Thomas Mann House Events Archive
October 2022
Thomas Mann's Los Angeles: Stories From Exile 1940-1952
Village Well Books & Coffee (9900 Culver Blvd. #1B Culver City CA USA, 90232)
Information
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.
Panelists
Claudia Suhr Gordon studied Egyptology, Sociology and Coptic Studies at the University of Göttingen, Germany where she earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on Ancient Egyptian first-person narratives. She has worked as an archaeologist in Luxor, Egypt and currently serves as Director of Villa Aurora, an artist residency in the former exile home of writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. In 2016, Villa Aurora was entrusted with the administration of the Thomas Mann House, where Claudia also serves as Head of Administration.
Benno Herz is Program Director at the Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles. He studied Theater, Film and Media Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt and completed his M.A. with a focus on new social media aesthetics and interface theory. He is co-editor and co-author of the publication Thomas Mann's Los Angeles: Stories from Exile 1940-1952 (Angel City Press, 2022). Herz taught a digital humanities class on European exile at University of California, Los Angeles.
Thomas Aujero Small is the CEO of Culver City Forward, a non-profit public-private partnership that brings business, government, and the community together to inspire and pursue innovative urban solutions to the most crucial issues in our region. He was the 2018 Mayor of Culver City and served on the City Council from 2016 to 2020. Culver City Forward Motion, part of his 2018 State of the City presentation, sets forth a vision for the future of Culver City. A long-time writer and consultant in architecture and urban planning, he serves on the Mobility Committee of the Urban Land Institute Los Angeles and chairs the LA METRO Sustainability Council. Thomas Aujero Small is on the advisory board of the Thomas Mann House.
Partner
The Event is organized by Village Well Books & Coffee
Interlacing Threads: Reading Anni Albers Together. Convened by Karis Medina & Rosario Talevi
Los Angeles (Thomas Mann House)
Information
Anni Albers (1899–1994) was a textile designer, weaver, writer, and printmaker who pioneered new possibilities for textiles as art, both as purely pictorial constructions and as functional objects. In 1922, she enrolled in the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, a then-new school that transformed modern design and emphasized the connection between artists, architects, and craftspeople. There Anni met a young artist and teacher, Josef Albers (1888–1976) who in 1925 would become her husband. In 1933, after the closing of the Bauhaus, the Albereses were invited to the newly-established Black Mountain College in North Carolina to develop the art program, which would serve as an essential core to the curriculum for all students. During their time at Black Mountain College, Anni made extraordinary weavings, developed new textiles, and taught, while also writing essays on design and craft that reflected her independent and passionate vision.
In this collaborative event between the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation and the Thomas Mann House, 2022 Fellow Rosario Talevi (Soft Agency) and curator Karis Medina (Josef & Anni Albers Foundation), together with artist Ahree Lee and historian & curator Gary Riichirō Fox, will convene a reading group in the living room of the Thomas Mann House. Although Anni Albers never claimed feminism and generally eschewed political labeling, this reading group will approach and negotiate Anni's legacy, her concepts, and ideas in dialogue while engaging with contemporary questions on gender specificity, invisible labor, and the construction/transmission of feminist genealogies. This event seeks to explore Anni Albers' transatlantic vision of weaving as a cultural practice.
In person event at the Thomas Mann House. By invitation only.
Participants
Karis Medina is the Associate Curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation where she aids and facilitates research on the Alberses. In her own research, her primary focus is studying and codifying the structure of Anni Albers’s textiles and pictorial weavings. She has lectured and led workshops at University College London, Yale University, Pratt Institute in New York, and New Britain Museum of American Art. She has an active art and weaving practice and has shown work in exhibitions in New York, Chicago, New Haven, and Croatia.
Rosario Talevi is a Berlin-based architect, curator, editor and educator interested in critical spatial practice, transformative pedagogies and feminist futures. Rosario is a graduate of the School of Architecture, Design & Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires. She has held teaching and research positions at the University of the Arts (UdK) and the Technical University (TU) in Berlin and at the University of Buenos Aires (FADU/UBA). Talevi was Guest Professor of Social Design (2021-22) at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg. She is a founding member of Soft Agency, a diasporic group of female architects, artists, curators, scholars and writers working with spatial practices.
Ahree Lee is a multi-disciplinary artist working in video, new media, and textiles. Lee received her B.A. from Yale University in English literature and a M.F.A. in graphic design from Yale School of Art. Her commissions include the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the 01SJ Biennial, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and the Sundance Channel. Her honors include an artist residency at Santa Fe Art Institute and a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award nomination, and her work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Metropolis, and Fast Company.
Gary Riichirō Fox is an architectural historian and curator. He has curated exhibitions and research programs at Getty Research Institute and at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, and he has led history/theory seminars at SCI-Arc and UCLA. His work has been supported by the American Alliance of Museums, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the UC Humanities Research Institute, and the W.M. Keck Foundation, among others. Gary studied at Yale University and the Architectural Association; at UCLA, he is currently completing a dissertation project where his research considers histories of aesthetic governance and environmental simulation.
Partners
A collaboration between the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation and the Thomas Mann House with friendly support from Christopher Farr Cloth & Thomas Lavin.
Loss and Modernity: Lecture and Conversation with Andreas Reckwitz
Goethe-Institut New York (30 Irving Place New York, NY 10003)
Speaker
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).
Partners
Presented in cooperation with the DFG German Research Foundation, 1014: Space for Ideas and the Thomas Mann House.
Towards a Sociology of Loss: Lecture and Conversation with Andreas Reckwitz
German Historical Institute Washington DC (1607 New Hampshire Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009)
Panelist
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).
Partner
Presented in cooperation with the German Historical Institute Washington and the Thomas Mann House.
Celebration of the Installation of Franz von Lenbach’s Portrait of Katia Pringsheim
Los Angeles, Thomas Mann House
Information
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.
Partners
This event is a collaboration between the Thomas Mann House, Villa Aurora and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra.
