The little hand on time’s clock trips away as though measuring seconds; but God knows how much time it is covering when it whisks round heedless of the divisions it passes over! So much is certain, that we have been up here for years. Our brains reel, surely this is an evil dream, though dreamed with nor hashish nor opium; a censor of morals would rebuke us for it.

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.