Julia da Silva-Bruhns

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Julia da Silva-Bruhns as a young woman
Julia Mann with her three oldest children. From right: Thomas, Heinrich and Julia
The garden house in Roeckstrasse

Julia da Silva-Bruhn's married man , called Dodo (born August 14, 1851 in Paraty , Brazil , † March 11, 1923 in Weßling ) was the wife of the Lübeck senator and businessman Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and the mother of the two writers Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann .

Life

Julia Mann was the daughter of the Lübeck farmer Johann Ludwig Hermann Bruhns (1821-1893), who emigrated to Brazil in 1837, and the Brazilian Maria Luísa da Silva († 1856), daughter of a large landowner of Portuguese origin. She had several siblings.

Her father owned some sugar cane plantations between Santos and Rio de Janeiro . She was born in Villa Boa Vista in Paraty and spent the first years of her life here in affluent circumstances. Her mother died when Julia da Silva-Bruhns was five years old, giving birth to her sixth child. A year after the mother's death, her father decided to send his children back to Germany . Julia didn't speak a word of German at this point . Until she was fourteen years old, she lived in a boarding school in Lübeck under the direction of Therese Bousset . In the meantime, her father looked after the plantations in Brazil and provided for them financially.

Her father's letter to Julia about the engagement

In 1869 she married the eleven years older senator Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (1840-1891). Together they had five children Heinrich (1871–1950), Thomas (1875–1955), Julia “Lula” (1877–1927), Carla (1881–1910) and Viktor (1890–1949).

Julia Mann's husband died of bladder cancer in 1891 . His company was dissolved on the basis of his will and the house was sold because he did not consider his sons to be suitable for the continuation of the company. The proceeds were invested by the executor Krafft Tesdorpf . After the death of her husband, Julia Mann lived in a summer house on Roeckstrasse at the gates of Lübeck . In 1893 she, commonly known as "Frau Senator Mann", moved to Munich with her children , and later moved on to Augsburg with the youngest son, Viktor, on Nibelungenstrasse. There she lived from 1903 to 1906 on the interest income, from which Heinrich and Thomas Mann also received a small pension.

Memorial plaque on the residential building in Nibelungenstrasse

“She was of a decidedly romantic type, a much-admired beauty in her youth, and extraordinarily musical. I ask myself about the hereditary origin of my disposition, [...] and find that I, too, lead my life seriously from my father, but the cheerful nature, that is the artistically sensual direction and - in the broadest sense of the word - the desire to use fables , from my mother. ”This is how Thomas Mann described her in 1936.

In 1903 Julia Mann wrote down her memories of her childhood in Brazil up to her marriage in Lübeck for private purposes. Viktor Mann prepared the publication, but it did not appear under the title Aus Dodos Kindheit until 1958.

Her well-known sons Heinrich and Thomas Mann created numerous fictional characters that were inspired by her. When a family fell into Buddenbrooks , she was the model for Gerda Arnoldsen. In Doctor Faustus the figure Senator Rodde, in Death in Venice the mother of the protagonist von Aschenbach and in Tonio Kröger that of the mother Consuelo are based on her person. Their exotic origins play a role in the will to happiness .

Julia Mann often changed her place of residence in old age. Inflation had eaten up the fortune left behind and she had to find cheaper and cheaper accommodation. She was proud not to accept the support offered by her sons. She died at the age of 71 in a hotel room in a village south of Munich surrounded by her family and was buried next to her daughter Carla Mann, who had already committed suicide in 1910.

Her great-grandson Frido Mann deals with his great-grandmother's Brazilian heritage. So he founded the Casa Mann association, which wants to build a Euro-Brazilian cultural center in the house where she was born, the Villa Boa Vista in Paraty .

Fonts

  • From Dodo's childhood , published with numerous prose sketches and romantic stories in I love to talk to my children . Structure Tb 1999. ISBN 3-7466-1041-9 .

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Martin Gauger : Between monkeys and parrots. Her sons Thomas and Heinrich wrote world literature, but she would have preferred a completely different family: A visit to Paraty, Julia Mann's Brazilian homeland . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 2, 2016, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Paratycultura - Arquitectura - Fazenda Boa Vista ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 23, 2013  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.paratycultura.org.br

Web links

Commons : Julia da Silva-Bruhns  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Silva-Bruhns, Julia there
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dodo; Husband, Julia (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mother of Thomas and Heinrich Mann
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Paraty , Brazil
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1923
Place of death Weßling