Thomas Mann House (Pacific Palisades)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Mann House, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, 2020

The Thomas Mann House (officially: Thomas Mann House ) in Pacific Palisades , Los Angeles , in the US state of California is the former home of the Nobel Prize winner for literature Thomas Mann , who lived in it with his family during his exile from 1942 to 1952. The house designed by the architect Julius Ralph Davidson at San Remo Drive number 1550 was built in 1941/42. The German government bought it in 2016, and on June 18, 2018 it was opened as a transatlantic meeting place.

history

The access to the property (2014)

The Thomas Mann House is located in the so-called Riviera District of Pacific Palisades, west of Los Angeles. During the National Socialist era , many German-speaking emigrants found refuge in the USA. California and especially the greater Los Angeles area became a preferred place of exile for many artists, writers and intellectuals, but also for numerous other emigrants. Also in Pacific Palisades is the Villa Aurora , where Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife lived in exile since 1943.

During their summer stay in 1940 in the elegant Brentwood , the Mann couple decided to move to California. In 1941, it rented a house above the Santa Monica Canyon. In the same year they bought around 6000 m² of land in Pacific Palisades that belonged to a lemon plantation. Today's Villa Aurora was also offered to them for sale, but they wanted a new building that would be smaller and more homely.

Planning and construction phase

The architectural planning of the house turned out to be difficult. Although Thomas Mann knew the architect Richard Neutra personally - he had accompanied Mann on an architectural tour of Los Angeles in 1938 and showed him some of his buildings - Mann decided against him. Neutra's architectural style of modernism did not appeal to him; in his diary he called it “[cubic] glass box style”. When he was a guest at Vicki Baum's party in April 1938 , which Neutra also attended, he shook the architect off to another guest with the remark: “Get that Neutra off my back.” Thomas Mann was able to get on with the architect Paul László did not agree on a plan for the house, and the suggestions of Frank Meline, who also worked as an architect, were rejected in October 1940. Erika Mann's suggestion to hire the architect Paul Lester Wiener was also soon dropped.

At the end of 1940, Mann commissioned the architect Davidson, who presented him with the first plans on January 4, 1941. The new building was financially made possible by his lucrative honorary position as a "Consultant in Germanic Literature" at the Library of Congress , which his long-time correspondent and benefactor Agnes E. Meyer gave him in 1941, and through his lucrative lecturing activities. Meyer also guaranteed the mortgage . He wrote to her on November 20, 1941 from Washington: “We have just heard that the house should be ready in four weeks. This residence, combined with the relationship with the library and the cultural task that has grown to me in this country - I can consider myself really lucky and feel deeply grateful. "

The two-story villa was built between June 1941 and February 1942 for $ 30,000. The amount is controversial because Thomas Mann found Davidson's $ 30,000 house plan too expensive in April 1941. For Francis Nenik , after reviewing the building bills, the result is a good $ 26,000. Such a price was absolutely common for this part of Pacific Palisades, especially since the local building regulations - depending on the location - stipulated a minimum price for new buildings of 12,500 to 25,000 dollars.

The construction work was carried out by the German émigré Ernst Moritz Schlesinger. The building plans were revised several times, the house was reduced in size and the planned structure above the garage and the planned fireplace in Thomas Mann's study were omitted. The living space was almost 400 m² in the so-called International Style . Interior designer Paul Huldschinsky , who emigrated from Berlin , took on the interior design of the house . On the first floor of the elongated building was Thomas Mann's study, whose wood paneling and bookshelves have been preserved, and the living room with a large glass front to the garden. On the upper floor, several smaller rooms served as bedrooms for the Mann couple and their children.

Life of the man in the villa

Because of the seven palm trees on the property, Thomas Mann called the house and the entire property "Seven Palms". The Mann family also relied on an emigrant to design the garden. The gardener Theodor Löwenstein, who came from Battenfeld and emigrated to the USA in 1931, invested it in 1942 for 1,100 dollars. In addition to his work as a gardener, Löwenstein was President of the German Jewish Club of 1933 between 1936 and 1938 .

Some of Thomas Mann's most important works, including his novel Doktor Faustus , large parts of the fourth volume of the Joseph Tetralogy and numerous political speeches and writings in which Thomas Mann expressed his opposition to the German Nazi regime , including one Most of his radio speeches are German listeners! . Since 1948 the daughter Erika Mann also lived in the house.

In June 1952 Thomas and left Katia man with Erika's house and returned disillusioned with the American postwar policy and McCarthyism in the Switzerland back. They had already lived there in exile between 1933 and 1938. On November 7, 1952, worried about his reputation in the United States, husband wrote to his American patroness Agnes E. Meyer from Zurich: “We want to sell our Californian house, which was long too big for us (if we can get a decent price for it to get). But I wish nothing less than that over there the impression would arise that I am turning my back on America. (...) I will remain an American citizen (...). ”When a man lived in Erlenbach ZH in what he believed to be too cramped conditions and complained that his study would not even fit a sofa, he wrote to Agnes E. Meyer: “I miss my Californian house.” Thomas Mann never saw the villa, “that home which I have come to love”.

