Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state ... Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.

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.