The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain was conceived in the 1910s, which is when the bulk of the novel takes place; however, it was not completed until 1924, after the cataclysmic events of the first world war. 

Mann was born in 1875, just four years after the creation of the modern state of Germany and the failed revolutionary Commune of France. During World War II, he was exiled from Germany, where Nazis burned copies of The Magic Mountain. He relocated to the United States and became a U.S. citizen in 1944.

World War I was the culmination of many upheavals to the global order that took place within Mann’s lifetime. The telegraph and railway were giving way to the motorcar and radio. Rapid technological changes were shrinking the world; advancements in medicine and the relentless exploitation and colonization of a global working class created to substantial changes to the health and prosperity of the European and American bourgeoisie.

A Modernist bildungsroman, or coming of age novel, The Magic Mountain takes place throughout the decade leading up to World War I and explores these global technological and ideological shifts through its main protagonist, Hans Castorp. The novel was Mann’s first to reach wide international acclaim and helped secure him a Nobel prize.