A Master from Germany: Thomas Mann, Albrecht Dürer, and the Making of a National Icon

Author: Ruehl, Martin A.

Source: Oxford German Studies, Volume 38, Number 1, 2009 , pp. 61-106(46)

Publisher: Maney Publishing

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Abstract:

Many critics have commented on Thomas Mann's allusions to Dürer's art in Doktor Faustus, but few have considered its larger symbolic significance for his self-understanding as a German Künstler and Bürger. One work was of particular importance in this regard: the copperplate engraving known as Ritter, Tod und Teufel (1513). In the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918), Mann invokes the engraving as a sign of Nietzsche's - and his own - attachment to a Protestant, ascetic worldview and a specifically German, Faustian notion of masterliness. This interpretation of the image as well as Mann's subsequent repudiation of it were conditioned by the increasingly nationalist appropriation of Dürer since the late nineteenth century, but even more so by the novelist's war-time confidant and collaborator, the literary historian and Nietzsche scholar Ernst Bertram.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1179/007871909x429897

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