1 Elisabeth Mann Borgeseâs Life in Time-Lapse
Elisabeth Mann Borgese spent much of her professional life between places. She was always on the move, travelling from one conference, session or gathering to another. Several times during her life she moved home between countries and even continents. Depending on where she lived and worked she changed citizenship on various occasions, seemingly without any great sentiment. Who was this woman and how did she get into ocean governance?
Elisabeth Veronika Mann was born in Munich on 24 April 1918. She was the fifth child in the intellectual Mann family,1 but succeeded in making enough of an impression on the world to rise above simply being âThomas Mannâs daughterâ. In academic and diplomatic circles there was often little interest in her family background.2
By her teenage years, the travelling and movement that would characterise her life had already begun. Germany had become a hostile place for families with Jewish heritage and Elisabeth Mannâs mother, Katia, had Jewish ancestry, so the family left the country in 1933.3 At first, they moved to neighbouring Switzerland, where Elisabeth Mann lived with her family in Zürich and
In Princeton, Elisabeth Mann met her future husband, the famous writer and scholar Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, who was thirty-six years her senior. One year later, in 1939, the couple married. In 1940, when Elisabeth Mann was twenty-two, her first daughter, Angelica, was born in Chicago. She obtained citizenship of the United States in 1941, four years after her arrival in Princeton, and her second daughter, Nica, was born in Chicago in 1944.9 From 1946â52, Elisabeth Mann Borgese and her husband worked on formulating a âWorld Constitutionâ in Chicago.10 In September 1952, the couple returned to Europe and settled in Fiesole, outside Florence in Italy. Just two months later, on 4 December 1952, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese died there.11 From 1953â64, Elisabeth Mann Borgese lived with her daughters in Italy and worked on several different projects. According to her Curriculum Vitae, she was employed as an editor for âinternational publicationsâ12 affiliated with the Ford Foundation. One was a magazine about culture called Perspectives, while another was a unesco-funded magazine called Diogenes.13 She also âwrote short stories,
We have fast-forwarded through forty-six years of Elisabethâs life. In that time, she had changed citizenship three times and lived in four different countries â Germany, Switzerland, the United States and Italy. She had married a much older man, borne two children, been widowed at just thirty-four years old, and managed to get the family through some rough years after Borgeseâs death. Before we continue with her life and start looking into how she got involved with the oceans, we should linger for a while over her relationship with Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and the work she did for the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. Did associating with the intellectuals in the Chicago circle influence her thoughts, and would this be reflected in her later career as she moved towards shaping the Law of the Sea?
2 Making Connections â An Intellectual Love with Giuseppe Antonio Borgese
Whenever Elisabeth Mann Borgese was asked about her late husband, the anti-fascist novelist and academic Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, she always talked about him with respect and pride,16 often choosing to emphasise the effect he had on her intellectual education.17 He gave her books he wanted her to read, introduced her to people he thought she would find interesting, and made her his close confidante, secretary and later research assistant.18
Elisabeth Mann was only twenty years old when she met Borgese for the first time at her parentsâ home in Princeton. Borgese was fifty-six.19 Throughout her
As luck would have it, Elisabeth Mann met the author of this prophetic book when he came to meet Thomas Mann at their home in Princeton in 1938.28 In an interview about her life, she said that her older sister Erika had helped arrange the meet-cute.29 Elisabeth Mann was instructed to pick Borgese up from the train station, and as she later told her biographer Kerstin Holzer, the reality of the man lived up to her image of him. Over the ensuing month, her
Elisabeth Mann was fascinated by the older and more experienced man, and she had a clear sense of purpose in this, as she confided to her biographer Kerstin Holzer. Holzer reported that Elisabeth Mann âwanted to learn, and she wanted to look up to someone. She was able to do that as a student of her husbandâ.32 The urge to learn â and maybe even to admire â were traits that she would display throughout her life, and Borgese was not the only man she would look up to. He was the second â after her father33 â in a series of important men in her life with whom she felt an intellectual connection and in some cases a romantic one too. That those people she admired were men was perhaps due to the fact that not many women in the 1950s could aspire to much beyond being a housewife. It might be more correct to suggest that Elisabeth Mann Borgese in general admired people who pursued their goals by using their wit and intellect, and that in 1950, those people were mostly men.34
The question of the relationship between men and women interested Elisabeth Mann even before she met Borgese. For many years, she worked on a
Indeed, the book is far from the feminist pamphlet its title suggests. Wolfgang U Eckert, who wrote an article about Ascent of Woman, supports this view.38 But while the book is therefore not suited to a study of early feminism, it can, however, give us some insights into Mann Borgeseâs understanding of the male-dominated society she lived in. In the book, Mann Borgese lays out a utopian theory in which women first rise through the ranks of society, but in the end are dominated by older, wiser patriarchs from whom they are supposed to learn. When the society of women has been perfected, families are built that are led by older, mature men âbetween forty-five and seventy-five years, from whom the âyoung, beautiful, receptive, sacrificial, loyal, committed womenâ learn wisdom and virtueâ.39 Finally, women actually turn into men and reach a kind of higher wisdom.40
According to Wolfgang Eckertâs reading of the theory, âElisabethâs Ascent of Woman is not about this ascent, or even the âdescent of the manâ, but solely about the rise of Elisabeth Mann Borgese to male acceptance in a male-dominated familyâ.41 A male-dominated society too, we might add. Elisabeth Mann Borgeseâs theories in Ascent of Woman might also have been an attempt to explore her own life choices in marrying Borgese and learning from him. Perhaps she felt this was her only chance at finding a way to greater âwisdomâ or a deeper purpose beyond domestic life.
