GOLO MANN

Hi, I am also re-reading works of Golo's father. What do you think of him? For me 'Death in Venice' was the work that changed my life when I was 17 and altered the way I feel. But I have never read it since fearing the over-whelming influence it exerts. The novel starts nr the Northern Friedhof. Aschenbach is walking towards Schwabing. I've been up there. The novel intimates death but the novel is really about decadence, a dying class of whom Aschenbach is one of the last intellectual defenders, author of The Abject and a treatise on art seriously compared to Schiller's 'Naive and Sentimental' (I've also read this tract).

If you don't like Golo Mann, can you suggest some German historians that you do like? There is always a need for people like GM, populisers who can write elegantly, have a certain command of their subject and can communicate with people. There is no need for every fact to be exact in a book like this. We are carried along by the force of argument, by the author's charisma, by the wisdom of his comments on certain historical personalities. At the end we may be none the wiser, but we have been entertained. The book is readable.

Gruss

Hi Paul,

I like Golo Mann too, I read this book in my youth. But Mann isn't a very good historian, because some of his "facts" aren't true, it is proven that he made many mistakes. I give you one example: G. Mann wrote that the German operation against Poland (the raid on a German radio station with German concentration camp prisoners in August 1939) had been organized by the SS, but we all know that the attack was carried out by KZ-prisoners. At the time Mann wrote his book this knowledge was already available. The German raid was the occasion for Hitler to start the 2nd world war and to attack Poland. He is a good Belles-letrist with a brilliant style who has written a book that is nice to read, but it is unexact and unhistorical.
Mann is very much credited and everything sounds very clear and reliable, but as a historian you may not cite him. He is not recognised as a historian because too many inaccuracies are to be found in his work.

Gruß
Armin

I'm reading Golo Mann's History of Germany. He is a fantastic historian with a wonderful, clear style and many very good points to make. He is also a gifted reader of philosophy, the sections on Schopenhauer, Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche and Lasselle are excellent primers on their subjects.