In September 1953, American lawyers, Chet and Jon Lappen, bought the house for $ 50,000. The family added extensions, built a swimming pool in the garden and lived in the property until 2010. The house was then rented for a few years, but remained in the possession of the Lappen family.

Purchase by the federal government in 2016, conversion and opening as a meeting place in 2018

In the summer of 2016, the poorly maintained building was for sale without any notice of the prominent previous owner. The villa was threatened with demolition. Herta Müller , winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature like Thomas Mann, and other writers warned that an important place for German exile literature was in danger of being lost. Politicians, including the Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters and Frank-Walter Steinmeier as Foreign Minister, took up the proposal to transform the building into a place of remembrance and encounter. In November 2016, the German federal government bought the house for around $ 13 million. The long-drawn-out efforts of the federal government to buy residents of the Riviera quarter were supported.

The renovation work began in 2017 and cost around five million dollars. The building was completely renovated. The floor plan was retained, as was Thomas Mann's study. In July 2018, the Spiegel reported on unhealth around the house, the academic program and comrade fils. The result was a controversy regarding the construction and internal structures of the association “Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann Haus”, whose managing director Annette Rupp had resigned at the same time.

Four scholarship holders will be accommodated in the main building, a fifth in a new building that was built next to the swimming pool. The scholarships, each endowed with 3,500 euros per month, are financed by foundations, partly from the Bosch and Berthold Leibinger Foundation , and partly from the Krupp Foundation .

The complex was opened by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on June 18, 2018. The opening came at a time of tension between Germany and the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump . Steinmeier said: “The struggle for democracy, the struggle for a free and open society is what will continue to unite us, the United States and Germany.” Of the descendants of Katia and Thomas Mann, their grandson Frido Mann attended the opening part. He had spent parts of his childhood in the house.

present

The Thomas Mann House is financed by funds from the Federal Foreign Office, by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, as well as by foundation funds. The program planning is the responsibility of Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V. The house offers a residency program in which up to five scholarship holders can participate at the same time. The aim is to give “the opportunity to exchange ideas with one another and with the host country about the big questions of our time”. A conference on The Struggle for Democracy started on June 19, 2018.

Since the opening of the house in June 2018, a large number of different programs have been developed under Program Director Nikolai Blaumer : conferences, readings, concerts or discussions, which are based on the research projects of the scholarship holders with various partner institutions in the United States and Germany.

In 2019, among other things, the multi-day conference Moral Code - Ethics in the Digital Age took place at the University of California, Los Angeles . Scholarship holder Damian Borth discussed new ways of communication and the moral effects of the use of digital technologies with American scientists. In addition to academic discourses, cultural and political issues are also increasingly pursued in the house's program.

In cooperation with Deutschlandfunk and Süddeutsche Zeitung , the series 55 Voices for Democracy started in October 2019 . A series of lectures following on from the 55 BBC radio addresses in which Thomas Mann addressed listeners in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, the occupied Netherlands and the Czech Republic from his home in California during World War II. 55 renowned international intellectuals, scientists and artists give speeches from the Thomas Mann House in which they present their ideas for the renewal of democracy, including the political scientist Francis Fukuyama , the philosopher Seyla Benhabib , the writers Orhan Pamuk and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong ' o , the sociologist Ananya Roy , the Germanist Jan Philipp Reemtsma , and the historians Martha S. Jones and Timothy Snyder .

In April 2020, Thomas Mann House started the #MutuallyMann initiative together with S. Fischer Verlag . Online, people were invited to read Thomas Mann's novella Mario und der Zauberer , in which well-known journalists, authors and scientists took part.

literature

  • Francis Nenik , Sebastian Stumpf : Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 (narrative non-fiction book)
  • Frido Mann : The White House of Exile . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-10-397404-1 (essay)
  • Heinrich Wefing : The house of the magician. Thomas Mann's Villa in Pacific Palisades , in: Sinn und Form 56 (2004), 4, pp. 562-569.
  • Anke Jaspers: Uncle Tommy's hut. Klaus Hubert Pringsheim's memories of Pacific Palisades , in: Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte XII (2018), 3, pp. 120–127.

