Undated photograph and Mann with his sister, Julia. Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 - August 12, 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. 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. He married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family, in 1905. She later joined the Lutheran faith of her husband. The couple had six children. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, principally in recognition of his popular achievement with the epic Buddenbrooks (1901), The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg 1924), and his numerous short stories. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, but returned to Switzerland in 1952. He died in 1955 of atherosclerosis at the age of 80. Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his bisexuality,which found reflection in his works.