Kapitel 5 Thomas Manns Essay „Pariser Rechenschaft“ (1926) als Vorstufe seines Exils
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Abstract
In 1926 Thomas Mann travelled to Paris as an unofficial cultural ambassador in order to advocate for improved German-French relations, writing about the trip in the same year in his essay “Parisian Account.” Mann himself understood this trip and his essay as a caesura in his life that meant turning away from his hitherto hawkish and German nationalistic attitude to a new beginning. This new beginning took place in three respects: (a) his internationalization and assumption of the role as representative of German and democratic culture; (b) his encounter with the problem of exile as he experienced in Paris in the form of Russian émigrés; and (c) his confrontation with a certain German mythological tradition which—especially via Alfred Baeumler—was to flow into totalitarian and National Socialist concepts of mythology. The Paris experience led Mann directly to the conception of his great novel of exile, Joseph and His Brothers, which his essay hints at repeatedly.