Nobel laureate in German-language literature - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1978 - 70 Pfennig

The Swedish chemist and industrialist Nobel (1833-1896) erected the Nobel Foundation in his will. Annually, on the anniversary of Nobel's death (10 December), the interest of around 31 million Swedish crowns is distributed as the Nobel Prize for the five most important achievements in the field of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peoples' peace regardless of the nationality of the award winner. The series honors the Nobel Prize winners of German literature Gerhart Hauptmann, Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann. On 6.6.1875 Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck as the son of a prosperous cereal wholesaler and senator. After the death of his father he moves to Munich in 1893, becomes a volunteer in an insurance company and works on the "Simplizissimus". He hears u.a. literary, historical and economic lectures. With his brother Heinrich, who is also a writer, he travels from 1895 to 1897 Italy. In 1899 he becomes editor of the Simplizissimus, soon after a freelance writer. After stays in Oberammergau, Tölz and Davos man lives from 1914 to 1933 in Munich. During a lecture tour in 1933 he emigrated via Holland, Belgium and France to Küsnacht on Lake Zurich, in 1939 to the USA. He is first Visiting Professor at Princeton N.J. then settles in Pacific Palisades. In 1944 he accepted American citizenship. After the war, he visited Germany on various trips and relocated to Kilchberg near Zurich in 1952. There Thomas Mann dies on 12.8.1955. In 1920 he received the Nobel Prize for his first great novel »The Buddenbrooks«. (Text: German Literature Archive - Schiller National Museum, Marbach am Neckar)