2022

Filthy rich heiress, mistress of numerous exiled artists and ghost-seer: Eva Herrmann was the first known female cartoonist in the Western world and an unusual woman for her time. Comic artist Anna Haifisch wants to find out why she has been forgotten.

Just like Marta Feuchtwanger, Eva Herrmann was at the center of social life in exile during the Nazi era. First in Sanary-sur-Mer, later in Los Angeles, she organized soirées and parties, cultivated friendships and love affairs with writers such as Thomas Mann and Aldous Huxley, and generously

supported her friends with money. At the same time, she drew biting caricatures of Bertolt Brecht, Arnold Zweig and her lover Lion Feuchtwanger. Why is this dazzling woman almost forgotten today?

Together with Étienne Roeder, Leipzig-based cartoonist Anna Haifisch, famous for her comic series "The Artist" and resident at Villa Aurora later this year, explores the life of the early jetsetter and discovers surprising parallels.

An event by the Thomas Mann House in collaboration with the Los Angeles Public Library and Zocalo Public Square.

Fritzi Massary was the most famous operetta singer of her time. But then came the Nazis, her flight to Los Angeles and oblivion. Time to rediscover her story together with composer Farahnaz Hatam.

A good 100 years ago, the young Austrian Fritzi Massary was a star on the stages of Berlin. She was the face of Berlin's Metropol Theater, and her frivolous song "Why shouldn't a woman have an affair" was a hit. But even before Hitler came to power, SA people disrupted her performances with chants.

After her escape in 1932, she lived in Los Angeles in the neighborhood of the German exile bohemians around Thomas Mann and Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger. But even though she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 1957, her career was over.

Together with composer and Villa Aurora fellow Farahnaz Hatam, Étienne Roeder visits the site of her great successes in Berlin - to discover that the spirit of "the Massary" is still in the air there.

Heinrich Mann's wife Nelly Kröger came from a humble background. Exiled in L.A., she felt all the contempt of the upper-middle-class intellectual Mann-family. Étienne Roeder follows her footsteps in Los Angeles.

A fairy tale-like story: A bar girl falls in love with a rich, respectable man. They marry and could be happy together. But the uneducated and penniless Nelly Kroeger was never accepted by her husband's famous family.

Without his wife, Heinrich Mann would probably never have survived the grueling escape to France and later America. Lonely and desperate, she took her own life in 1944.

In the last episode of the series "Exit Exile" Étienne Roeder travels to L.A. to learn more about this tragic life and to personally visit the places of the past episodes.

Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles: Stories from Exile 1940–1952 paints a vivid portrait of Mann’s experience through beautiful illustrations and about seventy brief, entertaining essays on literature, film, music, leisure, political thought, and more. As Mann and fellow émigrés used their skills to fight Fascism in their homeland, they also embraced and enriched the culture of their adopted city.

The Manns hosted a who’s who of social, cultural, and political figures in their modernist home, designed by Case Study House architect J.R. Davidson. Their circle included writers Bertolt Brecht, Vicki Baum, Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley; actor/screenwriter/activist Salka Viertel; Hollywood luminaries Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch; and musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg.   

Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles conveys the richness and complexity of Mann’s time in the city through the people and places that shaped it, connecting them to Mann, each other, and the present. 

The book, which is available in bookstores and to order, is published by Angel City Press together with the Thomas Mann House. On the occasion of its launch, editors Nikolai Blaumer and Benno Herz will moderate a conversation with three of the authors: professor for German Tobias Boes (University of Notre Dame), book critic and author Donna Rifkind, and music critic Alex Ross. 

This event will take place at the Thomas Mann House and is by invitation only.

An event by the Thomas Mann House in collaboration with Angel City Press.

An event by the Thomas Mann House in collaboration with The Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Association for Interactive Democracy.

An Event by Vroman's Bookstore.

The event is organized by 1014 and the Institute for Media and Communication Policy (IfM), in collaboration with the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium and with generous support from Stiftung Mercator.

