page_title: The Blood of the Walsungs
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Blood of the Walsungs / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Katia Mann with children (about 1919). From left to right: Monika, Golo, Michael, Katia, Klaus, Elisabeth, Erika. Deutsch: Katia Mann mit ihren sechs Kindern um 1919. Von links nach rechts: Monika, Golo, Michael, Katia, Klaus, Elisabeth, Erika.
context_page_description: The Blood of the Walsungs is a novella written by the German author Thomas Mann. Originally written in 1905 and set to be published in the January 1906 issue of Die Neue Rundschau, it was pulled from print under hushed mouths because of its similarities with Mann's new wife and her family. The story was finally published in Germany in 1921 and has since remained one of Mann's most controversial works for its portrayal of anti-Semitism and incest.
  The novella narrates an episode in the lives of the Aarenhold household and its youngest members, the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, who spend most of their time together and love each other deeply to the point of committing incest. Mann drew artistic inspiration from Richard Wagner's 1870 opera Die Walküre and the myth the Völsunga clan, famous in Nordic mythology.
context_section_description: At the center of Thomas Mann's novella lies the incestuous relationship between the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde Aarenhold, named after the ill-fated siblings of Wagner's Die Walküre. Although Mann never discussed explicitly his inspiration for writing The Blood of the Walsungs, it is believed that he based the story on his wife Katja Pringsheim and her twin brother Klaus Pringsheim. In 1905, Mann married Katja, the daughter of Alfred Pringsheim, who was the chair of the mathematics department at the University of Munich during the time. Katja and Klaus always had a close relationship and were often seen on the streets of Munich holding each other's hands. The extent of their love was never revealed, but it did cause a lot of public gossip and personal distress on the Pringsheim family. After being married to Katja for a few months, Mann wrote the novella in 1905 and arranged to publish it in the January 1906 issue of Die Neue Rundschau. The upper-class Jewish family that Mann writes about resembles the Pringsheim family to a great extent. Upon discovering the incestuous nature of the story, Katja's father demanded Mann to pull the story from print, which Mann did. The story was suppressed for another fifteen years until finally appearing in book form in 1921.
caption: Katja Mann (née Pringsheim) with her six children around 1919.
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