On September 7, the Friends of Princeton University Library Small Talk series returns with Professor Stanley Corngold, an emeritus professor of German and Comparative Literature, and a discussion about Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann’s pivotal time in Princeton.

In September 1938, Thomas Mann, author of “Death in Venice” and “The Magic Mountain,” fled Nazi Germany for the United States. Heralded as “the greatest living man of letters,” Mann settled in Princeton, where, for nearly three years, he was stunningly productive as a novelist, university lecturer, and public intellectual. In Princeton, Mann exercised his “stupendous capacity for work” in a circle of friends, all highly accomplished exiles, including Hermann Broch, Albert Einstein, and Erich Kahler. 

In two recent books, “The Mind in Exile: Thomas Mann in Princeton” (Princeton) and “Weimar in Princeton: Thomas Mann and the Kahler Circle” (Bloomsbury), Professor Corngold portrays in vivid detail this crucial station in Mann’s journey from arch-European conservative to liberal conservative to ardent social democrat. 

Join us for this fascinating talk about some of the extraordinary events occurring within this luminous constellation of intellectuals at an extraordinary time and place.

Registration details:

In-person: Open to current Friends members. The talk will be followed by light refreshments.

Virtual: Open to the public.