Júlia da Silva Bruhns

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Júlia da Silva Bruhns (Angra dos Reis, Brazil, August 14, 1851 – March 11, 1923 in Weßling, Germany) was the wife of the Lübeck senator and grain merchant Johann Heinrich Mann, and mother of writers Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann.

Júlia, a Roman Catholic, was the daughter of the German farmer Johann Ludwig Herman Bruhns and of Brazilian Maria Luísa da Silva. Her father owned several sugar cane plantations between Santos and Rio de Janeiro. Her mother died in childbirth at 28 when Júlia was six. She had three brothers and one sister. One year after her mother's death, her father decided to send his children back to Germany. 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 married Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann in 1869. 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

After the death of her husband and as consequence of bladder surgery, Júlia went to live in Munich with her children.

She wrote an autogiographical 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 affectively 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. Lula hanged herself in 1910, and Carla poisoned herself in 1930.

In her later years Júlia moved frequently and lived mostly in hotels. She died in a hotel room, watched over by her three sons.