The diary notes penned by Thomas Mann on 15 March 1933 convey a sense of the great unease that befell the author upon his sudden fate as an exiled person. Looking back at these events, Mann would attribute his three-month depressive episode to what he called the “cardiac asthma” of exile and the “nervous terror” of “homelessness”.

A significant feature of Mann’s early existence as an emigrant, which is evident in his diary, was his intention not to provoke the new ruling power by means of say, controversial passages, primarily out of a fear that his work would be banned and the resulting loss of his audience. Referring to his contentious essay Leiden und Größe Richard Wagners (1933), Mann notes that while taking breakfast in bed (as he tended to do at the time) he had hurriedly written several lines to Suhrkamp [then an employee of S. Fischer, Mann’s regular publisher] requesting the removal of a phrase from the Wagner text which addressed the theme of nationalism and in the process attracted the attention of Nazi censors. “Why would I want to provoke these animals at this point in time”, he wrote. It would be three years before Mann, under pressure from his family and other exiled colleagues, gave up this placatory stance.