Royal Highness

What It's About

In a small, financially struggling German Grand Duchy, Prince Klaus Heinrich grows up as the younger brother of the frail, withdrawn Grand Duke Albrecht II. His life is one of ceremony: laying foundation stones, greeting crowds and performing the role of "Royal Highness" for a public that expects it. The arrival of Samuel Spoelmann, an immensely rich American financier, and his intelligent, unconventional daughter Imma brings new money, new ideas and the prospect of real feeling into the prince's carefully managed world. Alongside them are his tutor Dr. Überbein, a disillusioned and sharp-tongued mentor, and the rest of the court. The novel is a comedy of manners and a love story, told with Mann's characteristic irony. It is often considered one of his lighter, more playful books, and some critics have found it slight beside his major novels. Others read its humour as a cover for serious reflection, and Mann is generally thought to have drawn on his own courtship and marriage while writing it.

Key Concepts

The central idea is representation: what it means to live as a symbol rather than as an individual, and the loneliness and discipline this demands. Klaus Heinrich's isolated, performative existence is widely read as a parable for the artist's position in society. The book also sets old aristocratic duty against the power of modern money, and asks whether genuine connection is possible for someone whose public role leaves little room for private life.

About the Author

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) was a German novelist and essayist, born in Lübeck into a prosperous merchant family. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929 and became one of the most influential German writers of the twentieth century. A vocal opponent of the Nazi regime, he left Germany in 1933 and spent the rest of his life in exile, in Switzerland and then the United States, before returning to Switzerland.

About This Edition

This is a 1916 translation by A. Cecil Curtis.