Influences Evident in Thomas Mann's Works Thomas Mann once said “Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.” This quote is the cumulative result of a life time of influences from the writers and culture that surrounded Mann. During the spread of eighty years, Mann was exposed to many influential writers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Hermann Bahr. Aside from the writers that Mann was influenced by, Mann was influenced by the German culture that surrounded him growing up in Lübeck, Germany. Researching Mann and finding sources that were critical of Mann was difficult, especially when it came to finding print sources. This is perhaps due to Mann's life being rather unimportant when compared to how influential and philosophical his works are. His works have so much depth and hiding meaning and cause contained within their covers that critics would much rather criticize his works than Mann himself. Another reason quite possibly be, that to criticize Mann's work a critic does not have to know Mann's background because of how well and precise Mann conveys and illustrates the ideals and philosophies of those who influenced him while writing. Nietzsche, influences nearly all of Mann's short stories and novels, whether it be that Mann quoted him or built antitheses off Nietzsche ideals or even based an essay completely off of a writing of Nietzsche. Mann has been accounted stating that he was undoubtedly a Nietzschean (Robertson 27). This being, Mann wrote in his “A Sketch of My Life,” that he saw in Nietzsche, above all, “the man who conquers himself”: “with him I took nothing literally, I believed almost nothing, but precisely this gave my love for him its multi-layered[sic] and passionate quality — gave it depth (Robertson 26).” This deep love for Nietzsche is why Mann took the basis for one of his most fundamental antitheses of early thinking from Nietzsche: the dichotomy between culture (a positive notion, connoting a private, inward and self-centered, not necessarily rational ideal, closely allied to the German concept of Bildung, the belief of self-cultivation) and civilisation[sic] (here a negative term, describing societies dominated by the political consciousness of democracy, such as England and France, where only rational values are recognized) (Robertson 26). Aside from the dichotomy between culture and civilisation[sic], Mann was greatly impressed by some of Nietzsche other philosophies; one of these ideas is found in “Culture contra Civilisation[sic],” where Nietzsche wrote “The high points of culture and civilisation[sic] do not coincide: one should not be deceived about the abysmal antagonism of culture and civilisation[sic]” (Robertson 26). The extent to which Thomas Mann was impressed by this idea is made abundantly clear in one of his early nationalistic essays, “Thoughts in War” (Robertson 26). Although Nietzsche may be considered the most influencing author to Mann, another author, Schopenhauer may have been just as influential. Robertson writes that Thomas Mann recalls in “A Sketch of my Life” that reading the second volume of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation was one of his formative experiences (24). Schopenhauer's novel and it's influence on Mann is also evident in Mann's novel, Buddenbrooks, where the main character, Thomas Buddenbrooks, purchases the novel and reads it in his garden on a warm sunny day; While he reads, the novel takes a philosophical change that occurs over the course of a few pages.(Robertson 24) This account in Buddenbrooks is similar to how Mann read the book, which in his 1938 essay, he states as fact (Robertson 24). Except, what Mann presents as an autobiographical account of his reading of Schopenhauer also carries deep resonances of Nietzsche's recollections of buying The World as Will and Representation from a second-hand bookseller in Leipzig and being subsequently overwhelmed by it. Thus the figure of Thomas Buddenbrook is not only triply related to its author as 'father, offspring and double', as Mann put it in Reflections of an Unpolitical Man , but is also a duplicate of Nietzsche (Robertson 25). Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are both very tied together when speaking of their influences on Thomas Mann, but there is a third author who really is not an author of novels at all, but rather a opera writer: Richard Wagner. Mann had first started listening to Wagner when he was sixteen, and up until the day Mann passed away, it had been a love-hate relationship (Robertson 27). It is evident in Mann's writing that he in fact did fancy Wagner, so much so that Mann claimed that he owed much to Wagner in terms of actual artistic technique, including the epic mode, beginnings and endings, style as assimilation of the personal to the objective, the creation of symbols, the organic unity of the individual work and the biographical unity of the complete oeuvre (Robertson 27). In Mann's earlier writings, the influence of Wagner is unmistakably there on a thematic level. As such, in Buddenbrooks, Hanno's musical improvisations are distinctly Wagneresque in character. Quickly gaining insight into how tonality functions, Hanno gives a performance of a piece that could easily have been written by Wagner (Robertson 29). “Gefallen”, Thomas Mann's very first novella, is a great example of a work where Mann's influences are evidently clear. Before the days of Mann reading the previously stated authors, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Wagner, he frequently read the works of Hermann Bahr. In her critical essay about Mann's novella “Gefallen,” Kamla writes that Hermann Bahr is believed to be the major influence of the novella. Evidence of this influence is documented as early as 1893 when, Mann, at the age of eighteen dedicated his prose sketch “Vision” to the “genialer Künstler Hermann Bahr” in the summer issue of his school publication Der Frühlingsstrum. Kamla later writes that “Gefallen” is linked to the decadence movement, or rather the criticism of the movement because the protagonist in the novella, Dr. Selton, is commonly linked to the direct