Grosz was born in 1893 in Berlin as Georg Ehrenfried Groß. His father was a restaurant owner. Thanks to his artistic talent, he was admitted to Dresden’s Royal Academy of the Arts in 1909. After that, he attended Berlin’s school of the arts, where he became a mentee of Emil Orlik. Although he volunteered to serve in World War I, he was declared unfit for military service in 1915 because of an illness. In 1916, he changed his name to George Grosz. Grosz was one of the Weimar Republic’s most influential artists. His works are considered part of the avant-garde art genre referred to as the New Objectivity. In addition, Grosz became involved in politics, joining the KPD in 1919. His political views, sharply critical of society, were also reflected in his artwork. After the Nazis seized power, he immigrated to the US, where he continued his career. In 1958, Berlin’s Academy of Arts elected him extraordinary member of the “Visual Arts” department. He died shortly after moving to Berlin.

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Wikipedia entry

Thomas Mann was born into a family of patricians in Lübeck on 11 June 1875. He broke off grammar school and moved to Munich with his mother. Once there, he started working for an insurance company. Yet with the success of his written works, he quit his job. Thomas Mann published Buddenbrooks - his greatest prose tome - in 1901. It earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Another influential novel, The Magic Mountain, was published in 1924 and translated into numerous languages. Mann’s political views transformed during the Weimar Republic. In contrast to his “Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen” essay, promoting conservative values, the government’s war goals, and the Kaiserreich, he later became a defender of the democracy. He joined the fight against national socialism before the Nazis seized power. After emigrating to Switzerland and the US, he continued his career in literature. After the war, Mann decided to not make a permanent move back to Germany. He died in Zurich in 1955.

Wikipedia entry