Villa Aurora
The Villa Aurora was the home of the writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta during their US exile. It is located in the west of Los Angeles and has served as an artist residence and "German cultural monument of exile" since 1995.
The Villa Aurora
Villa Aurora was built in 1927 on the hills of Pacific Palisades on Paseo Miramar. They and eight other houses were part of a building project by builders Arthur Weber and George Ley. Due to its role as a model home, weekly coverage of Villa Aurora and its construction progress appeared in the LA Times. This was intended to explain the advantages of living on the outskirts of the city to the Angelenos. In the 1920s, Mediterranean construction was very popular - the architecture of Villa Aurora was modeled on a Spanish palace. In addition, the equipment was very modern and technically state-of-the-art for the time. The villa was equipped with an electric garage opener, a refrigerator, a gas stove and a dishwasher. The first owner was the client himself: Judge Arthur Weber with his wife. They moved into Paseo Miramar in 1931, but had to leave the property in 1939 due to financial problems. It then stood empty for a while until Marta Feuchtwanger discovered it in 1943 as a future home for herself and her husband, the writer Lion Feuchtwanger.
On the run from the Nazi regime , the two had ended up in the southern French town of Sanary-sur-Mer , which became an important center of exile. In addition to the Feuchtwangers, u. a. Bertolt Brecht , Thomas Mann , Heinrich Mann , Ferdinand Bruckner , Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler-Werfel . After Hitler captured France, Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger fled on foot across the Pyrenees and finally came to Spain. From there they left for the USA in 1941, where they settled in Los Angeles. After five different residential addresses, they finally moved into Villa Aurora in 1943.
The Villa and the Feuchtwangers
By the time the Feuchtwangers bought the house, it was in a desolate and shabby state. The money Lion made by selling his novel The Lautensack Brothers was enough to buy the villa. The purchase price at the time was $ 9,000. There was initially no money for furniture, so a large part of the interior came from household resolutions and flea markets and gradually filled the house.
Marta Feuchtwanger, who turned out to be very talented in such things, designed the garden with a lot of love. A path wound its way down to the Pacific. In the 1940s and 1950s, Villa Aurora became a well-known meeting place for artists and intellectuals, a meeting place for European and American culture. In addition to Thomas and Katia Mann , who lived in the neighborhood, numerous artists such as Bertolt Brecht , Charles Laughton and Charlie Chaplin were guests. Readings and music evenings took place in the large salon. The villa established itself as a unique cultural monument of German exile in California.
The name "Villa Aurora"
The origin of the name "Villa Aurora" has not been finally clarified. It is believed that the residents of the area wanted to give the houses a European flair in the early 1960s. They achieved this through a Mediterranean architectural style and they chose French or Italian names for the houses in the area.
The villa today: artist residence and cultural monument
After Lion Feuchtwanger's death, Marta transferred the villa to the University of Southern California (USC), which initially assumed the running costs.
Feuchtwanger's library with more than 30,000 volumes was part of the inventory. Of these, around 22,000 volumes are still in the villa itself, the other 8,000 volumes in the Memorial Library at the University of Southern California.
Marta Feuchtwanger lived in the villa until her death in 1987. After that, it became apparent that the university wanted to sell the house. Thereupon Professor Harold von Hofe informed the Feuchtwanger biographer Volker Skierka about this project. This started a political initiative to preserve the villa. Following the example of the Villa Massimo in Rome, it was to be preserved as a German cultural monument of exile.
The Circle of Friends of Villa Aurora was founded in 1988 under the chairmanship of the Berlin publisher Lothar C. Poll . The journalist Marianne Heuwagen was also heavily involved: Since she had lived in Los Angeles for eight years, knew Marta Feuchtwanger personally and had many other contacts in Los Angeles, she was an important help in rescuing and building the institution. The Bundestag pledged funds in 1988. Eventually the dilapidated building was bought by the USC for $ 1.9 million. After numerous adverse circumstances, the house was thoroughly renovated; the foundation German class lottery in Berlin secured the maintenance for the first years. Today the villa is supported by the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media .
The idea of a lively cultural exchange between Germany and the USA is the primary goal of Villa Aurora.