influence of the French writer Paul Bourget; however, Mann had not yet started to take up French until after the publishing of “Gefallen.” Hence it is obvious that Mann had to be getting this influence from else where. In her essay Kamla writes that Paul Bourgets' idea of fin de siècle dilettantism is found in “Gefallen,” and the only known author that Mann would have been influenced by and would have also been writing of fin de siècle dilettantism is Hermann Bahr. So according to Kamla, Hermann Bahr is believed to be the connecting factor between the creation of “Gefallen” and fin de siècle dilettantism because he looked to Bourget as his model and thus communicated Bourgets' ideas to the young Thomas Mann through his own works. Apart from the idea of fin de siècle being from the influence of Bahr, Kamla writes that the opening reference to a Viennese school of symbolism, and its artistic prose implies a familiarity with not only Bahr but also with the circle of innovators that began to emerge on the Austrian literary scene during this time. Kamla writes “add to this the spirit of the time, in which the myriad of movements that comprised the era of the 1890s (aestheticism, impressionism, symbolism, decadence, etc.) was very much in vogue among Austrian intellectuals and artists, and the story can indeed be placed within the larger context of the German-speaking fin de siècle.” It is interesting to know that Mann has admitted slavishly copying Bahr, even though Mann made it clear that this was only in his writing exercises while in Lübeck. This still caused Bahr to become an exact observer of Mann's work according to Kamla . Hermann Bahr influenced many other parts of the novella, but the biggest influence was that of the idea of fin de siècle dilettantism that shaped the novella into its final being. Apart from being influenced by the works of the writers he read, Mann was influenced by the country he grew up in: Germany. In Germany before the time that Mann was writing, there was a movement in literature: the Weimar movement (Robertson 22). Robertson writes that the Weimar movement did not directly influence Mann but rather, influenced the writers he read and took from; such as, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer (22). Reading the works of these writers and learning of their fascination with Weimar classicism lead to Mann's preoccupation with the movement, knowing this enables the readers of Mann to reread the development of the aspects of his thoughts as an attempt in dark times to preserve and develop a tradition of humanism that is distinctively German as well as European (Robertson 22). According to Anthony Hartley, Mann was also influenced by customs and habits of that of older Germany. This is because Mann found the tribal coziness and stock of common habits comforting. Hartley writes that one of these habits that is evident not only in Mann's life but also in his work, The Magic Mountain, is the consuming of tea at four o'clock, this at first may seem trivial until we realize that this was a ritual required, by Thomas Mann, to enact the life of a great writer, and a world figure, whose impressive facade must be served by a continuity of habits. Hartley further writes another German belief that one picks up on in Mann's writing is a constant comparison of the east and west. This is most apparent in his work, The Magic Mountain, where it is believed that the east is unstructured and free-flowing; where as, the west is refined, pure, and above all the more respectable of the two. To Mann, the matter of east and west is all to be regarded with the “erotic irony of the spirit,” whose quieting effect may calm the turbulence and confusion of the German spirit according to Hartley. Some influences came from Mann's experiences in his home town of Lübeck, such as in Buddenbrooks, where Mann draws on many of his experiences, one such being when Thomas Buddenbrooks, the main character, reads Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, a book Mann once read and changed philosophically because of, just as Buddenbrooks does in Mann's novel (Robertson 24). In conclusion, many authors, events, and cultures had influenced Thomas Mann's works. Whether it be Nietzsche and his philosophies on culture, or Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, or Wagner's operas, or Hermann Bahr and his writings about french philosophy, or the overall culture of the German people it all had great influence on Mann's final works. Nietzsche and his philosophies on culture played large roles in the structure of Mann's works, they formed some of Mann's most known and renowned antitheses and writings. And Schopenhauer's work, The World as Will and Representation, had a great impact on Mann to the extent that in multiple instances and in multiple works he either wrote about what he got from the work from a philosophical standpoint, or completely depicted his first reading of the novel through characters in his novels; such as, Thomas Buddenbrooks in Buddenbrooks. In addition to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Wagner's operas had a great influence on Thomas Mann when he was young and old. Alsom young Thomas Mann was greatly influenced by Hermann Bahr, but more specifically his borrowed philosophical ideals from Paul Bourget. And finally, Thomas Mann was under great influence by his home town memories and German culture that was instilled in him from a very young age. So it is evidently clear that Mann was greatly influenced by the writers and culture that surrounded him in his years of writing.

Works Cited
Hartley, Anthony. “Thomas Mann and Germany's Demons.” National Interests 44 (Summer 1996):92-99. Rpt. In Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 168. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2014.
Kamla, Thomas A.”Thomas Mann's 'Gefallen': Êtats d'âme and the Bahrian New Psychology.” The German Quarterly 66.4 (Fall 1993): 510-523. Rpt. In Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 82. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. Robertson, Ritchie. The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.