The work of city planners and architects worldwide has come under pressure. A lack of affordable housing, climate change and migrant movement challenge the traditional image of the architect as designer of objects in the built environment.

The term Public Interest Design expands the practice of architecture and design towards a multidimensional process that addresses issues such as disaster preparedness and recovery, scarcity of food and water as well as shelter. During her Fellowship at the Thomas Mann House, the architecture journalist and author Friederike Meyer explores how planning structures and strategies can support new forms of living together in changing heterogenous societies.

Sergio Palleroni, director of the Center for Public Interest Design in the School of Architecture at Portland State University and Thomas Mann Fellow Friederike Meyer discuss how architects and planners can re-engage with society to meet the needs of increasingly diverse communities and how public interest design can create a healthy, resilient and sustainable living environment.

A recording of the conversation will premier on our YouTube channel on 10th of September at 10 am (PT).

In his recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, journalist Ezra Klein warns that when the border between entertainment and political discourse becomes blurred, entertainers might be the only ones able to fulfill our expectations for politicians and coverage of political events might become “entertainment packages.” Prominent examples can be found throughout history and across political camps, such as the presentation and setting of Volodymir Zelensky’s video addresses, Donald Trump’s background in reality TV, and the serial style and format of the recent news coverage of the January 6^th hearings. In an attention economy, methods of production and writing in audiovisual media leave their mark on the way political debate is presented to the public. From the first televised presidential debates to famous actors-turned-politicians such as Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger, media technologies and their use within the entertainment industry have always shaped and influenced public discourse and the way in which politicians have made use of these media environments.

2022 Thomas Mann Fellow Christoph Bieber, Professor for Political Science at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, and U.S. television producer and writer Stephen Engel will engage in a conversation about how political debate is narrated and presented in a rapidly changing political public sphere. Political actors rely on routines, formats, and narratives originally developed in entertainment media, not only during campaign season, but also within everyday political processes such as plenary sessions or committee hearings. By analyzing and discussing different media formats and historic examples, the discussion will explore the benefits and pitfalls of the entanglements between the entertainment industry and political discourse. The conversation will be facilitated by Lorraine Ali, television critic at the Los Angeles Times and award-winning journalist, who has written in publications ranging from the New York Times to Rolling Stone.

In person event at the Thomas Mann House. By invitation only.

"Memory culture" (German Erinnerungskultur) is a central concept in current debates about the ways Germans remember, commemorate, and historicize the era of National Socialism and its aftermath. The term relates to the question whether Germany has largely accepted responsibility for and learned from its past crimes. From school education and memorials to art monuments, films and public discourses, the idea of an active and successful memory culture plays an important role in contemporary German discourses, for instance about a post-Berlin Wall united identity for Germany after 1989. While many international voices praise Germany’s self-reflexive commemoration of its national trauma, a new generation of German-Jewish artists and intellectuals raise an important point of critique: What if Germany’s culture of memory is merely a "theater of reconciliation"? Whom does this form of remembrance actually serve, and to what end?

German poet Max Czollek, who writes about contemporary Jewish life in Germany, argues that German memory culture created a "symbolic Jew" as a counterfigure to a German "we." According to him, Germany is mistaking remembrance for reconciliation, with the recent rise of racist and anti-Semitic violence and right-wing populism as a consequence. For Czollek, a functioning and productive culture of memory must confront its “fantasies of homogeneity,” question concepts of national greatness, and include contemporary minority voices into its discourse.

Yasemin Yildiz, Professor at the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, engages with questions of German memory culture from another angle. She is currently working on the book project Memory Citizenship: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance, co-authored with Michael Rothberg, in which she explores the effect of transnational migration on German cultural memory relating to National Socialism, the Holocaust, and World War II, opening up new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between memory and migration at present.

