Exhibition opening to mark the 150th birthday of TUM alumnus Thomas Mann
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Thomas Mann – in the scorched landscape of democracy
Welcome address at the exhibition opening
Monday, December 8, 2026
TUM-IAS Director Prof. Dr. med. Michael Molls
The University of Freiburg, my alma mater...
Since 1909, the motto on the University of Freiburg's Kollegiengebäude I building has been: The truth will set you free (Christ in the Gospel of John). Not long after, in May 1933, the newly elected rector, Martin Heidegger, gave his infamous rector's speech, which you can hear on YouTube (link). On July 10, 1934, the roof of College Building I burned down, and in 1936, the Nazis added a new inscription to the building, which read: “To eternal Germanness.”
Science strives for truth. It looks deep and far beneath the surface to discover the essence, the truth. As a researcher, I want to know why ionizing radiation can destroy cancerous tumors, how plants make sugar and oxygen from light, carbon dioxide, and water, what the expansion of the cosmos is all about, and what the consequences of global warming could
According to Plato, truth is a constant quest. In this sense, art also seeks truth, and it seems to me that it can sometimes reveal truths that transcend the magnitude of natural laws. You can feel this when you experience the interior of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, when you look at Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, when you listen to music, when Felix Mayer conducts Bach's Mass in B minor or works by Arvo Pärt, or when Miles Davis plays his trumpet, lost in his own world.
The art lover Thomas Mann, the great writer who supposedly valued the sense of hearing more than the sense of seeing, was a guest student at the Technische Hochschule München, now TUM, for two semesters in his early years, where he attended lectures on literature, history, and art history, among other subjects. Today, humanities topics are still addressed at TUM, for example through the Philosopher in Residence program at the Institute for Advanced Study. Philosophers, who are selected through a competitive process, collaborate on specific projects with TUM researchers, preferably from the fields of engineering, life sciences, or natural sciences.
As early as the 1920s, Thomas Mann recognized the dangers posed by National Socialism and, in a departure from his reflections as an apolitical person, which should also be read in view of his dispute with his brother Heinrich, made a firm commitment to democracy (cf. his speech Von deutscher Republik, 1922). In 1929, Thomas Mann received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His Munich Rotary Club organized a festive reception. In his speech, he professed his commitment to the “complex of ideas of bourgeois humanity, to the unity of ideas of freedom, education, humanity, tolerance, helpfulness, and sympathy.”
Four years later, in April 1933, Thomas Mann was expelled from his Munich Rotary Club because of his critical stance toward National Socialism, and in the same year, 1933, he and his wife Katia did not return to Munich from a lecture tour. On the advice of their children, they remained abroad. Thus, somewhat unprepared, their exile began in the year of the violent book burnings by students here in Munich and at other German universities, and in the year of Heidegger's ill-conceived rector's speech.
I believe that we need to be vigilant in society and at university today. Truth is paramount, especially at universities. The rules of good scientific practice must be strictly observed, and, among other things, “embellishment” and trickery in publishing must be criminalized.
In my opinion, the university's contribution to strengthening democracy lies in the responsible fulfillment of its core tasks, namely teaching and research, as well as its credibility within society and its influence, in line with the motto “The truth shall set you free.” This motto means abstaining from ideologies of the far left and far right, and above all, a clear rejection of violence and disregard for the law and human rights. As Thomas Mann once said here in Munich, it is about the unity of ideas of freedom, education, humanity, tolerance, helpfulness, and sympathy.