HISTORY AND THOMAS MANN “THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN”

Thomas Mann, Katia Mann and Waldhotel Davos

Katia Mann was one of the first patients to be treated at the newly opened Wald Sanatorium in Davos in 1911. Her lung catarrh was cured here. When her husband, the writer and later Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann visited her in the spring of 1912, he was inspired and he went on to write his famous novel «Der Zauberberg» (The Magic Mountain). His novel, which was based on his impressions and on letters his wife sent him from the sanatorium, was written between 1913 and 1915 and was finished in 1924 after a break of several years. In 1957, the sanatorium was converted to the Waldhotel Davos, which has been under the private ownership of the von Gemmingen family (now in its third generation) since 1911.