Mann started writing The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a much shorter narrative that comically revisited the aspects of Death in Venice, a novella that he was preparing for publication. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from respiratory disease, resided at Dr. Friedrich Jessen's Waldsanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, for several months. In May and June 1912, Mann visited her and became acquainted with the team of doctors and patients in this cosmopolitan institution. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation of his novel, this stay inspired his opening chapter ("Arrival").
The outbreak of World War I interrupted his work on the book. Like many other Germans, Mann supported the German Empire, and his own mental state he described as "sympathy with death"; he wrote essays "Gedanken im Kriege", "Gute Feldpost" and "Friedrich und die große Koalition", examples of his "intellectual military service" which he regarded as his duty. However, his position was shaken by anti-war intellectuals such as his older brother Heinrich, who, unlike Thomas, did not support the German state: on the contrary, he wrote the satirical novel Der Untertan and the essay "Zola", where he defended the idea of the inevitable defeat of Germany which would lead to Germany becoming a democracy. In response to the intellectuals with an anti-war stance, Thomas Mann wrote a long essay, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, which came out only in 1918. The end and the aftermath of the war led him to rethink his position, however, and in 1919, he changed the tone of the novel to reflect the reality of war rather than a romanticized depiction of it, and to include conflict between characters that was inspired by that between his brother and himself.[2] Mann undertook a major re-examination of European bourgeois society. He explored the sources of the destructiveness displayed by much of civilized humanity. He was also drawn to speculate about more general questions related to personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality, and mortality. His political stance also changed during this period, from opposing the Weimar Republic to supporting it.[3] Der Zauberberg was eventually published in two volumes by S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin.
