Of Mutts and Mann: The Mischling Theme in Herr und Hund

Abstract:This article focuses on Thomas Mann’s autobiographical essay about his dog in the light of his early fiction and wartime journalism. Herr und Hund represents not only an idyllic retreat from troubled times but also an ongoing engagement with themes central to Mann’s creative prose and cultural politics, including distinctions between human reason and animal passions, alleged racial differences among humans, and relations between nature and civilization. Issues currently cordoned off into the discrete categories of animal, environmental, and critical race studies inform one another in Mann’s multi-faceted essay. Herr und Hund marks both an end to the reflections that preoccupied Mann during the war and their continuation by other means, revisiting themes that inspire his earliest prose and will continue to inform his political thought and creative practice for years to come.