Hedwig Pringsheim

Hedwig Pringsheim as a young woman

Hedwig Pringsheim (born Gertrude Hedwig Anna Dohm ; born July 13, 1855 in Berlin , † July 27, 1942 in Zurich ) was a German actress. She was the daughter of the well-known women's rights activist Hedwig Dohm , wife of mathematics professor Alfred Pringsheim and mother of Katia Mann , who was married to the writer Thomas Mann .

Life

Hedwig Pringsheim was the second of five children of Ernst Dohm and his wife Hedwig Dohm. Her father was the editor-in-chief of the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch , and her mother made a name for herself as a writer, publicist and feminist from the 1870s. In 1873 she was one of the first in Germany to demand the right to vote for women. Hedwig Pringsheim's parents' salon was a permanent meeting place for Berlin’s cultural and intellectual elite. a. Alexander von Humboldt , Ferdinand Lassalle , Fanny Lewald , Hans and Cosima von Bülow and Franz Liszt frequented there . However, because of the poor pay of the father, the family was in financial difficulties for a time. When Ernst Dohm was even threatened with imprisonment in 1869, the family broke up for almost a year: the daughters went to pensions or boarding school in Eisenach , Ernst Dohm fled to Weimar and Hedwig Dohm spent a year with her sister in Rome.

Hedwig came to the court theater in Meiningen through a friend of the family, the former actress Ellen Franz . She made her debut on January 15, 1875 in the role of Louise in Schiller's Kabale und Liebe . Other roles were Jessica in Kaufmann von Venice , Esther in the eponymous fragment of the drama by Franz Grillparzer Esther , Bertha in Wilhelm Tell and Käthchen in Das Käthchen von Heilbronn , which she also embodied on Meininger's tours to several European cities.

Alfred Pringsheim in his younger years

In 1876 she met the wealthy mathematics professor and art patron Alfred Pringsheim , whom she married on October 23, 1878. With him she had five children: Erik (1879–1909), Peter (1881–1963), Heinz (1882–1974) and the twins born in 1883, Klaus (1883–1972) and Katharina (1883–1980), called Katia. Erik was the black sheep of the family and was exiled to Argentina. Her sons Peter and Klaus later embarked on an academic career like their father and held professorships in physics and composition. Heinz was a PhD in archaeologist. The daughter Katia was Munich's first high school graduate and was one of the first active female students at Munich University. In 1905 she married the writer and later Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann.

Palais Pringsheim, 1890–1933,
formerly Arcisstr. 12, photograph around 1891

The Palais Pringsheim at Arcisstrasse 12, an urban villa on Königsplatz in Munich completed in 1890, was for a long time the focus of Munich society under Hedwig Pringsheim's direction. Hedwig Pringsheim also maintained a long-term correspondence with the publicist and actor Maximilian Harden , which also related to political issues such as the mutual rejection of the Wilhelmine Empire . Hedwig was later described by her grandson Golo Mann as the "femme du monde of the Bavarian capital", who "mastered the rare art of perfect conversation". Although her maternal grandfather had converted to the Protestant faith in 1817 and her paternal family in 1827, Hedwig, as a non- Aryan , had to flee to Switzerland with her Jewish husband in 1939 from the National Socialists . The family seat had already been expropriated in 1933 and the villa was demolished. The administration building of the NSDAP was built in their place . Today the building is called the Munich House of Cultural Institutes . The current address is Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10; Arcisstrasse is now shorter than it was in Pringsheim's time.

Hedwig Pringsheim died in exile in Switzerland at the age of 87.

plant

• Domestic memories. 11 features of Thomas Mann's mother-in-law in the “Vossische Zeitung” 1929 to 1932. Edited and introduced by Nikola Knoth. Self-published, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-00-017883-X .

See also

• Pringsheim (family)

literature

• Inge and Walter Jens : Katia's mother. The extraordinary life of Hedwig Pringsheim. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2005, ISBN 3-498-03337-9 .
• Inge and Walter Jens: In search of the prodigal son. Hedwig Pringsheim's trip to South America in 1907/8. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek, 2006, ISBN 3-498-05304-3 .

also in:

• Kirsten Jüngling , Brigitte Roßbeck: Katia Mann. The wizard's wife. Propylaea, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-549-07191-4 .
• Isabel Rohner: Daughters, Daughters. In: dies .: Traces into the now. Hedwig Dohm, a biography. Ulrike Helmer Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-89741-299-6 , pp. 91-103.

swell

• Hedwig Pringsheim: My intelligence service. Letters to Katia Mann 1933–1941. Edited and commented by Dirk Heisserer, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-0253-2 .
• Hedwig Pringsheim: Diaries. Edited and commented by Cristina Herbst, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen.
  • Volume 1. 1885-1891. 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-0995-1 .
  • Volume 2. 1892-1897. 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1267-8 .
  • Volume 3. 1898-1904. 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1426-9 .
  • Volume 4. 1905-1910. 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1626-3 .
  • Volume 5. 1911-1916. 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1804-5 .
  • Volume 6. 1917-1922. 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-1996-7 .
  • Volume 7. 1923-1928. 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3183-9 .
• Hedwig Pringsheim: My husbands. Letters to Maximilian Harden. Edited and commented on by Helga and Manfred Neumann (they chose the title), Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-351-03075-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hedwig Pringsheim in the catalog of the German National Library
• "How Mann's mother-in-law withstood Hitler's pressure" , a review by Hedwig Pringsheim: My intelligence service. Letters to Katia Mann 1933–1941 , April 5, 2013
• “Katja's new comical family” , Deutschlandradio , review by Hedwig Pringsheim: Meine Manns. Letters to Maximilian Harden , December 29, 2006
• Maren Gottschalk : October 31, 1939 - The Pringsheim couple leaves Germany WDR ZeitZeichen from October 31, 2019 (podcast)