German writer Thomas Mann was BOTD in 1875. Born in Lübeck in the German Empire to a socially prominent family, he was raised in Munich. He studied at multiple universities in Munich, intending to become a journalist. After graduating, he worked in an insurance company and began publishing articles and stories. His 1901 debut novel Buddenbrooks, an autobiographical drama about the decline of a German merchantile family, became a major success, establishing his literary reputation. He was also highly praised for his novella Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice), a portrait of a middle-aged writer who becomes fatally obsessed with a beautiful 14 year-old boy. After pursuing a number of affairs with men, he married Katia Pringsheim in 1909, with whom he had six children. In 1912, Katia was treated for tuberculosis at an alpine resort in Davos, Switzerland, where Mann visited her. The experience inspired his 1924 novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), a dense and witty examination of European civilisation on the cusp of World War One. A critical and commercial success, it helped restore his family’s lost fortune. In 1929, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. With the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, Mann delivered anti-Nazi radio broadcasts via the BBC. He fled Germany with his family in 1939, emigrating to the United States. Settling in Princeton, New Jersey and later in Los Angeles, California, Mann became a university lecturer and a prominent critic of the Nazi Party. During the 1950s, he was required to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and became a vigorous critic of Senator Joseph McCarthy‘s anti-Communist witch-hunts. In 1952, he and his family returned to Europe, settling in Kilchberg, Switzerland. He died in 1955, aged 80. Mann struggled with his homosexuality throughout his life. His diaries, published posthumously, revealed his romantic crushes on a number of younger men, and his sexual attraction to his pre-adolescent sons Klaus and Golo. The homoerotic and pederastic themes in his work have been discussed extensively by biographers and critics. Death in Venice remains his most widely-read and quoted book, filmed successfully by Luchino Visconti in 1971 and starring Dirk Bogarde, and adapted into an opera by Benjamin Britten in 1973. Three of Mann’s children – Erika, Klaus and Golo – identified as gay, publishing frank accounts of their father’s emotional reserve, explosive rages and furtive sexuality. Klaus struggled with his homosexuality and drug addiction, committing suicide, as did his (straight) brother Michael.