You may be surprised that I mention all those âintellectualâ things first, but when you are 20, and marry a man 56, and you fell in love with his intellectual work, that was all very important. We spent long, long evenings, over a bottle of wine, talking and talking and talking (he did most of the talking, but I did some too), and there were very happy evenings. Inspite for [sic: in spite of] some storminess, it was, for many years, a very successful and happy marriage.43
Maybe Ascent of Woman is a reflection on their early years of marriage, during which Elisabeth Mann Borgeseâs husband influenced her intellectual development. We have to bear in mind that, although she had travelled and moved around a lot, she had lived with her parents for most of her life. Her marriage to Borgese was the first time she had moved outside her parentsâ sphere of influence.44 During their marriage, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese enhanced Elisabeth Mannâs interest in discussions on fascism, politics and world governance. In an early letter to Borgese before their marriage, she wrote: âConcerning Lehr- und Wanderjahre I am not yet content. My opinion is one has to lernen und zu wander all oneâs lifeâ.45 This was a reference to Goetheâs classic Wilhelm Meisterâs Journeyman Years and perhaps referred back to a previous discussion between them. The assertion that âone has to lernen und zu wander all oneâs lifeâ is something Elisabeth Mann Borgese truly put into action throughout her own life. Even at this early stage, the learning and wandering had already started, and through her marriage to Giuseppe Antonio Borgese she would be given a direction.
Elisabeth Mann Borgese with her husband in Chicago 1943
monacensia literaturarchiv und bibliothek münchen, emb f 203photo: unknown
Elisabeth Mann went from being the youngest daughter in an expat-German intellectual household, safeguarded by the ties of her family and her status as the youngest female member, to being the spouse of a well-respected man who had built himself a reputation based on decades of publishing and teaching success. Elisabeth Mann had just finished her âMaturaâ in Zurich and completed her concert pianist training in Switzerland a year before they met.
Starting out as a personal secretary â in much the same way that her mother, Katia Mann, carried out secretarial functions for Thomas Mann â Elisabeth Mann Borgese became familiar with her husbandâs academic work. Unlike her mother, though, she soon had higher aspirations. She was eager to learn and to contribute to her husbandâs research for the Committee to Frame a World Constitution in Chicago.47
3 The Chicago Committee to Frame a World Constitution
When Elisabeth Mann Borgese came to Chicago in 1939, two people were going to be of great importance for her further career. One was her husband,
Hutchins was conscience-stricken about his participation in the project, feeling that he had contributed to the horror that the bomb inflicted not only on the Japanese but also on the whole world.52 In a radio programme called âThe University of Chicago Roundtableâ, broadcast on 12 August 1945, Hutchins argued that âall the evidence points to the fact that the use of the bomb was unnecessary. [â¦] Therefore, the United States has lost its moral prestige!â53 Prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, Hutchins and physicists from Chicago had attempted to convince President Truman to drop the bomb on rural Japan, thus allowing the United States to demonstrate its power without actually harming large numbers of civilians. Leo Szilard, a Jewish-Hungarian physicist who was part of the Manhattan Project and had conceived the nuclear chain reaction, drafted a petition against the use of the atomic bomb after the Trinity test in July 1945. The petition was supported by Hutchins and signed by some sixty-five of the engineers and physicists involved in the project, mainly those
No-one realised at the time that the enormously potent weapon the Truman administration had unleashed would backfire so spectacularly, ringing in an infinity echo of horror and paranoia that persists right up to the present day. The US had sole possession of the weapon for just four short years, and apparently President Trumanâs only strategy was to rely on the belief that no other country could ever uncover the âengineering secretsâ of the weapon.57 What a misconception. By 1949, the Soviet Union had managed to create her first nuclear bomb, the US responded by developing the super hydrogen bomb, and the Soviet hydrogen bomb followed shortly after. Just five years later, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had already been superseded by much more destructive weapons.58
