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He was very much in favor of being cheerful.

That was how he had finally learned from Fontane.

But Thomas Mann could also freak out.

Get really mean.

The writer Theodor Lessing also had to experience this.

And that's how it happened.

In 1910, work on "Felix Krull", at that time still called "The Impostor", stalled.

Thomas Mann was looking for distraction.

Lessing's attack on Samuel Lublinski came at the right time.

Lublinski was a fan of the "Magician".

Of all the critics, he welcomed “Buddenbrooks” the most enthusiastically when it appeared.

When Lessing took Lublinski, who was drifting slightly pathetic, to his chest, Thomas Mann listened carefully.

He wasn't alone in that.

The German literary community was quite unanimous in revolting against a pamphlet in which one Jew (Lessing) defamed the other (Lublinsiki) as follows: “A gesticulating apology monk tumbled into the room.

On a couple of very short, erratic legs, a fat synagogue, its tummy stretched far into the outside world like the apse. ”And more like that!

The insolent dwarf

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As a result, no fewer than 33 writers (including Stefan Zweig, Georg Hermann, Theodor Heuss) came together to make a statement in which they expressed their regret that “there is no court of honor for journalists”.

Thomas Mann was also asked for his signature.

But he found the explanation too lax.

He wanted to chastise the "insolent dwarf", as he called Lessing to his brother Heinrich, on his own.

And that's what happened.

First edition of Thomas Mann's novel "Buddenbrooks" (1901)

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

"The Doctor Lessing" was the headline of the Philippika and initially quoted with relish all the anti-Semitic clichés that Lessing had poured out on poor Lublinski.

And then he took a blow: “Mr. Lublinski is not a handsome man, and he is a Jew.

But I also know Mr. Lessing (who can for his acquaintances!), And I will only say as much as anyone who claims to see a light album or the archetype of Aryan masculinity in him would have to be drawn to enthusiasm. "And man asks the rhetorical question:" Where does this disadvantaged dwarf, who should be happy that the sun shines on him, get the lust, the inner right to be aggressive ”and so on, and so on and on.

Theodor Lessing (1872-1933)

Source: picture-alliance / dpa

As one can imagine, Lessing was not amused.

He sent Thomas Mann a telegram in which he asked “on behalf of mine” whether the addressee was willing to stand up for his “conviction with a weapon”.

Then he got a little queasy.

Shoot yourself with Theodor Lessing?

Was he even “satisfactory”?

Miserable end

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Thomas Mann asked his father-in-law Pringsheim, who should have known, not least because he was a Jewish believer himself.

And he said, you usually send your second, but you don't ask in advance by telegram whether you are ready to duel.

The son-in-law should answer: “Your telegram contradicts every origin and is incomprehensible to me.” Nothing prevents Lessing from “sending me his request on this,” Thomas commented on the whole thing to Heinrich.

Which of course was omitted.

But Mann's hatred was not gone.

When the news came that Lessing had been murdered by fanatical Nazis in Marienbad, he wrote in his diary on September 1, 1933: “I dread such an end, not because it is the end, but because it is so miserable and a Lessing awaits like, but not me. ”Mercy looks different.

All life as a writer is said to be paper.

In this series we provide counter-evidence.