Júlia da Silva Bruhns (14 August 1851,

Paraty Paraty (or Parati, ) is a preserved Portuguese colonial (1500–1822) and Brazilian Imperial (1822–1889) municipality with a population of about 43,000. The name "Paraty" originates from the local Guaianá Indians' indigenous Tupi language, ...

– 11 March 1923, Weßling) was the Brazilian mother of

Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...

and

Heinrich Mann Luiz Heinrich Mann (; March 27, 1871 – March 11, 1950), best known as simply Heinrich Mann, was a German writer known for his sociopolitical novels. From 1930 until 1933, he was president of the fine poetry division of the Prussian Academy ...

and one of the matriarchs of the

Mann family The Mann family ( , ; ) is a German dynasty of novelists and an old Hanseaten (class), Hanseatic family of Patrician (post-Roman Europe), patricians from Free City of Lübeck, Lübeck. It is known for being the family of the Nobel Prize for Li ...

Biography

Da Silva Bruhns was born in

, Rio de Janeiro state on Boa Vista sugar plantation. Raised

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, she was the daughter of a

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

er farmer Johann Ludwig Herman Bruhns and his wife Maria Luísa da Silva, herself the daughter of a Portuguese immigrant and landowner and his wife, who was of

Criollo Criollo or criolla (Spanish for creole) may refer to: People * Criollo people, a social class in the Spanish colonial system. Animals * Criollo duck, a species of duck native to Central and South America. * Criollo cattle, a group of cattle bre ...

descent. Johann had emigrated from Lübeck to Brazil at age 16 and changed his name to João Luis Germano Bruhns. He owned several

sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

plantations between Santos and

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

. Maria died at age 28 in childbirth when da Silva Bruhns was six. The following year, she, her father, and her four siblings moved to Lübeck, where da Silva Bruhns and her sister, neither of whom spoke German, lived in a

boarding house A boarding house is a house (frequently a family home) in which lodging, lodgers renting, rent one or more rooms on a nightly basis and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months, or years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and ...

for girls. Their father, meanwhile, returned to Brazil to care for the farms. In Germany, she was forbidden from speaking Portuguese. When she turned 14, da Silva Bruhns moved into her uncle's house. On 4 June 1869, when she was 17, she was married to 29-year-old senator and grain merchant Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, a man from a wealthy hanseaten family. They had five children: Luiz Heinrich, Paulo Thomas, Julia Elisabeth Therese "Lula", Carla Augusta Olga Maria, and Karl Viktor. Her husband died in 1891 due to complications from bladder surgery and his business was liquidated. After his death, da Silva Bruhns moved with her younger children to

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. In 1903, she wrote a memoir about her idyllic childhood in Brazil. It was published posthumously in 1958 under the name ''Aus Dodos Kindheit''—"From Dodô's childhood", in reference to her childhood nickname. In 1910, da Silva Bruhns' daughter Carla, an actress, died by suicide from

cyanide In chemistry, cyanide () is an inorganic chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Ionic cyanides contain the cyanide anion . This a ...

poisoning while visiting her mother in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

. In her final years, da Silva Bruhs moved frequently and lived mostly in hotels. On 11 March 1923, da Silva Bruhns died in a hotel room in Weßling with her three sons at her side. Despite her prolonged experience with xenophobia in Germany and her longing to return to South America, she was never able to return to Brazil. Three years after da Silva Bruhns' death, her other daughter, Lula, a morphine addict, died by suicide from hanging in Munich.

Literary impact

In recent years, particularly as the Mann brothers' Brazilian ancestry has been uncovered, it has become clear just how much da Silva Bruhns inspired and impacted the work of her sons

and Heinrich. Both created characters inspired by her in several of their books, referring to her South American blood and passionate artistic temperament. In ''

Buddenbrooks ''Buddenbrooks'' () is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in th ...

'' 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 memoir inspired Heinrich to write ''Zwischen den Rassen'', whose main character is a fictionalized version of her. Among the biographies about her are Dagmar Von Gersdorff's ''Julia Mann, the Mother of Heinrich and Thomas Mann – A Biography'' (2019), ''O retorno de Júlia Mann a Paraty'' by Teolinda Gersão (2021); and ''Julia de Paraty'' by Fabia Terni Leipziger (2024).

Biography

Literary impact

See also

References

Further reading