The study examines the interplay of religion and narrative technique in Mann’s early and ‘middle’ literary works. Following Friedrich Nietzsche’s God is dead, religion and narration form an increasingly dynamic connection in Thomas Mann’s thinking and writing. This connection, however, has hardly been accorded any attention at all up to this time. Yvonne Nilges finally analyses this very relation, also shedding new light on Thomas Mann’s religious education at the Katharineum in Lübeck (1889–1894). The book includes archival illustrations that have been unknown in scholarship so far.