With the University of Chicago at the forefront of atomic sciences, Hutchins decided to use his remaining years in office to educate scientists and ordinary Americans about nuclear energy. Perhaps as an act of reparation, he threw all his efforts into sourcing funding for three nuclear energy research institutes at the University of Chicago.59 At around the same time, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists60 started up. The Bulletin was a non-technical journal that was founded in 1945 to educate both scientists and the wider public about the Atomic Age, the dangers of the atomic bomb, and the impact that scientific discoveries such as nuclear fission could have in political and social spheres.61 The Bulletin was very much connected to what Hutchins was doing at the University of Chicago, and several pieces that appeared in the Bulletin were in fact written by researchers involved in Hutchinsâs education efforts at the
The Bulletinâs January 2020 statement reported that the Doomsday Clock countdown was âcloser than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnightâ.63 Editor-in-chief John Mecklin stated that âCivilization-ending nuclear war â whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication â is a genuine possibility. Climate change that could devastate the planet is undeniably happeningâ.64 The scientists, politicians and academics who allowed the Manhattan Project to come to fruition in 1945 undoubtedly wound up the Doomsday Clock and it is still ticking away today. Hutchins was one of those who regretted his involvement deeply and wanted to make amends. He founded institutes researching nuclear energy and also supported the foundation of the Chicago Committee to Frame a World Constitution in 1945.65
4 A New World Constitution
While Hutchins was grappling with the organisation and later the outcomes of the Manhattan Project, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese had been working as a professor of Romance literature and languages at the University of Chicago since 1936.66 In 1945, together with Richard P McKeon, Borgese suggested founding the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. Hutchins, who by
In 1946 â the year in which the Manhattan project finished its work as its horrendous consequences became apparent â Elisabeth Mann Borgese started getting involved with her husband and Robert Maynard Hutchinsâs work on the Committee to Frame a World Constitution.68 The goal was to write a âworld constitutionâ â a holistic ideal of governing the world as one federal system by abolishing nation states. The University of Chicago was not the only place where this endeavour was pursued.69 In fact, at the time there was a wide movement for promoting world governance and world citizenship,70 including the World Federalist Movement and many other large and small attempts to unite the worldâs citizens.71 The outcome of the committeeâs work, apart from a monthly journal called Common Cause72 in which other world constitutions were presented and reviewed,73 was a drafted world constitution that was published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1948, and was dedicated to Gandhi.74
That the drafted world constitution was printed in the fifth issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was hardly a coincidence. Hutchins was in contact with the Bulletin because part of its purpose was to educate Americans
The committee designed the constitution as follows: The world constitution should provide for a president who would be the âprotector of peaceâ in the Federal Republic of the World.76 This president would be elected by delegates, each delegate representing âthe people of all statesâ77 at a rate of one delegate per million people.78 These delegates, together with the elected president, would constitute the world government. Furthermore, the committee allocated several âgrants of powersâ to the world government. One which was especially important in the context of the Atomic Age was the âlimitation or control of weapons and domestic militias [â¦]â.79 Others included âthe maintenance of peaceâ80 and the âjudgment of conflictâ81 â all-in-all, the kinds of tasks a democratic, constitutional government of a nation state would carry out. However, in the constitutionâs âdeclaration of duties and rightsâ section there was a key passage which revealed a relatively new way of thinking. The committee proclaimed that âThe four elements of life â earth, water, air, energy â are the common property of the human raceâ.82 To dedicate elemental resources to the whole human race â instead of to specific nation states, stakeholders or other âownersâ â was not necessarily well-received by the (probably quite limited) audience who read and discussed the draft of the world constitution.
it is true that the life and dignity of any human is a sacred trust of society. It is not true that China with its 400,000,000 is ten times more valuable than France with its 40,000,000. It is not true that 150,000,000 Americans who have created the greatest democracy of all times should sit humbly in the back rows of the world arena and surrender their sovereignties to a billion proliferating Asiatics.86
Culbertson concluded with the diagnosis that the âdisease of internationalism, such as the Communist internationalism, can be as monstrous as the disease of nationalismâ.87 Such attitudes among the opponents of world governance show how unlikely it was that the âutopian idealsâ of the Chicago draft (or any idealistic vision of a world constitution) had any chance of being implemented in the 1940s.
