MANN THOMAS: (1875-1955) ´ I don't have much left. But I keep going, and I do my bit to help others´

MANN THOMAS: (1875-1955) ´ I don't have much left. But I keep going, and I do my bit to help others´

MANN THOMAS: (1875-1955) German novelist, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1929. A.L.S., with his initials T. M., to the verso of a picture postcard depicting the Limmat River and its snow covered surroundings in Zurich, Kilchberg, 11th December 1954, to Dr. Klaus Mampell, in German. Mann writes, in full (translated) ´Many thanks for your kind thoughts and the report on your activity, the satisfactions, the disappointments, the hopes, and the final act: these are the realities through which our lives pass. You still have a lot of that ahead of you; I don't have much left. But I keep going, and I do my bit to help others. All good things! Keep up the good work! Keep going!´ A fine letter in which Mann, nearing the end of his life (he died in the August of the folliwng year), provides a magnificent lesson in life to his younger friend, with slightly melancholic wisdom but ultimately encouraging and positive words. VG

Klaus Mampell (1916-2000) German geneticist and writer, a close friend of Mann. Mampell was a member of Gruppe 47, the collective of writers who offered a platform for the renewal of German literature after World War II and the end of censorship in Nazi Germany, later becoming an influential institution in the cultural life of the Federal Republic of Germany.