Monika Mann


Monika Mann was a German author and feature writer. She was born in Munich, Germany, the fourth of six children of the Nobel Prize–winning author Thomas Mann and Katia, née Katharina Pringsheim.
She trained as a pianist and her early attempts at a musical career seemed promising, but were not met with success and she instead pursued a career as a writer. She married in 1939 but lost her husband the following year, when the ship on which they were travelling to Canada was sunk by a German submarine. Later that year she joined her family in Princeton, New Jersey, and was granted US citizenship in 1952.
Between 1954 and 1986, she lived with her partner Antonio Spadaro in Villa Monacone on Capri. This was her most productive time as a writer and her books and several magazine articles were written during this period. After the death of her partner she left Capri and spent her last years until her death with her brother Golo's adopted family in Leverkusen, Germany.

Family and early life

Thomas Mann was already well established as a novelist and short story writer at the time of Monika's birth, although his Nobel Prize came many years later. Her mother, born Katharina Hedwig Pringsheim, was the daughter of the German Jewish mathematician and artist Alfred Pringsheim and the actress Hedwig Pringsheim.
Monika had an elder sister, Erika and two elder brothers, Klaus and "Golo". A year after Monika's birth her mother was ill with a lung complaint and was one of the first patients to be admitted to the Wald Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. There was an interval of eight years before the birth of the last two children, a sister Elisabeth and a brother Michael. Her uncle was the novelist Heinrich Mann.
She was not her parents' favourite. Her father confessed frankly in his diary that, of the six children, he preferred the two oldest, Klaus and Erika, and little Elisabeth. Her mother wrote in 1939 to Klaus that she was determined not to say any more unfriendly words about Monika and to be kind and helpful. In the family letters and chronicles she was often described as weird. "... after a three week stay here she is still the same old dull quaint Mönle, pilfering from the larder...".
After boarding school at Schule Schloss Salem she trained as a pianist in Lausanne and spent her young years in Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin. In 1933 when Hitler came to power she emigrated with her parents to Sanary-sur-Mer in southeastern France. In 1934 she studied music and history of art in Florence, taking private piano tuition from the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola.

Later career

In Florence she met the Hungarian art historian Jenö Lányi and in 1938 the couple left Italy for London, where they married on 2 March 1939. They left for Canada in 1940 on the SS City of Benares, which on 17 September was sunk by a torpedo from the German submarine, U-48. Monika survived, clinging to a large piece of wood, but Lányi was drowned. According to her account she heard him call to her three times before he went under. After 20 hours she was rescued by a British ship and taken to Scotland. She reached New York on 28 October 1940 on the troopship Cameronia, and joined her parents, who had moved to the US in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II. For a while she lived with her parents, who showed little sympathy for her. Her traumatic loss of her husband and her attempts at a new beginning with them were ignored. Later she moved into her own apartment near her parents.
From 1943 to 1952, with short breaks, she lived in New York. After attempts to renew her career as a pianist she turned to employment as a writer. In 1952 she was granted US citizenship, but she was already planning her return to Europe. In September she travelled with her sister Elizabeth's family to Italy. After a few months in Genoa, Bordighera and Rome she fulfilled her desire to live in a beautiful region by moving to Capri, where she lived in the Villa Monacone with her partner, Antonio Spadaro. In Capri she blossomed. During this period she wrote five books and contributed regular feature pages to Swiss, German and Italian newspapers and magazines. She remained in Capri 32 years until the spring of 1986, a few months after the death of Spadaro in December 1985.
She was not able to realise her desire to live in Kilchberg, Zurich with her parents, who had returned to Europe. She spent her last years at Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia, in the care of Ingrid Beck-Mann, the widow of her brother Golo's adopted son, and died on 17 March 1992. She was buried in the family grave in Kilchberg.

Selected works