BIRTHDAY SALUTATION

TO THOMAS MANN

by Agnes E. Meyer

On June 6th Thomas Mann will have completed his sixty-fifth year, and we do well to deafen our ears temporarily to the thunderous roar of Germany's weapons of war, to remember and to contemplate the seemingly contradictory fact that this country has also produced one of the most enlightened minds of this era, an outstanding leader of humane thought, acknowledged universally as the greatest figure in the contemporary world of literature. Now at the zenith of his spiritual and intellectual development, this distinguished German has recently published two books; one, entitled THIS WAR, is an inspired polemic against the brutal purposes for which his misguided countrymen are shedding their blood; the other, called LOTTE IN WEIMAR, is a novel about the poet Goethe, in which the purest traditions of German classicism, its feeling for self-development and self-discipline, its love of simple goodness, its deliberate and unswerving quest for ultimate truth, are set forth in impeccable beauty and preserved for posterity not merely unimpaired, but embellished, intensified, and translated to reach the contemporary needs of heart and mind.

Both books remind us that German writers and philosophers have always been their country's severest critics, for Goethe, likewise, gave frequent expression to the deep antipathy which he felt for the limitations, the weaknesses, the violence of the German temperament and character.

The period in which Goethe lived, when Napoleon's triumphant army was marching back and forth over the prostrate German principalities, were just as chaotic as ours; the hatred which Goethe endured at the hands of his countrymen was as bitter as that now meted out to Thomas Mann, and his isolation in thought from the rest of Germany was as complete, as Thomas Mann's exile is in fact. Goethe suffered from

this persecution to such a point that he angrily defied his opponents,
as Mann's novel reminds us, with the challenge: "They think they are
Germany, but I am the real Germany, and if it should be destroyed root
and stem, it would still continue to live in me." Is this not also
true of Thomas Mann? However his country's finest qualities may be
endangered by the barbarians who now hold it in subjection, its priceless
and eternal contributions to the progress of humanity will flourish,
pure, rich and mighty in spirit, as long as Thomas Mann is still alive.
Whoever doubts that this great soul is still fighting undaunted the
battle of the true Germany, need only read the quotation from Goethe
which he has chosen as the prelude to LOTTE IN WEIMAR:

"Durch allen Schall und Klang
Der Transoxanen
Erkühnt sich unser Sang
Auf deine Bahnen!

Uns ist für garnichts bang,
In dir lebendig;
Dein Leben daure lang,
Dein Reich beständig!"

Freed by the mysterious power of these words, exalted by the
civilizing influence of this great work of art, our song also rises,
our pain is momentarily assuaged, and hope is born again for the ultimate
victory of justice, beauty, and truth.

May your life also be a long one, Thomas Mann, for the real spirit
of Germany, brave and undefiled, cannot feel itself orphaned nor yet
impoverished, as long as you are permitted to survive among us, and your
new country, be assured, feels itself blessed and ennobled by the sacred
heritage which you have brought to its shores.