Heinrich Mann is known today as a writer who satirized and analyzed Wilhelminian and Weimar society, who understood where Germany was heading politically, and who warned in vain of the impending catastrophe of Nazism. His novels, essays, and plays display his development from a preoccupation with the problems of the artist to a concern with social and political criticism and the attempt to prevent the victory of national socialism.

Luiz Heinrich Mann was born on 27 March 1871 to Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, a merchant and patrician citizen of the old Hanseatic city of Lübeck, and Julia da Silva-Bruhns Mann, who had been born in Brazil as the daughter of a German immigrant and his Brazilian wife. His younger brother was Thomas Mann, with whom his relationship would be close but at times difficult because of their political differences. Not wanting to take over the family's wholesale grain...