Georg Lukacs and Thomas Mann: A Study in the Sociology of Literature

Georg Lukács, the philosopher and literary critic, and Thomas Mann, the creative artist were two towering figures in the twentieth-century European intellectual life. Although they enjoyed a fruitful literary relationship, the two men never established an intimate friendship. In fact, Lukács once said that the only “dark spot” and “unsolved mystery” in his life was Mann’s life-long unresponsiveness to him as a bad person. Based primarily on Lukács, Katja Mann, Ernst Bloch, Arnold Hauser, and others, Part I of this study traces the development of “spiritual-intellectual symbiosis” between Lukács and Mann that lasted at least until the First World War. Part 2 turns to the question of the inspirational sources for Mann’s fictional characters, Leo Naphta, in his novel The Magic Mountain. Exploring the claim that Lukács himself was the model for his protagonist, Judith Marcus looks at the “Jewish intellectual” as an ideal type throughout Mann’s oeuvre. She concludes that Naphta’s totalitarian personality was inspired by the radicalism, rigidity, dogmatism, and asceticism of the young, then non-Marxist Lukács, and that is was in part these very traits in Lukács that stymied the growth of personal intimacy between the two men.