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Agnes von Kurowsky

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Nurse

The Resume

    (January 5, 1892-November 25, 1984)
    Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania
    Birth name was Agnes Hannah von Kurowsky
    Served as a nurse during World War I
    Worked at an American Red Cross hospital in Milan
    Inspiration for Catherine Barkley in Ernest Hemingway's ‘A Farewell to Arms’ (1929)

Why she might be annoying:

    By her own account, she had at least three ‘serious affairs,’ in her first month overseas (she later said: ‘I was very fickle in those days!’).
    She nursed a nineteen-year-old Hemingway, who fell madly in love with her.
    They had planned to get married within a few months of their joint return to America. However, she later wrote to Hemingway (by this time living with his parents in Oak Park) to break off the engagement because she had accepted an Italian officer’s proposal instead.
    Verbatim, she wrote: ‘I am now & always will be too old … I can’t get away from the fact that you’re just a boy — a Kid.’
    She was eventually married twice (although not to the Italian officer she mentioned in the letter).
    The two never met again, and her identity wasn’t revealed until after Hemingway’s suicide in 1961.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She was portrayed by Sandra Bullock.
    She helped Ernest Hemingway to recover after his leg was wounded by shrapnel.
    After the war, she was stationed at hospitals in Romania and Haiti.
    She remained a private person even after Hemingway achieved literary celebrity.
    Ernest Hemingway very likely exaggerated the level of their love’s seriousness (she was seven years his senior).
    Her 1918 diary and her letters to Hemingway were published in a nonfiction book, in 1989, and seemed to back up that he made more of their relationship than she did.
    She inspired one of the greatest literary romances and war novels of all time.
    In addition to Farewell to Arms, she also inspired characters in his short stories ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ and ‘A Very Short Story.’
    Hemingway's son, Jack, called the loss of von Kurowsky ‘the great tragedy’ of his father's early life.

Credit: BoyWithTheGreenHair


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Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 5 Votes: 20.0% Annoying