The traveling pop-up exhibition 'Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!,' created by the Thomas Mann House, will be shown at the University Library at Northwestern University.

Join the Goethe-Institut Chicago and Northwestern University for a series of talks about Thomas Mann’s advocacy of democracy during the Nazi period, held on the occasion of the exhibition 'Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!,' currently on view at the University Library.

The exhibition commemorates the series of lecture tours that the Nobel Laureate conducted throughout the Unites States from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s. The first of these tours began at Northwestern University, where more than 4000 people came to hear him speak about the fundamental reasons for liberal democracy. “It is a terrible spectacle when the irrational becomes popular,” Mann said in a speech at the Library of Congress in 1943, and he drew on his considerable powers of thought and expression to counter the sources of this spectacle through his confident motto: “Democracy will win.”

The like-named exhibit, located on the ground floor of the University Library, is divided into two parts: the first charts the changes in Mann’s political views, while the second connects Mann’s lectures tours to current political situations in both Europe and the United States.

The library and the exhibit is open to the public Monday – Saturday, 8am – 6pm with photo ID.

The exhibition was introduced with a symposium on Thomas Mann in exile with Tobias Boes, Veronika Fuechtner and Meike Werner.

The symposium and the 'Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Winn!' exhibition is a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut Chicago, the German Department at Northwestern University and the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.