Understanding acumen and politics plus German culture and Western civilisation as diametrically opposed is a German disease which Thomas Mann also succumbed to. Initially, Mann did not regard democracy as an appropriate form of government for Germans as they were not able to love politics: he was therefore just one apolitical individual among many. Eventually, Thomas Mann liberated himself from this prejudiced approach to politics and the apolitical, and came to terms with democracy. From then on, he countered radicalism’s propensity to use violence with republican reason, which led to him being treated with hostility, persecuted and forced into exile. Politics, which was originally alien to him, swept its way into his life and forced him to adopt a standpoint on it, without him ever having become a political person or even a political thinker at heart. His comments on politics did not leave West and East Germans unaffected, especially as the idea of a cultural nation, through which acumen suddenly legitimised politics, was one of the few things which held the seemingly irreconcilably divided nations together. In post-war Germany, Thomas Mann increasingly became a ‘Praeceptor Germaniae’ (one of the country’s most eminent teachers). In this book, prominent experts clearly depict his gravitation towards the republic, his road into exile, his fight against Hitler and his influence on a divided Germany. With contributions by Manfred Görtemaker, Philipp Gut, Helmut Koopmann, Horst Möller, Heinrich Oberreuter, Julia Schöll, Hans-Rudolf Vaget, Georg Wenzel, Ruprecht Wimmer and Hans Wisskirchen.