Max Czollek and Yasemin Yildiz will engage in a conversation around cultures of remembrance: What new perspectives and critiques do minority discourses offer on the questions and debates surrounding contemporary German memory culture? And what is the takeaway for those of us in the United States? How can these discussions inform our local debates and controversies about commemoration and memory practices? The conversation will be moderated by Joes Segal, Chief Curator and Director of Programming at The Wende Museum.

The Event is a collaboration between the Wende Museum & the Thomas Mann House.

Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles: Stories from Exile 1940–1952 explores Mann’s relationships to the city and the network he found there: writers including Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, and a young Susan Sontag; Hollywood luminaries like Jack Warner, Carl Laemmle, Max Reinhardt, and Ernst Lubitsch; and musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. In addition to the cultural and political life of the city, Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles explores how the formidable Mann adapted to life as an Angeleno, enjoying the city’s many beaches, dining out at the Brown Derby, visiting the Hollywood Bowl, and taking walks through the neighborhood with his poodle, Niko. Short essays on each topic, written by forty-three experts on the subject, provide fascinating insight into Mann’s life in exile.

The conversation will highlight Claudia Gordon's chapter on Lion Feuchtwanger and his relationship with Thomas Mann and other fellow exiles. Together with co-editor and co-athor Benno Herz and moderated by Thomas Aujero Small, they will discuss the role that the Thomas Mann House and the Villa Aurora as the former exile homes of the Mann and Feuchtwanger families continue to play and what the stories of the 1940s exile community might reveal to us today.

The Event is organized by Village Well Books & Coffee

A collaboration between the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation and the Thomas Mann House with friendly support from Christopher Farr Cloth & Thomas Lavin.

Andreas Reckwitz studied sociology, political science and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Hamburg and Cambridge. After his professorships at the University of Konstanz and the European University Viadrina, he is now Professor of General Sociology and Cultural Sociology at the Humboldt University Berlin. He has held numerous fellowships and visiting professorships in Germany and abroad. In 2019, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. In 2017, he received the Bavarian Book Prize, in 2020, he was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, and in 2021 he received the Academy Medal of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. From 2012 to 2020 he was a member of the advisory board "Education and Discourse" of the Goethe Institute. Andreas Reckwitz has published a number of widely discussed books on the theory of modernity and late modernity, including Die Erfindung der Kreativität (Suhrkamp 2012; English Polity 2017), Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten (Suhrkamp 2017; English Polity 2020), Das Ende der Illusionen (Suhrkamp 2019, English Polity 2021), and Spätmoderne in der Krise (with Hartmut Rosa; Suhrkamp 2021; English Polity forthcoming).

Presented in cooperation with the DFG German Research Foundation, 1014: Space for Ideas and the Thomas Mann House.

Andreas Reckwitz studied sociology, political science and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Hamburg and Cambridge. After his professorships at the University of Konstanz and the European University Viadrina, he is now Professor of General Sociology and Cultural Sociology at the Humboldt University Berlin. He has held numerous fellowships and visiting professorships in Germany and abroad. In 2019, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. In 2017, he received the Bavarian Book Prize, in 2020, he was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, and in 2021 he received the Academy Medal of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. From 2012 to 2020 he was a member of the advisory board "Education and Discourse" of the Goethe Institute. Andreas Reckwitz has published a number of widely discussed books on the theory of modernity and late modernity, including Die Erfindung der Kreativität (Suhrkamp 2012; English Polity 2017), Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten (Suhrkamp 2017; English Polity 2020), Das Ende der Illusionen (Suhrkamp 2019, English Polity 2021), and Spätmoderne in der Krise (with Hartmut Rosa; Suhrkamp 2021; English Polity forthcoming).

Presented in cooperation with the German Historical Institute Washington and the Thomas Mann House.

