the advice of his friend René Schickele, he chose Sanary as his residence. His children Klaus and Erika, along with their friend Sybille von Schoenebeck (later Sybille Bedford), found Villa La Tranquille for him to rent.
Thomas and Katia Mann‘s financial situation was secure, even though their assets in Germany were confiscated by the Nazis. They managed to transfer part of their fortune to Switzerland in time, and received royalties from their foreign publishers into their London bank account. ‘We’re not rich, but we’re wealthy,’ Thomas tells his family. So Katia is able to provide a decent life for herself, in keeping with their social status, so that her husband can devote himself entirely to his writing. He finished his trilogy Joseph et ses frères in Sanary. Katia hired someone from the village to help with the housework, and Thomas took turns writing and organising literary circles with Feuchtwanger and Schickele. In the calm of Sanary and the sunshine of Provence, Thomas Mann finds inner peace and adapts to the climate. Later, when he left Sanary, he would look back with gratitude on what he considered to have been the happiest period of his life.
The new political situation in Germany marked the beginning of a family crisis. Klaus, who was rather extreme, published the exile magazine Die Sammlung (The Collection) in Holland under the patronage of André Gide, Aldous Huxley and Heinrich Mann.
Thomas Mann withdrew his agreement to take part in the project because it was too politically polemical and risked offending his readership in Germany.
On September 22, 1933, the Manns bid farewell to Sanary and traveled to their next exile destination in Switzerland, where their daughter had rented a house in Küsnacht to their standards. During their final lunch at the Hôtel de la Tour, Thomas reflected on their time in Sanary, expressing gratitude for the peace and serenity it brought him. On August 18, 1936, Thomas Mann accepted Czech citizenship. Two weeks later, he was stripped of his German citizenship by the Nazis. After Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany in March 1938, Thomas Mann no longer felt safe in Switzerland and decided to emigrate to the USA. Like in Sanary, the Manns belonged to the privileged exiles in the United States. In 1944, he obtained American citizenship. After fourteen years in America, the Manns returned to Switzerland in 1952, where Thomas Mann died on August 12, 1955, in Zurich.
TO FIND OUT MORE
The Jacques Duhamel multimedia library in Sanary-sur-Mer has a collection of books on the theme of the memory of exile in Sanary.