Franz-Joseph-Straße: Thomas Mann Starts a Family
Why is it significant?
Stand at the beginning of Franz-Joseph-Straße, just off the traffic of Leopoldstraße, where tall apartment houses from around 1900 line up like well-dressed burghers waiting for a tram.
Key Facts
| Place | Franz-Joseph-Straße: Thomas Mann Starts a Family |
|---|---|
| Address | Franz-Joseph-Straße 2, 80801 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.15770, 11.58380 |
| Part of Walk | Munich's Schwabing: Blue Riders, Bohemians and Banned Poets |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the beginning of Franz-Joseph-Straße, just off the traffic of Leopoldstraße, where tall apartment houses from around 1900 line up like well-dressed burghers waiting for a tram.
In 1905 a twenty-nine-year-old writer from Lübeck, Thomas Mann, married Katia Pringsheim, the clever daughter of one of the richest families in Munich, and the young couple moved into a flat here at number 2. Mann already had a famous novel behind him: Buddenbrooks, published in 1901, the saga of a merchant family's decline. Now he was trying to become a respectable family man... which, for a writer who had spent years in Schwabing's rented rooms, was its own kind of adventure.
And the family came quickly. Erika was born in 1905, Klaus in 1906, Golo in 1909... three children who would grow up to be actors, novelists and historians in their own right. Mann worked at his desk every morning with the discipline of a bank clerk, and here he wrote Royal Highness, published in 1909, a fairy tale about a lonely prince who marries a fabulously rich heiress. Nobody in Munich missed the parallel.
Mann's love for this city was complicated. In 1902 he had published a story, Gladius Dei, that opens with two words every Münchner knows: München leuchtete... Munich was shining. Then the story turns, and a gaunt young man in a dark hooded cloak rages against the luxury and the art shops of the city. The shining city and the dark visitor... read today, it feels almost like a warning.
In 1910 the growing family moved on, and in 1914 into a villa by the Isar. In 1929 Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1933, abroad on a lecture tour, he was warned not to come home, and he never lived in Munich again. Now step back onto Leopoldstraße, where a giant white figure is striding along the boulevard.