Thomas Mann Cultural Center

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The Thomas Mann House in Nida

The Thomas Mann Cultural Center ( lithuanian Thomo Manno memorialinis muziejus or short Thomo Manno namas ) in Nida (Nida) on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania is a Lithuanian-German since 1996 Cultural Center , located in the former holiday home of German writer Thomas Mann is and is dedicated to him.

history

Memorial plaque on Thomas Mann's summer house
The “mother-in-law mountain” with the house
Italy view from the summer house
Signpost to the center
An interior room with a fireplace

In the summer of 1929, after a stay in Königsberg , Thomas Mann had spent holidays with the family in Rauschen , which included a short visit to Nidden. He was so enthusiastic about the magnificence of the landscape that he commissioned the architect Herbert Reissmann from Memel to build and furnish a summer house. The plot of land on the hillside of a large dune on the “Mother-in-Law's Hill” was leased by the Lithuanian Forestry Office. It offered what Mann called "Italy View", the view of the Curonian Lagoon and the Purwin district of Nida.

Before emigrating in 1933, Thomas Mann spent the summer vacation from 1930 to 1932 with his family there and kept to his usual daily rhythm. So he wrote his romantic tetralogy Joseph and his brothers and wrote articles and letters. The locals referred to the property as "Uncle Tom's Cabin", alluding to the novel of the same name by Harriet Beecher Stowe . Due to the respected name of the writer, the summer house became an excellent advertisement for the growing seaside resort of Nidden. The place, which was already known for its artists' colony , became, according to an Austrian newspaper, a "literary term".

In the last summer of 1932 the Manns received a package containing a charred copy of the novel Buddenbrooks , for which Thomas Mann had received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929 . The Nazis had reached Nida. The Mann family never returned to the house. The painter Ernst Mollenhauer took care of the property until 1939 . In that year, Memelland , which had been German territory until the end of the First World War and later belonged to Lithuania, was annexed to National Socialist Germany. The house was confiscated by Hermann Göring and renamed the Jagdhaus “Elchwald”.

During the Second World War , the house was used to recover wounded officers of the German Air Force . At the end of the war it was damaged by a shell. In 1954 the Soviet administration classified the building as a "war ruin to be demolished".

The Lithuanian writer Antanas Venclova (1906–1971), whom Thomas and Katia Mann had met in 1955 when they were visiting Weimar , saved the house. In 1967, at the suggestion of Venclova, a memorial was initially built there. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the house opened its doors to German visitors in 1989. From 1995 the property was restored (among other things with funds from the German federal government) and the Thomas Mann cultural center was founded. Its founders were the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, Klaipėda University and the Neringa City Council . The restoration was carried out on the basis of the preserved documents from Herbert Reissmann and the memories of the Mann daughter Elisabeth . The writer's living room, terrace and study have been authentically restored. In 1996 the museum opened in the summer house. An annual cultural festival has been held since 1997 . The Thomas Mann Cultural Center is a member of HALMA , the European network of literary centers. It is the most visited museum in Lithuania with 40,000 visitors annually.

Architectural style of the house

Close up view of the house

The Thomas Mann House blends architecturally into the Nida fisherman style one: the roof is covered with thatch covered, the first crown consists of two intersecting horse heads, which the poet Ross Pegasus symbolize. The Baltic-Scandinavian paintwork is done in the color " ox blood ". The red-brown wooden paneling contrasts blue shutters, roof profiles and gable beams.

In his lecture Mein Sommerhaus in Munich in December 1931, Thomas Mann mentioned the color blue in particular: “In the fishing village you can often find a particularly bright blue on the houses, the so-called Nida blue, which is used for fences and ornaments. All houses, including ours, are covered with thatched and reed roofs and have pagan crossed horse heads on the gable - this is exactly how it was done with our house. "

Board of Trustees

The cultural center is managed by an international board of trustees. Since it was founded in October 1995, the following personalities have held the chair in succession:

Prof. Dr. Alvydas Nikžentaitis (1995–1998)

Prof. Dr. Irena Veisaitė (1998-2002)

Antanas Gailius (2002-2008)

Prof. Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz (2009-2020)

Prof. Dr. Irena Vaišvilaitė (since 2020)

reception

Thomas Mann's grandson Frido Mann published his book Mein Nidden in 2012 . On the Curonian Spit , in which he went in search of clues about the family holidays of his ancestors and at the same time traces the eventful history of the Curonian Spit in the 20th century from the German Empire to Soviet rule to the independence of Lithuania as well as the beauty of the landscape. Among other things, family members have their say in the book, because Thomas Mann had largely destroyed his diaries before 1933 in exile in Pacific Palisades in 1945.

Frido Mann legally enforced his uncle Golo Mann's only verbal waiver of transferring the house back to the family. The waiver was made out of respect for the local commitment to Thomas Mann's legacy.

literature

  • Thomas Speaker: Thomas Mann in Nidden . German / Lithuanian, translated by Antanas Gailius. German Schiller Society, Marbach 2000, ISBN 3-933679-39-7 .
  • Bernd Erhard Fischer: Thomas Mann in Nidden. with photographs by Angelika Fischer. Edition Fischer, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-937434-17-9 .
  • Frido Mann: My Nidden. On the Curonian Spit . Mareverlag, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-86648-148-0 .

Web links

Commons : House of Thomas Mann in Nida  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nidden and the Curonian Spit , exhibition from 2011 , klosterscheune-zehdenick.de, accessed on June 7, 2013.
  2. ↑ See also the website of the Thomas Mann Cultural Center
  3. ↑ The Thomas Mann House in Nida , bpb.de, accessed on June 4, 2013.
  4. ↑ Thomas Mann Cultural Center ( memento of October 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), halma-network.eu, accessed on June 4, 2013.
  5. ↑ See also the website of the Thomas Mann Cultural Center
  6. ^ Thomas Mann Cultural Center , Kulturforum.info, accessed on June 5, 2013.
  7. ↑ Bruno Schweitzer: Curonian Spit: Three Summers in Nidden. Subsequent additions to the film trilogy "The Manns". In: The Ostpreußenblatt , February 16, 2002 (online)
  8. ↑ Thomas Mann: Mein Sommerhaus , das-alte-nidden.de, accessed on June 8, 2013.
  9. ↑ Frido Mann: Drei Sommer in Nidden , welt.de, accessed on June 4, 2013.
  10. ↑ Review of the FAZ from June 19, 2012, p. 30. on Frido Mann: Mein Nidden. On the Curonian Spit.


Coordinates: 55 ° 18 ′ 48.5 "  N , 21 ° 0 ′ 48"  E