Heinrich Mann wrote a collection of essays about hatred in the 1930s. Mann was expelled from the Berlin Academy of Arts in February 1933.

He went into exile in France, where he lived until 1940. Mann died in Santa Monica, California in 1951, and was buried in a plot of land he inherited from his father, who had died in World War II. The essay is a book about hate, written by someone who didn't want to hate back, because hate makes you stupid and small.