For almost 80 years, a painting of an unnamed girl by renowned portraitist Franz von Lenbach was part of a private collection. When it appeared in an auction catalogue in 2018, it was identified as a portrait of Katia Pringsheim, who later married novelist Thomas Mann. The owner, Robert Schoenhofer, has since donated the painting to the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, the family's exile home. Schoenhofer joins lawyer and genealogist E. Randol Schoenberg in a conversation moderated by Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. With Welcoming Remarks by German Consul General Stefan Schneider.

Even though the painting dating from 1892 has been treated as a nameless “portrait of a girl” for decades, it undoubtedly shows Katia Pringsheim at the age of seven or eight. Katia is seen in half profile with a red cap over her dark hair. Her face has been brightly illuminated by the painter and one is drawn to her eyes, her look – concentrated and attentive. When the painting was consigned to an auction house in 2018, Dirk Heiserer took notice of it. The literary scholar and chairman of the Thomas Mann Forum in Munich recognized that it was Katia Mann who was portrayed in the painting, and that it seemed to be a version of a portrait from the same time period that used to hang in Thomas Mann’s Pacific Palisades study and appeared on the cover of Katia Mann’s 1974 book My Unwritten Memoirs. Lenbach had painted numerous portraits of members of the Pringsheim family. When Katia’s parents, Alfred and Hedwig Pringsheim, both from prominent Jewish families, were finally able to leave Germany in late 1939, they took only very few possessions with them. Their exquisite art collection had been either auctioned off or confiscated. In 1940, the grandparents of the donor, Robert Schoenhofer, bought Lenbach’s “Portrait of a Girl” from an art dealer. After a thorough provenance report and discussions between Pringsheim heirs and Robert Schoenhofer, the painting has now been donated to the Thomas Mann House with the generous patronage of the Pringsheim descendants Claudia Beck-Mann, Angelica and Domenica Borgese, Katja Geb-Mann, Anthony Mann, Frido Mann, Raju Mann Ward, Gerrit and Arie Adriaensen, Ruth Bradshaw, Judith Forster, Mike Estermann, Paul Garver, Sarah Garver, Nick Garver, Yurika Pringsheim, Hsiuping Pringsheim, and Tamara Marwitz. By accepting this donation, Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V. has assumed the obligation to continue to pursue provenance research and to ensure that the portrait and information on its history are made accessible to the public.

On the occasion of the donation and the first public presentation of the painting at the Thomas Mann House, donor Robert Schoenhofer is joined in conversation by Randol Schoenberg, a lawyer and genealogist, specializing in legal cases related to the recovery of looted or stolen artworks, particularly those by the Nazi regime. Schoenberg is the grandson of composers Arnold Schoenberg and Eric Zeisl and widely known for successfully representing Maria Altmann, neé Bloch in her case against the Republic of Austria to return five paintings by Gustav Klimt from the estate of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer to their heirs. The conversation is moderated by Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation whose deep knowledge of the visual arts and strategic philanthropy has led to the creation of meaningful initiatives that have supported groundbreaking research and exhibitions. Weinstein has been active in professional organizations in the fields of art history and philanthropy and has served on a number of non-profit boards. The panelists will explore the potentials of and obstacles for provenance research in Germany and the United States and present the story of Lenbach’s painting and its journey to Pacific Palisades.

After the conversation and welcoming remarks by Stefan Schneider, German Consul General in Los Angeles, there will be a short concert performed by musicians from the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. Works for soprano and piano by Clara Schumann and Gustav Mahler will be performed by Ariadne Greif and Robert Fleitz.

In person event at the Thomas Mann House. By invitation only.

This event is a collaboration between the Thomas Mann House, Villa Aurora and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra.

An Event by the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association.

This workshop is a continuation of a cooperation between VATMH and KMM that began in the winter semester of 2021/22, from which six short audio features were produced under the project title "Exit Exile. Dialogues" six short audio features have emerged: Master students of the FU Berlin had the opportunity to interview current and former scholarship holders of the VATMH residency programs and to enter into a dialogue with each other in the context of a research with a historical exile person.

