When a Desk Tells a Story

The Aquarium

Entering the Thomas Mann Archive at ETH Zurich, the first thing I notice is not a desk, but a vast red “aquarium”: a glass case crowded with furniture and books.

An oversized museum display case. A repository of memory. A writer’s treasury. A casket.

Officially, it’s called The Furnishings of a Writer. Thomas Mann and His Study. This exhibition, dedicated to Mann’s writing habits, accessories, amulets, and rituals, tells the story of how, where, and when he wrote—and what he did when he wasn’t writing.

But I’ll stick with the unofficial name: the aquarium.

Life Through the Glass

To find the exhibition in the first place, I have to get a little lost in one of the university buildings. Passing the same group of students for the second time, I spot a tiny sign at the end of a corridor. To my surprise, there are no tickets or guards—yet everything I might want to touch is sealed behind glass.

It’s hard to imagine doing any real writing in this space. The desk is cluttered with objects. A faded couch sits directly behind it. An armchair and another table are pushed up against the couch. And above it all—almost looming over the hypothetical user of this space—hangs a small, suspended desk.

I peek through the glass—as that’s all I can do here—with a sigh of relief that no one is locking me inside this stuffy intellectual cantina and making me write. But as I look closely at photos of Mann’s different studies and writing rooms, I reassure myself that he, too, needed more space to write.

The Essence of a Study

This is not merely a writer’s study reproduced in a showcase, but the essence of one—a cross-section, a distilled version of all his working spaces. Or even a fragment of an open, bleeding writing vein. That impression is heightened, in my mind, by the reddish hue of the aquarium’s frame.

Just enough space has been left around the aquarium to circle it. The spines of the books have been arranged so they are invisible from the inside, but clearly visible to those walking outside. The objects on the desk no longer serve the writer at work; instead, they serve the peering visitors.

“These are the first lines I have written at my own handsome desk, sitting in the chair that goes with it,” Thomas Mann noted in his diary in November 1933. The “handsome desk” was a somewhat pompous, ornament-laden, but sturdy piece of wooden furniture with deep drawers, measuring two meters by one. For years, it stood in his Munich study.

The Desk in Exile

The very same desk followed the writer to Zurich when, after a brief stay abroad, he decided not to return to Nazi Germany. It remained with him throughout his exile. It accompanied him from Munich to Zurich, then across the Atlantic to Princeton, and finally to California.

The desk, Mann’s greatest treasure, is also the centerpiece of the exhibition—though it takes me a few laps around the room to fish this insight from the sea of furniture, photographs, and trinkets.

Cluttered with a plethora of objects and writing paraphernalia, the desk—like a spread-out lifeboat—takes me on a journey through the cities where Mann lived and worked.

Amid changing homelands, houses, continents, and languages, the desk remained a constant. A portable home. In this heavy wooden desk lived the writer Thomas Mann. Along with his writing habits and rituals, the desk ensured the continuity of his creative work. It was the mainstay of his talent, supported by astonishing discipline.

A Life of Routine

Katia Mann, in her memoir Unwritten Memories, devotes considerable space to her husband’s working habits. He wrote slowly—only before noon, roughly from nine to twelve. “If he wrote two pages in one day, it was more than usual.”

As Katia puts it: “His daily schedule was very disciplined, simple, and always took the same course.” Wake up around eight o’clock. Nine to twelve: writing. Then a walk, lunch, a cigar, and a nap. Afternoons and evenings were for newspapers, research reading, and letters (written by hand or dictated). Sometimes socializing over dinner or attending the theater; sometimes reading aloud new passages to family or guests. Often, listening to music.

This morning routine applied even on Saturdays and Sundays, holidays, trips, and vacations. He wrote little and slowly, but with remarkable regularity.

Secrets in the Drawers

In the evenings, Thomas Mann did something else: he completed the pages of his secret diaries. He kept them throughout his life, locked inside his desk. Although, in his own words, they had no literary value, they sometimes provided material for his fiction. The reading and eventual publication of the diaries—per his instructions, not until twenty years after his death—caused a stir among researchers and readers alike. They became a rich source for biographies tracing connections between life and literature.

Hermann Kurzke, author of Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art. A Biography, traces homoerotic themes in the writer’s work from his earliest stories (Tonio Kröger, Death in Venice). He describes The Magic Mountain as “a kind of fantasy of the removal of limits,” adding: “In its innermost core, the wounds of unresolved homosexuality fester.”

As Kurzke puts it:

Everyday Accounting

In the diaries that survived—prepared for publication by his son Golo—homoerotic desires and temptations appear only occasionally. What dominates instead is the mundanity of daily life, an ongoing, meticulous bookkeeping of existence.

Hermann Kesten, in the foreword to the American edition of Thomas Mann’s Diaries, observes:

Kesten concludes his introduction with a note of awe:

Mundanity of Writing

One recurring motif in these nightly reports is the quality of Mann’s sleep—along with the exact dosage of sleeping aid taken. His sleep, in turn, dictated the hour of rising and the tone of the morning’s writing session:

Satisfaction with his progress was often punctuated by doubts and discouragement:

Katia: The Quiet Anchor

Thomas Mann’s wife, Katia—referred to simply as ‘K.’ in the diaries—appears in nearly every entry. Despite their separate bedrooms and her husband’s secret inner life, the diaries record nights spent together as well as occasional arguments.

Katia was the quiet anchor of the household. She managed the family and the rhythm of Thomas Mann’s daily life. She was mistress of the house, secretary, typist, driver, counselor, walking companion, and caregiver.

Hermann Kurzke captures the complexity of their marriage this way:

Their enduring bond is perhaps best captured by their daughter, Erika Mann, who recalls their daily walks in The Last Year of Thomas Mann. A Revealing Memoir by His Daughter:

Still Life of a Writer

Thomas Mann’s diaries—those meticulous accounts of daily life—also mention his “handsome desk,” where he pedantically and systematically spent three hours each morning.

Today, those same objects, frozen in time, rest behind glass in the aquarium. Some are purely practical: pens, fountain pens, inkwells, notebooks, calendars, a magnifying glass, scissors, and an ivory paper knife. Others seem like travel souvenirs: a bronze figurine reminiscent of Thai Buddhas, a small Egyptian servant[CW1] , and various other busts.

There are family photos—of his wife and children—and for counterbalance, Mann’s favorite painting: Die Quelle by Ludwig von Hofmann, depicting three young, naked boys. Scattered among these are personal artifacts: pebbles, bowls, flasks, cups, porcelain boxes, wooden caskets, and candlesticks with their candles burned down.

What Remains

By my next lap around the aquarium, I no longer know where to rest my eyes. Trinkets, amulets, and souvenirs still crowd the desk.

Nearby, other pieces of furniture—plucked from the many offices that traveled with the writer across continents—press close together, like a distilled essence of Thomas Mann’s existence and art.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of objects—books,  furnishings, and the stories they carry—I stand alone, weighed down by my own tangled excesses, equally unmanageable.