At the Nexus Lecture many decades later, Elisabeth Mann Borgese talked about her involvement with the Chicago committee, saying that they had known the constitution was not ârealisticâ, but had meant it to be a âblueprint pointing in the direction of a desirable or probably ineluctable futureâ.88 This blueprint was, in fact, later used for the Law of the Sea. By the 1940s, earth had been nationalised and remained hotly contested; air had been largely nationalised; energy had been nationalised, but (sea) water remained untouched beyond the coastlines of each nation state. In her work with the Chicago committee, Elisabeth Mann Borgese had reviewed several drafts of world constitutions and had been present as they discussed their own draft. While ultimately the committeeâs work was neither finalised nor implemented, Elisabeth Mann Borgese took some of it with her when she started working on the Law of the Sea Convention. If earth, air and energy were not going to be the common
It is difficult to gauge the extent of Elisabeth Mann Borgeseâs involvement in designing this first draft constitution. One thing for certain is that during her years with the committee, her role went far beyond that of a secretary, and her participation might shed some light on her deepening involvement with world governance issues.
5 From Secretary to Academic
How exactly Elisabeth Mann Borgese made her way into academia through the committee is somewhat blurry. Her Curriculum Vitae, dated December 1982, lists some of her activities from 1948 onwards. The document mentions her having âhelped Borgese and Hutchins (Chancellor of U. of Chicago) found âThe Committee to Frame a World Constitution,â [and] Contributed research papers on Comparative Constitutional Law, some 12 of which were subsequently published in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and Common Cause. [â¦]â.89 Furthermore, it says that she was the editor of Common Cause, a monthly journal published by the Chicago committee from 1948â52.90
It is unclear whether she composed this cv herself or for what purpose it was written. The University of Chicago Library, where the records of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution are stored, lists her as âresearch assistant for the Committee and later editor of the journal Common Causeâ,91 not as a founding member of the committee. It seems odd to believe that she would have been deeply involved in founding the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, bearing in mind her young age and the fact that she had given birth to her second daughter the previous year.92 It is also questionable whether her husband, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, would have accepted this view. In Elisabeth Mann Borgeseâs biography, Kerstin Holzer notes his struggle with her growing professional independence in 1949.93
Although the exact circumstances are difficult to reconstruct, all evidence suggests that Elisabeth Mann Borgese made her way into academia without a degree or an academic publishing record, mainly by taking on a growing role in her husbandâs academic work. Borgese introduced her to Robert Maynard Hutchins, who in turn became an important partner in her further career, and her involvement with the Committee to Frame a World Constitution would lay the foundation for her later work with the oceans.97
In a 1951 letter to George Kennan at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, Elisabeth Mann Borgese described the nature of her work with the Chicago committee. She recounted that she had written âabout
Clearly, by 1951 her tasks in the committee had far exceeded those of a regular secretary. She must, however, have started her deeper academic involvement later than 1945, since she wrote: âduring the two years of research for the Committee [â¦]â,104 meaning that she had spent at least three years doing more standard secretarial duties. Though she probably spent only two years researching, she managed to write twelve articles, all of which were closely related to the committeeâs core work. She became familiar with various drafts for a world constitution, wrote and discussed her own ideas around those drafts, and in general practised writing papers on âworld unityâ and âEuropean unityâ.
Apart from telling us about Mann Borgeseâs growing professional expertise, paired with her ability to work herself into institutional settings through informal or unconventional channels, the letter to Kennan also reveals that in March 1951 she was looking for a job. She wrote, âMr. Hutchins tells me that you might have an opening for me to work on your staff in Princetonâ.105 Apparently things were not going well for the Chicago committee. That Hutchins was helping them find new positions suggests that it was not a lack of effort or expertise on the part of Mann Borgese or her husband that was making them look for new jobs. Rather, external circumstances threatened the committeeâs existence.
The peculiar distaste for the âdisease of Communist internationalismâ108 also affected the Committee to Frame a World Constitution at the University of Chicago. Though the committee was probably not seen to be directly communist or pursuing communist goals, there was little appetite for peace-seeking activities with the Eastern Bloc. Efforts to design a world constitution had gone out of fashion, lectures were forbidden, people were fired, and the whole enterprise was shut down in 1952,109 when Hutchins left the University of Chicago to take a job as director of the Ford Foundation.110 The committee members, including the Mann Borgeses, had to find new employment.
