Caroline Newton - Biografische Skizze
Caronline Newton wurde 1893 als Tochter des Industriemanagers und Büchersammler A. Edward Newton und Babette Newton, geb. Edelheim, in Philadelphia geboren.
Sie besuchte die New York School of Social Work, arbeitete als Fürsorgerin und beteiligte 1921 im Rahmen der Quäker-Organisation „American Friends Service Committee“ in Wien an der Verteilung von Lebensmitteln.
Sie machte in New York bei Leonhard Blumgart eine erste Analyse, dann 1921 kurz bei Freud und schließlich bei Otto Rank.
1924 wurde sie Mitglied bei der WPV.
Ihr Ansuchen, als Mitglied bei der New York Psychoanalytic Society (NYPS) aufgenommen zu werden, wurde abgelehtn, selbst ihr Gaststatus wurde ihr aberkannt. Sie wurde Testfall im Konflikt zwischen Freud und seinen amerikanischen SchülerInnen um die Laienanalyse.
Sie blieb bis 1938 Mitglied der WPV.
Sie übersetzte Otto Ranks und Sándor Ferenczis Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse (The Development of Psychoanalysis, 1925) und Caspar Hauser von Jakob Wassermann (1928).
Auf einer Europareisen lernte sie 1929 Thomas Mann kennen und förderte ihn nach seiner Emigration 1937 in die USA großzügig. Thomas Mann verewigte Chrakterzüge von ihr in „Doktor Faustus“ in der Figur der Klavierlehrerin Meta Nackedey,
1940 lernte Caroline Newton, wahrscheinlich über Vermittlung der Manns, W. H. Auden kennen und förderte ihn ebenfalls.
Caroline Newton wird in einem Brief vom 6. Oder 8. November 1941 von Auden an die Sterns erwähnt:
„Caronline Newton, as I dare say you’ve heard by now, had to have an emergency hysterectomy. She is now back at home an I’, sure woul like to see you.“Dazu findet sich dausführliche biografische Fußnoten.
Fußnote 2, S. 66:
„The hysterectomy was apparently performed in early Oct. 1941. Caroline Newton (1893-1975), a rich psychiatrist and saloneuse, was one of Thomas Mann’s earliest and staunchest friends in the US, lending him her summer house at Jamestown, Rhode Isalnd, when he arrived in the country in 1938, and later undertaking to write a biography of him for Random House. (It was abandoned.) Mann used her as the model for Leverkühn’s blushing admirer Meta Nackedei in Doktor Faustus (1947).
She was the daughter of the wealthy bibliophile and Johnsonian, A. E. Newton, and she had homes in Jamestown, in Manhattan, and, from 1942 onwards, in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Her relationship with her father had been particularly troubled and she was analysed for a while by the New York physician Leonhard Blumgart and then, briefly, in 1921, by Freud in Vienna. She published translations of, amongst other things, Ferenczi and Rank’s The Development of Psychoanalysis (New York and Washington, 1925) and Jakob Wassermann’s Caspar Hauser (New York, 1928). In 1925 she applied to be admitted as a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, becoming a test case in the dispute between Freud and his American followers about whether lay analysts (like her) should be allowed to have practice. Despite Freud’s protests, her membership request was denied, and even her guest privileges were withdrawn. (See Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York, 1988), 498 and n. 499, 717-18). Newton was later in analysis with Karen Horney in New York, and eventually she managed to set up her own practice, associated with Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital.
In the Spring of 1940, probably through the Manns, Newton met Auden, and she soon appointed herself a kind of patroness to him. Before long, she also became heavily infatuated. She asked Auden to translate Goehte’s poem “Durch allen Schall und Klang” for her (Published in ‘Goethe’s “Reich” ‘, a letter to The Saturday Review of Literature, 22.21 (14. Sept. 1940) and lured him into giving her private tutoring about books and opera. Later he wrote out in longhand an extensive compilation of his favourite passages of poetry and prose. (He also gave her some old notebooks and ledgers, now in the Berg.) In return she showered him with badly-needed money and expensive presents – see Letter 13, n. 2 below. Newtons fussy, neurotoc behaviour soon made her the butte of jokes between Auden and the Sterns. In the typescript draft of his memoir Auden: An American Friendship (New York, 1983) (now in the Berg, it is referred to her after als ‘Miller (draft)’, the published version as ‘Miller’), Charles H. Miller described her during a December 1941 visit to Ann Arbour as ‘short, plump, and round-faced with lots of loose brown hair, graying. Despite her furs and expensive clothing she managed to look disheveled … blinking behind her glasses’ (200) (For more on Miller, see Letter 2, n. 6 below.) See also Letter 6, n.5.“
Fußnote 3, S 67:
„Miller (25-6) says that Newton sent Auden a cheque for USD 750 for a car, one of several large gifts around this time. Around the End of Sept. 1941 he used the money to buy the green Pontiac coupe that he drove in Michigan. Despite what Auden says here, he had already owned at least two cars, though it is possible that both were given to him rather than purchased.“
Quelle:
Nicholas Jenkins, aus dem Kapitel: Some Letters from Auden to the Sterns.
In: Auden Studies 3. ‘’In Solitude, for Company’. W. H. Auden after 1940. Edited by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995
Werk:
Newton, Caroline (1925): Die Anwendung der Psychoanalyse auf die soziale Fürsorge. Imago 11 (5), 1925, 239-253
Newton, Caroline (1967): The spiritual legacy of Vienna and other reminiscences. Annapolis 1967
Newton, Caroline (2004):Thomas Mann. Notizen für die Nachwelt. In D. Heißerer (Hg.): Thomas Mann in München II. Vortragsreihe. München
Übersetzungen:
Otto Ranks und Sándor Ferenczis (1924): Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse / The Development of Psychoanalysis (New York and Washington, 1925)
Jakob Wassermann: Caspar Hauser (New York, 1928)
Sekundärliteratur zu Caroline Newton:
Bucknell, Katherine, und Nicholas Jenkins (Hg.) (1995): „In Solitude, for Company“. W. H. Auden after 1940. Oxford 1995
Fallend, Karl (2012): Caroline Newton, Jessie Taft, Virginia Robinson. Spurensuche in der Geschichte der Psychoanalyse und Sozialarbeit. Wien
Gay, Peter (1995): Freud. Eine Biographie für unsere Zeit. Frankfurt/M
Harpprecht, Klaus (1996): Thomas Mann. Eine Biographie. Reinbek 1996
Jonas, Klaus W., und Dee L. Ashliman (1973): Thomas Mann und Caroline Newton. Freundschaft über den Tod hinaus. Die Presse, 28./29. 4. 1973, 22 [Thomas Mann and Caroline Newton. Modern Austrian Literature 6 (3/4), 1973, 107-116]
Mann, Thomas (1971): The Letters of Thomas Mann to Caroline Newton. Princeton University Library
Mühlleitner, Elke (1992): Biographisches Lexikon der Psychoanalyse. Tübingen: edition diskord
http://www.psychoanalytikerinnen.de/usa_biografien.html#Newton
Redaktion: CD, 17.11.2013