With his reflections in "The Considerations of an Unpolitical Man" (1918), Thomas Mann earned the reputation of a German nationalist monarchist and reactionary. The speech "On the German Republic," published in 1922, is considered a decisive turning point in his political existence due to its advocacy for the republic and democracy. Rather than addressing the actual recipient Gerhart Hauptmann, Mann directed his message to the younger generation, legitimizing the republic by invoking Romanticism, aestheticism, vitalism, and homoeroticism. The array of his references is correspondingly colorful: Novalis, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan George, and Hans Blüher. Shortly before his death, Thomas Mann summarized: "Undeniably, the political moralizing of an artist has something comical about it.".