Júlia da Silva Bruhns was the wife of the Lübeck senator and grain merchant Johann Heinrich Mann, and mother of writers Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann.
Background
Júlia, a Roman Catholic, was born in Paraty, Brazil, the daughter of the German farmer Johann Ludwig Herman Bruhns and of Brazilian Maria Luísa da Silva, the daughter of a Portuguese immigrant, a lady who also had South American Indian blood. Her mother died in childbirth at 28 when Júlia was six.
Career
Júlia"s father owned several sugar cane plantations between Santos and Rio de Janeiro. They lived in Lübeck, where Júlia had an uncle. At six, Julia didn’t speak a word of German.
She stayed in a boarding school until she was 14 years old, while her father was back in Brazil caring for the farms.
She was 17, he 29. They had five children:
(Luís) Heinrich Mann
(Paulo) Thomas Mann
Julia (Elisabeth Therese) (Lula) Mann
Carla (Augusta Olga Maria) Mann
(Carl) Viktor Mann
She wrote an autobiographical work called Aus Dodos Kindheit, in which she described her idyllic childhood in Brazil. Her sons Heinrich and Thomas created characters inspired by her in several of their books, referring to her South American blood and passionate artistic temperament.
In his autobiography, Thomas Mann describes Júlia as "Portuguese-Creole Brazilian". In Buddenbrooks she was the inspiration for Gerda Arnoldsen and Toni Buddenbrook.
In Doktor Faustus, she became the wife of Senator Rodde.
In Tonio Kröger, she was the mother, Consuelo. In Death in Venice, she appears as the mother of the protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach. Her two daughters both committed suicide: Carla poisoned herself in 1910, and Lula hanged herself in 1927.
In her later years Júlia moved frequently and lived mostly in hotels.