Unwritten Memories

By Katia Mann

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394494032
• ISBN13: 9780394494036
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Mrs. Mann writes her memoir at the urging of her children

Frau Thomas Mann, nee Katia Pringsheim, was an intelligent and energetic woman who gave the famous author 6 children and her full attention as a manager and major-domo of the household. "I never in my life did what I really wanted to do" she protests, at the beginning of the memoir. And one thing she did not want to do was write a "tell all" autobiography and be a "veuve abusive" or a toxic widow, one who tells all and sullies the reputation of a late husband. But she is so reticent, that it takes the urging of her family to finally put on paper some of the interesting events in her long marriage to the Nobel Prize-winning author. Katia Pringsheim was a highly intelligent child, daughter to a university professor in Munich. She was so bright that her parents arranged for her to be privately tutored for high school--sadly, before World War I, girls were not admitted to German "gymnasium" or high school college preparatory schools. She enjoyed the tutoring of some rather famous instructors (Roentgen, the physicist, for one.) She qualified for the Abitur or university entrance. But as life would have it for many women, she married, and children and care for a husband became her occupation. She doesn't regret this entirely--she took on the role of manager of the quickly-growing Mann family, and her quick intelligence and practical side helped to get the Manns through some dangerous times, first World War I, then even more dangerous, World War II. All through the turmoil of moving from Germany to Switzerland, to the US, back to Switzerland, Frau Doktor Mann kept a watchful eye over the publishers, and ran the business side of the author's work. She tells less than one would like about her feelings during many traumatic or exciting events, but there are interesting if somewhat sketchy details on the models for famous characters in Mann's novels. For example, a very good friend, Gerhart Hauptmann, had a way of speaking in broken, incomplete sentences and thoughts. He became Pieter Pieperkorn, the kingly but incoherent Dionysian figure in "Magic Mountain." While Frau Mann claims not every famous character had a real-life counterpart, she is able to source many of the characters Mann created, showing what physical or idiosyncratic portions he borrowed to put in his novels. This makes the memoir fascinating reading, as does a small but biting portrait of Alma Mahler and other luminaries of the early 20th Century such as Schoenberg, Brecht, Einstein, and Chaplin. For these sketches alone, this is must-reading for anyone interested in Thomas Mann.