6 Retreat to Italy
In September 1952, Elisabeth Mann Borgese returned to Europe. Her husband had been offered a job at the University of Milan,111 and she followed together with her two daughters. The couple agreed to find a house in San Domenico in Fiesole and, according to Katrin Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese declined a job offer at an American cultural journal called Perspectives, opting to settle into life as a mother to her daughters and a caring wife for her husband.112 Just two months later, she would have to rethink this decision. Giuseppe Antonio died unexpectedly at the age of seventy on 4 December 1952,113 leaving Elisabeth Mann Borgese and her two daughters alone in Italy. The family had not even had a chance to take up residence in their new house. Instead, Elisabeth Mann
Her time in Italy could be described as a period of varied jobs, interesting involvements, writing and experimental living.115 She did everything from teaching German to political science students at the University of Florence116 to more adventurous work like travelling to India to interview Nehru and conduct behavioural experiments on elephants.117 First of all, she reconsidered the job offer she had so recently declined, taking up employment as editor of Perspectives.118 Another job she took to make a living was at a unesco-financed magazine called Diogenes, where she also got to know her second life partner, Corrado Tumiati.119 Tumiati was a former psychologist who had written a book about his work in a closed institution, and he was supposed to help Mann Borgese with her editing jobs. At the time, he worked at a magazine called Il Ponte.120 Once again, Elisabeth Mann Borgese picked a man much older than herself, and Tumiati would live in the villa in Fiesole until his death in 1967.121 During the years in Italy, Mann Borgese also published several smaller tales and novels, one of which was To Whom It May Concern122 â a collection of peculiar stories about futuristic freak scenarios, published in 1960.
There seems to be a kind of veil draped over Elisabeth Mann Borgeseâs years in Italy.123 Although she was occupied with a variety of different smaller jobs, she always kept in contact with Hutchins â who now worked at the Ford Foundation â and with the American circle she had been part of in Chicago. She also started to develop an increasing interest in behavioural studies of
By 1964, Hutchins had started a new project in the United States, and having maintained contact with Mann Borgese throughout her years in Italy, he now asked her to join him. At this point, the pieces of her unusual career path started to fall into place.
7 The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara
Elisabeth Mann Borgese had been sending Hutchins more than just funny pictures of typewriting dogs. Their correspondence had revolved around the Encyclopaedia Britannica126 â a reference work that had been donated to the University of Chicago â and other projects. These included at least one conference that Mann Borgese apparently took a role in organising, although it is not quite clear what it was about or for whom.127 From their correspondence in January 1964 we can glean only that the conference would deal with ânothing less than the future of manâ128and that Mann Borgese was interested in merging it with another conference that Hutchins had mentioned at Christmas.
Robert Hutchins had been working as the head of the Ford Foundation, after leaving the University of Chicago amid political upheavals and the animosities brought about by McCarthyism.129 In 1959, he had set up the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, using money from âThe Fund for the Republicâ â a fund established by the Ford Foundation while he was at its head.130 Having returned to academia, Hutchins now reached out
Bob has asked me to come to Santa Barbara a good many times and every time I have thought about it, I have had a deep revulsion against doing so. I like Bob, as you know, and I like being with him; but my habits of work are so different from the way things are done in Santa Barbara that I know that I would be miserable in that environment. My hunch is that your habits of work are very much like mine and that you would be equally out of place there.138
Hutchins called the Fellows to the conference table by ringing an old school bell three or four mornings a week â occasionally five â at 11 A.M. The twenty to twenty-five persons assembled as often as not included whoever happened to be on the premises, invited or uninvited.142
Before the meeting started, the paper that was on the agenda that day had to be handed out to the participants, and they were expected to study it before the bell called them to the discussion room.143 According to Meyers, the discourse was often unfocused and fluid, and the effect and importance of the centreâs activity was questionable. As the Vietnam War raged, Kennedy was shot and world politics generally went up in flames, the fellows explored abstract futuristic questions on governance or world order, many of which were detached from reality and inaccessible to a broader audience.144
The centreâs most significant efforts, Meyers writes, were four conferences organised between 1965 and 1975 called Pacem in Terris.145 The first conference, set in New York in 1965, was concerned with questions of world peace, and the hosts themselves billed it as âan attempt to see whether the understanding and
When Elisabeth Mann Borgese joined the centre in 1964, preparations for the first mammoth conference were probably ongoing. How much she was involved in organising the first two conferences is hard to determine, but in her holdings at the Dalhousie University Archives there is at least one folder containing a report on the Pacem in Terris ii Convocation.149 The centreâs interest in organising conferences would come in handy for Mann Borgeseâs later work, and thematically the Pacem in Terris conferences were of interest to her. Documents from her first year in Santa Barbara show that she was once again involved in discussions about a world constitution.150
Her involvement with the world constitution in Chicago in the early years of her marriage with Borgese meant she slipped easily back into to the circle of academics and intellectuals that were now gathered once again in Santa Barbara. Here she would be able to rethink and refine her understanding of world governance, after a twelve-year detour in Italy. On a practical level, the centre also made a good training ground for learning about organisational skills, networking and funding. Organising large-scale international conferences was not always simple. Over the years, conflict arose at the centre â often
When Adler told Mann Borgese that he was unsure whether she was suited to a position at the centre, perhaps he was referring to Hutchinsâs particular method of discourse-based research. But despite Adlerâs grave predictions, Elisabeth Mann Borgese was not âmiserableâ152 during her first years at the centre, and she thrived on the opportunity to work on world governance once more. Meanwhile, over at the United Nations in New York, discussions on ocean governance were already on the agenda and were about to accelerate.
