Artistic Consciousness and Political Conscience - The Novels of Heinrich Mann 1900-1938

Few writers have engaged themselves so actively politically as Heinrich Mann. An investigation of the whole complex of art and politics in his life and work is beyond the scope of a single study. The present study examines Heinrich Mann's work in terms of his response to his situation and the age. This is only one aspect but none the less perhaps the most crucial, because it necessarily involves the central problem of Heinrich Mann's work: its artistic unevenness which makes appreciation and evaluation so difficult. The dialectic of artistic consciousness and political conscience is thus the determining reference of this study.