Web links

Commons : Thomas Mann House (Pacific Palisades)  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 , pp. 10-156 .
  2. ^ Trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco. bundespräsident.de. June 15, 2018. Retrieved June 19, 2018.
  3. ↑ Claus-Dieter Krohn: Emigration 1933–1945 / 1950 Emigration 1933–1945 / 1950 . In: EGO | European history online . ( ieg-ego.eu [accessed June 18, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Aerial photos of the area from 1940/1941. In: the-quandary-novelists.com. Retrieved September 4, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Frido Mann: The White House of Exile. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2018, pp. 20–21.
  6. ↑ Hans Rudolf Vaget : Thomas Mann, the American. Life and work in American exile 1938–1952. S. Fischer. Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 287; Diary quote from April 18, 1938 p. 357 ISBN 978-3-10-087004-9 .
  7. ^ Hanno-Walter Kruft: Thomas Mann and the fine arts. In: Helmut Koopmann (Ed.): Thomas Mann Handbook. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, 3rd, updated edition. Pp. 343-357, here p. 349.
  8. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, pp. 84-93 .
  9. ↑ Hans Rudolf Vaget: Thomas Mann, the American. Frankfurt am Main 2011. pp. 19–21, pp. 181–182, p. 258.
  10. ^ Hans Rudolf Vaget (eds.), Thomas Mann, Agnes E. Meyer: Correspondence 1939–1955 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1992 ISBN 3-10-048200-X p. 334.
  11. ↑ Hans R. Vaget: Bad weather, good climate: Thomas Mann in America. In: Helmut Koopmann (Ed.): Thomas Mann Handbook. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, 3rd, updated edition. Pp. 68–77, here p. 72.
  12. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 , pp. 143 .
  13. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 , pp. 143 .
  14. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, pp. 127 .
  15. ↑ Thomas Mann. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
  16. ^ Moving into the exile villa of Thomas Mann . In: The time. June 14, 2018, accessed June 23, 2018.
  17. ^ Under Californian palms: moving into the exile villa of Thomas Mann . In: Zeit Online . ( zeit.de [accessed on June 18, 2018]).
  18. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, pp. 119-156 .
  19. ↑ Katharina Sykora: Erika Mann in America. Here she spoke , faz.net, June 28, 2020, accessed on July 8, 2020
  20. ↑ Steinmeier emphasizes the friendship between the USA and Germany. In: tagesspiegel.de. June 19, 2018, accessed July 10, 2018 .
  21. ^ Hans Rudolf Vaget (eds.), Thomas Mann, Agnes E. Meyer: Correspondence 1939–1955 . P. 781.
  22. ↑ Frank Walter Steinmeier: The spirit errs as soon as it renounces politics. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 20, 2018, p. 11; Hans Rudolf Vaget (eds.), Thomas Mann, Agnes E. Meyer: Correspondence 1939–1955 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1992 ISBN 3-10-048200-X , p. 774.
  23. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, pp. 306 .
  24. ↑ Frido Mann: The White House of Exile. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2018, p. 174.
  25. ↑ Peter Schubert: This house belongs to all of us. In: The world. February 9, 2012, accessed June 20, 2018 .
  26. ↑ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Cultural workers demand the preservation of the Thomas Mann Villa in California | DW | 08/14/2016. Retrieved September 24, 2019 (German).
  27. ↑ a b The great haunted house. Retrieved September 24, 2019 .
  28. ↑ Germany buys Thomas Mann's former Pacific Palisades home, averting demolition. November 22, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2019 (American English).
  29. ↑ Christoph Schult, Veit Medick, DER SPIEGEL: Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles: LA Confidential - DER SPIEGEL - Politics. Retrieved May 7, 2020 .
  30. ^ Thomas Ribi: A piece of Germany in Los Angeles. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. May 14, 2018, accessed June 23, 2018 . ; Stephan Dege: Scholarship holder residence: Steinmeier opens Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. In: dw.de. June 9, 2018, accessed July 10, 2018 .
  31. ^ LA Confidential. In: Der Spiegel. July 21, 2018, pp. 30–31, here p. 31.
  32. ↑ Federal President Steinmeier opens Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. In: ln-online.de. June 18, 2018, accessed June 19, 2018 .; Steinmeier emphasizes friendship between the USA and Germany. In: tagesspiegel.de. June 19, 2018, accessed July 10, 2018 .
  33. ↑ Dirk Hautkapp: Thomas Mann House opened as a transatlantic meeting place. In: general-anzeiger-bonn.de. June 19, 2018, accessed July 10, 2018 .
  34. ↑ history of the house - VATMH. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
  35. ^ Opening of the Thomas Mann House: Conference "The Struggle for Democracy" - VATMH. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
  36. ^ Moral Code - Ethics in the Digital Age. Retrieved May 7, 2020 (American English).
  37. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Francis Fukuyama - Democracy in the Crisis. Retrieved May 7, 2020 .
  38. ↑ #MutuallyMann - A virtual reading initiative , vatmh.org

Coordinates: 34 ° 3 ′ 32.4 "  N , 118 ° 29 ′ 57.5"  W.