Several cv versions exist. For detailed information from 1918â1982, see ms-2-744, Box 16, Folder 19. Shorter version see ms-2-744, Box 362, Folder 6.
For more information on the Mann family, several studies are available. Memoirs of family members: Monika Mann, Vergangenes und Gegenwärtiges. Erinnerungen (München: Kindle Verlag, 1956); Klaus Mann, Der Wendepunkt. Ein Lebensbericht (Reinbek: Rowohlt 2006, first edition 1952); Elisabeth Plessen and Michael Mann, eds., Meine ungeschriebenen Memoiren (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1974). Biographies about family members: Inge Jens and Walter Jens, Frau Thomas Mann: Das Leben der Katharina Pringsheim (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2004). Karin Andert, Monika Mann. Eine Biographie (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2010); Klaus Harpprecht, Thomas Mann: Eine Biographie (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1995).
Cf. Irmela von der Lühe, ââIch gehöre doch zu den Kleinenâ Elisabeth Mann Borgese als Chronistin ihrer âamazing familyââ, in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 20. See also Thomas Sprecher, âEine Jugend in Zürich. Elisabeth Mann in den Jahren 1933â1938â, in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 34.
Cf. ms-2-744, Box 362, Folder 6. See Sprecher, âEine Jugend in Zürichâ, 43.
Sprecher, âEine Jugend in Zürichâ, 43. Sprecher refers to Thomas Mann Tagebücher: 1935â1936, 396 [10.03.1937].
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 69â70.
Cf. Sprecher, âEine Jugend in Zürichâ, 45.
See Holzer referring to Einstein in Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 94. Elisabeth Mann Borgese wrote a letter to Albert Einstein in 1951. See b-iii.17.eins-1, 24.03.1951.
Cf. Giovanni di Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgese. Porträt eines unruhigen Weltenbürgersâ, in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 60.
Cf. ms-2-744, Box 362, Folder 6.
Cf. Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 62.
ms-2-744, Box 16, Folder 19.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 146â147.
A first extensive collection of Mann Borgeseâs publications can be found in Pils and Kühn, eds., Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 246â255.
nb-Folder 5, May 20, 1964.
See Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 129: ââEr war ein Gentleman, ehrenhaft und hochanständigâ, betont sie, âund ich habe ihn sehr verehrt. Aber er war eben unerträglich.ââ
Holzer described this in Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 112â114. Mann Borgese refers to his influence on her in a letter to her daughters in 1982. Cf. emb B4 Mann Borgese, 15.10.1982.
Cf. Baker, âElisabeth Mann Borgeseâ, 91.
For a more detailed account of their first meeting see Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 96â110.
For instance, at the Nexus Lecture in 1999. See Elisabeth Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Life. The Nexus Lectureâ (1999), in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 211.
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Goliath â The March of Fascism (New York: Viking Press, 1937).
Cf. Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 55.
He held several chair positions from 1931â1936 also in New York. Cf. Hannibal S. Noce, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, in Modern Philology 50, no. 4, (May, 1953): 218,
Cf. Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 54â55.
Cf. Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 55.
Cf. emb b4 Mann Borgese, 15.10.1982.
Cf. Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 56.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 101.
See Ingo Hermann, ed., âElisabeth Mann Borgese. Die Meer Frau. Gespräch mit Amadou Seitzâ in der Reihe âZeugen des Jahrhundertsâ (Göttingen: Lamuv Verlag GmbH, 1993), 27.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 103.
Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 46.
Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 112. âElisabeth wollte lernen, und sie wollte zu jemandem aufblicken. Als Schülerin ihres Mannes konnte sie dasâ.
