Writing in his diary in February 1934, Thomas Mann confessed, with some degree of bitterness, that the experiences of the previous twelve months had made him feel his age and had taken their toll more profoundly, than he would have liked to admit, given that this was the doing of the “stupid and brutish” powers that had forced him into exile. The sudden separation from his native land and the erratic nature of the daily life that followed triggered a deep depression from which the author could make only a slow recovery.

The preceding months had indeed been turbulent: just a few weeks after the Nazi seizure of power, Mann had delivered his essay Leiden und Größe Richard Wagners [Suffering and Greatness of Richard Wagner] in the Auditorium Maximum of Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians University. A subsequent reading tour of Europe included a stop in the Swiss town of Arosa. At the behest of friends and family members, the author and his wife Katia did not return home to Germany as planned amid fears for their safety under Nazi rule. Those concerns proved to be well-founded as a preventive arrest order was issued against Mann. In a written communication from the acting Bavarian Chief of Police, Reinhard Heydrich, the Nobel laureate was castigated as an opponent of the national movement and a supporter of the Marxist mentality. These were the grounds for the arrest warrant, which would have likely facilitated Mann’s immediate transport to the Dachau concentration camp had he been captured. His Munich villa and a large portion of his assets were seized. His son Golo did, however, manage to transport his collection of diaries and prized furniture to Mann’s new residence in Küsnacht, near Zurich.