Golo Mann

Golo Mann (27 March 1909 – 7 April 1994), born Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann, was a popular historian, essayist and writer. He was the third child of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia Mann.

Golo Mann, originally a Bavarian German, held Czechoslovakian citizenship from 1936 on, American 1943–68, Swiss from 1968 on and additionally German since 1976.

Mann was born in Munich. As a child, he pronounced his first name as Golo, and this name was adopted. He had an elder sister, Erika Mann, an elder brother, Klaus Mann, and three younger siblings, Monika, Elisabeth and Michael.

In her diary his mother describes him in his early years as sensitive, nervous and frightened. His father hardly concealed his disappointment and rarely mentioned the son in his diary. Golo Mann in turn described him later: "Indeed he was able to radiate some kindness, but mostly it was silence, strictness, nervousness or rage." Among his siblings he was most tightly connected with Klaus, whereas he disliked the dogmatism and radical views of his sister Erika.

An average pupil, he received a classical education at the Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich beginning in September 1918, revealing talents in history, Latin, and especially in reciting poems, the latter being a lifelong passion. Increasingly sensing his parents‘ home as a burden, he attempted a kind of break-out by joining the Boy Scouts in spring 1921. On one of the holiday marches he was the victim of a slight sexual violation by his group leader.

New horizons opened up in 1923, when Mann entered the boarding school in Salem, feeling liberated from home and enjoying the new educational approach. Here, in the countryside near Lake Constance, he developed an enduring passion for hiking through the mountains, although he suffered from a lifelong knee injury.

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