Cf. Peter Serracino Inglott, âElisabeth Mann Borgese: A Metaphysician by Birthâ, Ocean Yearbook 18 (2004): 22â74, quoted in Wolfgang U. Eckert, âDas âUtopiaâ der Meer-Frau. Elisabeth Mann Borgese und der âAufstieg der Frauâ (1963â1965)â, in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 67.
Her daughter emphasised in an interview that Mann Borgese was not a feminist. Borgese, Nica. (Professor cnr Institute of Neuroscience, Milano), interview with the author, October 26, 2015. Milano, Italy. Elisabeth Mann Borgese has recently been studied from a feminist research perspective in a series about Gender and the Law of the Sea in Mallia, Patricia, and David Testa, âElisabeth Mann Borgese, Gender and the Law of the Seaâ, in Gender and the Law of the Sea, (Leiden: Brill | Nijhoff, 2019)
Elisabeth Mann Borgese, Ascent of Woman (New York: George Braziller, 1963).
Cf. Hermann, ed., Die Meer Frau, 40. Mann Borgese said she started becoming interested in this topic when she was fourteen or fifteen years old.
emb b3 Mann Borgese, 26.09.1951.
See Eckert, âDas âUtopiaââ, 64â71.
Eckert, âDas âUtopiaââ, 71. â[â¦] zwischen fünfundvierzig und fünfundsiebzig Jahren, von denen die âjungen, schönen, aufnahmefähigen, opferwilligen, loyalen, dienstfertigen Frauenâ Weisheit und Tugend erlernenâ.
Cf. Eckert, âDas âUtopiaââ, 71.
Eckert, âDas âUtopiaââ, 71. âLetztlich geht es in embs Aufstieg der Frau gar nicht um eben diesen Aufstieg, oder gar um den âAbstieg des Mannesâ, sondern alleine um den Aufstieg der Elisabeth Mann Borgese zur männlichen Akzeptanz in einer männlich dominierten Familieâ.
emb b4 Mann Borgese, 15.10.1982.
emb b4 Mann Borgese, 15.10.1982.
See Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 110. She was the only one of the six children to live with her parents until her marriage.
emb b3 Mann Borgese, Tuesday [no date].
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 110â114.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 121.
See Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 212. See also Robert A. McCaughey, âShaking things up in Chicagoâ, The New York Times, 1989.
Edward, Shils, âRobert Maynard Hutchinsâ, The American Scholar 59, no. 2 (1990), 218
Cf. Milton Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins. A Memoir, (Berkley: University California Press, 1993), 275.
Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 275.
Cf. Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 214.
âThe Chicago University Roundtable â 8/12/45 â Gordon Skene Sound Collectionâ, accessed 30 September 2021,
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 264.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 264.
For the public announcement, see Press release by the White House. âImmediate Release. Statement by the President of the United Statesâ. August 6, 1945, available at:
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 376.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 376.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 270.
See Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, âBackground and Mission: 1945â2018â,
Cf. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, âBackground and Mission: 1945â2018â,
See for example Robert M. Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draft of a World Constitutionâ, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4, no. 5 (1948): 145â150. The other authors were the members of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution: G. A. Borgese, Albert Guérard, Harold A. Innis, Erich Kahler, Wilber G. Katz, Charles H. McIlwain, Robert Redfield, Rexford G. Tugwell, Stringfellow Barr, Mortimer J. Adler.
John Mecklin eds., âIt is a 100 seconds to midnight â 2020 Doomsday Clock Statementâ, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2020),
John Mecklin eds., âIt is a 100 seconds to midnight â 2020 Doomsday Clock Statementâ, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2020),
See Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 240. See Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 327.
Cf. Noce, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 218.
Robert M. Hutchins et al., Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1947/1948), ii.
Cf. ms-2-744, Box 362, Folder 6.
Cf. Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 216.
Mann Borgese worked on a platform for world citizenship. See ms-2-744, Box 135, Folder 22.
Cf. Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 114â116.
A complete collection of the publication Common Cause can be accessed at: University of Chicago Library, the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. Records, 1945â1951, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.), in âSeries iii: Common Cause and the Preliminary Draft Filesâ,
Cf. Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 216.
Cf. Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 145â150. See the committeeâs publication of the draft: Robert M. Hutchins et al., Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1947/1948).
Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 145.
Cf. Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 146, 149.
Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 146.
Cf. Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 146.
Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 146.
Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 145.
Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 145.
Hutchins et al., âPreliminary Draftâ, 145.
For more information on the early UN reform attempts, see Joseph Preston Baratts, The Politics of World Federation: United Nations, UN Reform, Atomic Control (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishing, 2004).
