Agnes von Kurowsky

Agnes Hannah von Kurowsky Stanfield (January 5, 1892 – November 25, 1984) was an American nurse who inspired the character "Catherine Barkley" in Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. Kurowsky served as a nurse in an American Red Cross hospital in Milan during World War I. One of her patients was the 19-year-old Hemingway, who fell in love with her. By the time of his release and return to the United States in January 1919, Kurowsky and Hemingway planned to marry within a few months in America. However, in a letter dated March 7, 1919, she wrote to Hemingway, who was living at his parents home in Oak Park, Illinois, that she had become engaged to an Italian officer. Although Kurowsky did eventually return to the United States, they never met again. Hemingway's son Jack called the loss of von Kurowsky "the great tragedy" of his father's early life. Their story is shown in the 1996 film In Love and War where she is portrayed by Sandra Bullock. Hemingway used his experiences in Italy as the basis for ten short stories. Fictionalized characters based on Kurowsky appear in his short stories "A Very Short Story" (1924) and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936), as well as his novel A Farewell to Arms. Agnes von Kurowsky Stanfield was born on January 5, 1892, in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents met while her German-born father Paul von Kurowsky was teaching languages at the Berlitz school (her mother Agnes Holabird was a pupil) in Washington, D.C. One of her uncles was the famous Chicago architect William Holabird, and her maternal grandfather Gen. Samuel B. Holabird, had served as Quartermaster General of the United States Army. Although her family would move many times during her childhood, Agnes came to regard Washington as her home. She attended the Fairmont Seminary and a training program for the Washington Public Library, and got her first job in 1910 as a cataloger at the Carnegie-built Central Library there. In 1914 she decided to leave the library and attend nursing school.