It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories as well as the ideas of Goethe Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. " Nietzsche's influence on Mann runs deep in his work especially in Nietzsche's views on decay and the proposed fundamental connection between sickness and creativity. In 1942 the Mann family moved to Pacific Palisades in west Los Angeles California where they lived until after the end of World War II.

Mann was a member of the Hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his own family in the novel Buddenbrooks. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories as well as the ideas of Goethe Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. When Hitler came to power in 1933 Mann fled to Switzerland.