A historian rather than an inventor of tales: in choosing his profession, Golo Mann separated himself from his famous family of authors. From a very young age, he stood in the shadow of his father Thomas Mann, who never made a secret of his dislike of his third child. In 1933, Golo followed his family, critical of the regime, into emigration, first to France and Switzerland, then over the Pyrenees and though Portugal to the United States. There he taught as a professor for history at various universities. In 1953, he returned to Germany, but he failed to achieve an academic career at German universities. All the same, he became a widely read German historian of his period. With his Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (1958) and Propyläen-Weltgeschichte (1961–1964), Golo Mann wrote standard works of history in postwar West Germany. He died in 1994 and was buried in Zurich—at his own request in a grave separate from the family plot.