In 1995 Villa Aurora was officially opened as an artist residence in Los Angeles. Since then, the focus of the work has been the Artists in Residence scholarship program . Up to 16 working grants are awarded annually to artists from the fields of visual arts, composition, film and literature. A prerequisite for the stay in Los Angeles is an application process in which the future scholarship holders are selected by an independent jury.
During the stay, Villa Aurora organizes readings, concerts, exhibitions and film screenings for the artists. The Villa Aurora also helps in networking with other local cultural institutions.
In addition, the Villa Aurora, in close cooperation with the USC Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, annually awards the “Feuchtwanger Fellowship”, a grant of up to ten months for writers and journalists in whose home country no freedom of expression is possible or who are persecuted there.
Villa Aurora - Berlin Office
The villa is sponsored by two non-profit organizations: the “Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V. "based in Berlin and the" Friends of Villa Aurora Inc "based in Los Angeles.
The Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V. opened in 1996, then under the name Circle of Friends and Patrons of Villa Aurora e. V., an office in Germany that was supposed to act as a coordination point between Los Angeles and Berlin.
In addition to awarding scholarships and managing the overall financing, the Berlin Office organizes programs and publications with former scholarship holders, in which the results of their stays in Los Angeles are presented to the public in Germany. In addition, the Berlin Office organizes events that address current debates on the transatlantic dialogue and keep the memory of the history of exile alive. The regular events include the annual Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House Night, to which all former and future scholarship holders as well as guests from culture, politics, science and the media are invited, and the event in commemoration of the events of the book burning from 10. May 1933.
The office is in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences on Gendarmenmarkt. The association convenes the annual jury meetings in which the Villa Aurora grants are awarded to artists and the Thomas Mann Fellowships to intellectuals who deal with the fundamental questions of our time. After intensive discussions, experts in the respective fields select the scholarship holders and fellows for the following year from the numerous submissions. The Berlin Office is the first point of contact for the selected scholarship holders : This is where the projects and plans are discussed and initial contacts are established with partners in Los Angeles.
20 years of Villa Aurora
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Villa Aurora as a German cultural institution in the USA, an event entitled Checkpoint California was held in the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle from June 12 to 28, 2015 . In addition to an exhibition with exhibits from scholarship holders from the villa, lectures by scholarship holders (such as by Dietrich Brüggemann , Stefan Kriekhaus, Uljana Wolf , Heinz Emigholz , Rosa von Praunheim , Steven Warwick, Veronika Kellndorfer , Steve Rowell, Felicitas Hoppe ) and others were about their work or current plans. At the closing event , the moderator Jörg Heiser discussed with the artists Susan Philipsz as a future scholarship holder and Christian Jankowski as a former scholarship holder. The event ended with a performance by the artists Matan Zamir, Nicola Mascia, Claudia De Serpa Soares and Jeff Wood.
Scholarship holders (excerpt)
literature
- Marta Feuchtwanger: To Emigre Life: Munich, Berlin, Sanary, Pacific Palisades. Interviewed by Lawrence M. Weschler. University of California, Los Angeles 1976.
- Marta Feuchtwanger: Just a woman. Years. Days. Hours. Long miller. Munich Vienna 1983. ISBN 3-7844-1876-7
- Manfred Flügge : The four lives of Marta Feuchtwanger. Biography. Structure of the publishing house. 2nd edition 2008. ISBN 978-3-351-02664-6
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated August 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Randy Young: The Feuchtwangers in Pacific Palisades
- ↑ Marianne Heuwagen: The Rescue of the House ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Marianne hay cart: Marta's vision. In: Circle of friends and supporters of Villa Aurora (ed.): 10 years of Villa Aurora. 1995-2005. Berlin 2005. ISBN 3-937904-34-4
- ↑ Marianne Heuwagen: The Rescue of the House ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Berlin Office - VATMH (de). Retrieved November 27, 2017 .
- ↑ To the author. Fatma Aydemir. In: Spiegel Online . February 17, 2019, accessed February 18, 2019.
Coordinates: 34 ° 2 ′ 46.7 " N , 118 ° 33 ′ 21.5" W.