Cf. Ely Culbertson, âThe preliminary Draft of a World Constitution, by the Committee to Frame A World Constitutionâ, Indiana Law Journal 24, no. 3, (1949): 477,
Culbertson, âThe preliminary Draftâ, 481.
Culbertson, âThe preliminary Draftâ, 481.
Culbertson, âThe preliminary Draftâ, 474.
Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 215.
ms-2-744, Box 16, Folder 19.
Cf. ms 16â19.
See The guide to the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. Records, 1945â1951, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.),
Nica Borgese was born in Chicago in 1944. See Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 60.
See Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 129.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 124â125.
ms-2-744, Box 16, Folder 19. Also not mentioned in Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 214.
See âHistorical noteâ, The guide to the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. Records, 1945â1951, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.),
Baker comes to a similar conclusion. See Baker, âUncommon Heritageâ, 14.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
b-iii.17-kenn-1, 29.03.1951.
Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 216.
Cf. Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 216.
Culbertson, âThe preliminary Draftâ, 474.
Cf. Mann Borgese, âThe Years of my Lifeâ, 216.
Cf. Shils, âRobert Maynard Hutchinsâ, 234.
Cf. Noce, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 218.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 142.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 145. See also Stefano, âGiuseppe Antonio Borgeseâ, 62.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 146.
More on Mann Borgeseâs years in Italy, see Baker, âUncommon Heritageâ, 14â15.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 146.
For letters in which Mann Borgese reports about her travels, see b-iii.17-mann-106, b-iii.17-mann-106, b-iii.17-mann-107, b-iii.17-mann-108, b-iii.17-mann-109, b-iii.17-mann-110. See also Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 167â168. Her 1964 trip to India has been described by Peter K. Wehrli, ââÃberall ist alles anders!â Mit Elisabeth auf dem Landweg nach Indienâ, in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 142â175.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 146â147.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 147.
Cf. Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 147.
Katrin Holzer has discussed Mann Borgeseâs relations with older men. See Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 158. Mann Borgeseâs relations with men or her feminist theories in Ascent of Woman will not be discussed any further in this book.
Elisabeth Mann Borgese, To Whom it May Concern (New York: George Braziller, 1960).
Katrin Holzer deals with the years in Italy under the title âKrisenjahreâ (years of crises) in Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, 125.
In her new job in Santa Barbara she would eventually keep a monkey for a couple of years. See Holzer, Elisabeth Mann Borgese 169â170.
nb-Folder 5, September 30, 1963.
The Britannica was donated to the University of Chicago in 1943. William Benton, then vice President, became the Chairmen of the Board. He and Hutchins were friends. See Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 197.
nb Folder 5, January 16, 1964.
nb Folder 5, January 16, 1964.
See Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 396 -397, 400.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 470â471. About foundation of the centre, see Baker, âElisabeth Mann Borgeseâ, 93.
Betsy Baker writes that she was in touch with her colleagues from Chicago. See Baker, âUncommon Heritageâ, 15.
nb Folder 5, May 17, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 17, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 17, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 17, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 17, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 17, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 20, 1964.
Cf. nb Folder 5, May 26, 1964.
nb Folder 5, May 26, 1964.
See Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 472. Mayer writes of the fellows: âOver the next ten years there were a few academics who became attached as Fellows: Wheeler, a political scientist; Rexford Guy Tugwell, the one-time Chicago economist and Roosevelt Brain Truster; John Wilkinson and William Gorman, young philosophers; Stanley Sheinbaum, a young economist; sociologist John Seeley; none of them, however, of the caliber that Hutchins had originally tried to get. An ailing Scott Buchanan â who was of that caliber â came out for a few years preceding his death, as did his St. Johnâs associate, historian Stringfellow Barr. Another of the Fellows was Elizabeth Mann Borgese, nonacademic daughter of Thomas Mann and widow of Hutchinsâs old associate, G.A. Borgese. Nobel Prize-winning chemist and peace activist Linus Pauling and the controversial Episcopal bishop James A. Pike accepted fellowships but were more often than not awayâ.
Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 474.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 474.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 480.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 481.
Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 481. For the encyclical, see Pope John xxiii, âPacem in Terris â Peace on Earthâ, (1963), Papal Encyclicals online, last modified February 20, 2017,
Pope John xxiii, âPacem in Terrisâ.
Cf. Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 482.
See ms-2-744, Box 145, Folder 11.
See ms-2-744, Box 43, Folder 54. Mann Borgese also worked on âWorld Communitiesâ. See ms-2-744, Box 147, Folder 1.
Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 484.
nb Folder 5, May 20, 1964.