Heinrich Mann: Mirror and Antagonist of his time

Kapitel: 4.4 Heinrich Mann’s “Die Kleine Stadt” (1909) as a democratic

novel Heinrich Mann, in the meantime a solid novelist, has the need to extend his view beyond both discussed sociocritical novels after the change of 1905. After the completion and publication of the novel 1909 he writes to his friend Ludwig Ewers: “Die Kleine Stadt ist mir von meinen Romanen der liebste, denn er ist nicht nur technisch eine Eroberung, auch geistig. Es ist Wärme, die Wärme der Demokratie die darin wiedergegeben ist, ein Glaube and die Menschheit … zu dem die Welt, wie mir scheint, wieder gelangen wird.“ At the same time it is the refusal of the individualism which specifies the epoch of literature of the Fin de siècle (“Der Individualismus auf den wir einmal stolz waren, fängt an uns erbärmlich vorzukommen…”). Thomas Mann values the novel as the “Hohe Lied der Demokratie”. That the novel remains extensive unnoticed in the contemporary reception is due to two factors. On the one hand as already mentioned in the forecast of the

democratic content for that the nationalistic Germany wasn’t prepared. On the other hand Mann changes to the Inselverlag with which he was unhappy afterwards and he thereupon decides as a start “keine weiteren Romane zu schreiben”.