'The Years of My Life'

The youngest daughter of German novelist, Thomas Mann, she moved to the United States in the 1930s. With her husband, Giuseppe Borgese, she was active in the "Chicago School" of international scholars and activists, which provided much of the intellectual pioneering work for the world federalist and United Nations reform movements.
Later, at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, she helped advance the legal concept of the world's oceans as the "common heritage of mankind," now enshrined in the modern law of the sea. The evolution of international ocean law was her life’s work. She saw that the borderless oceans required a new form of cooperative governance to protect and preserve precious resources for future generations. She believed fervently that finding a new non-territorial way to govern the oceans was necessary and would teach humankind important lessons for governing our shared planet. In one of her many books, "The Tides of Change," she wrote, "If the oceans are indeed man's last frontier on this old earth of scarcity and competition to which we have reduced our common heritage, the law of the seas is the advance post on the long march toward a new world of science and technology, of abundance and cooperation, which we have set out to achieve."
She founded the International Oceans Institute (an international NGO with five centers around the world), convened annual Pacem in Maribus (Peace in the Oceans) conferences; co-edited the UN’s annual International Oceans Yearbook and wrote dozens of scholarly articles, in English and German. Her "Ocean Governance and the United Nations," and "The Oceanic Circle: Governing the Seas As a Global Resource," are internationally recognized texts. She also wrote "To Whom It May Concern" (a collection of short stories, published in 1960), Ascent of Woman (1962), and "The Language Barrier: Man and Beast" (1968).
After leaving California, Elisabeth moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was Senior Research Fellow, Adjunct Professor of Law, and Chair of the International Oceans Institute at Dalhousie University. She also served for years as Honorary President of World Federalists of Canada (WFC).

'Nico Kaufmann's Hesse Liederzyklus - set to music of poems by Herman Hesse' by Ursula Hesse (soprano) and Peter Lockwood (piano).