The imposing house on Stockton Street in Princeton where Thomas Mann lived between 1938 and 1941 is these days owned by the Catholic Church. The main room is large enough for a congregation to assemble, and now contains pews and an altar. At either end of this room there are two beautiful smaller rooms with walls of glass, one made for summer light and the other designed for the winter. Mann’s study, where he spent his mornings, is next door. There he kept his desk, the same desk he had taken from Munich to Küsnacht in Switzerland, where he lived between 1933 and 1938. ‘Thus I am determined,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘to continue my life and work with the greatest steadfastness just as before, unchanged by the events that injure me but cannot divert or humble me.’ Upstairs, there are two further floors, one for the main bedrooms and bathrooms, the other to house servants.

LRB 3 November 2011 | PDF Download