In the workshop "Exit Exile. Escape Routes and Temporary Networks," authors, writers, and scholars will engage in conversation. The workshop will discuss, on the one hand, the different forms of escape routes and, on the other hand, the temporary networks and communities that often emerge during the flight - on the way to a place of exile that is as safe as possible and as final as possible.

The discussion begins with the perspective of the historical exiles, especially the intellectuals who had to flee Germany (first) to other European countries and then overseas, to the United States or even to Central and South America, at the latest after the Nazis had seized power.

The discussion will not only remain with a possible historical classification, but will repeatedly establish references to the present.

The following questions will be explored: Which (emigration or flight) paths do exiles generally take? What continuities, breaks and obstacles do the fugitives experience on their paths into exile? What communities do they form with other people who meet the same fate? Are these more or less loose connections, communities of purpose or communities of fate, which make the suffering of the individuals on the run more 'bearable' in the group, so to speak? Or do these loose connections possibly give rise to sustainable networks, structures that could only emerge from the event of flight? Do these communities serve as a substitute for a so-called "home"? What happens after an initially successful flight in the respective transit countries or in the countries of exile that ultimately take in the refugees - possibly forever? How does the relationship of exiles to their country of origin change over the course of their exile? Is exile a temporary state per se, which - in the best case - must be overcome?

This program is supported in part by the California Arts Council Recovery Grant, Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles (DCA), PICE AC/E's Programme for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture, and the Thomas Mann House.

In 2021, the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles launched "The Neighborhood Interpretive Center:" a hyperlocal initiative of cultural programs that focus on and uplift the MacArthur Park/Westlake neighborhood and surrounding areas. The project engages with local partners to present programs developed with and relevant to the community, with a greater understanding of the area's unique history, dynamics, heritage, and distinctiveness.

2022 Thomas Mann Fellow Swenja Zaremba's project in Los Angeles is dedicated to collaborative spaces on the local level and inclusiveness in public collaboration. During her time in L.A., she will examine how local participatory approaches can strengthen trust in interactions between civil society and institutions to see what transformative potential for public organizations as well as for civil society networks these approaches hold.

Join the "Neighborhood Interpretive Center" project partners Byron, Pauletta Pierce, Robin Garcia, the Frida Kahlo Theatre, Homies Unidos, and Thomas Mann Fellow Swenja Zaremba for a collective gathering and evening of conversation focused on community engagement.

This event is free of charge and open to the public. Please RSVP and find further information here.

This is an event of the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles in collaboration with the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles. Part of the Neighborhood Interpretive Center, a hyperlocal initiative of cultural programs that focus on and uplift the MacArthur Park/Westlake neighborhood and surrounding areas.

The German sociologist Max Weber once described the regularity and routine of public administration as a basic condition for efficient political control and protection against arbitrariness, since everyone has to play by the same rational rules. But does this definition still hold up today, considering the rise of populist tendencies that are gaining momentum and increasingly influencing political developments and elections on both sides of the Atlantic? What is the role of public administration in today's world of contested democracies when, for example, the legitimacy of electoral processes is relying on the functioning of these administrative processes? How can public administration become more resilient when it is both claimed and demanded by civil society on the one hand and by political leaders on the other? Or is it perhaps for this very reason that a return to rational Weberian principles is necessary?

2022 Thomas Mann Fellow Rubina Zern-Breuer, a historian and innovation researcher, focuses on interactions between public administration and civil society. She will be joined by Professor Michael W. Bauer, Chair of Public Administration at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy and by journalist Joe Mathews, co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy & democracy editor of Zócalo Public Square. The conversation, which will transition into a fishbowl discussion with the audience, explores how resilient public administrations can protect democracies against populist pressures and restore trust in democratic institutions. The discussion will be moderated by Alexandra Lieben.

The discussion will take place in the living room of the Thomas Mann House.

In person event at the Thomas Mann House. By invitation only.

This event is organized by the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles and co-presented by the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute and Democracy International and Zócalo Public Square.