Rue Thomas Mann, Paris, 2018, Photo: Eva-Maria Troelenberg
As the first component of the memorial to the Mann family, „Rue Thomas Mann“ in the characteristic Parisian design was installed on Salvatorplatz in Munich in April 2024, on the façade of the Salvator garage.
It refers to the street in Paris that has commemorated the „Ècrivain allemand“ since 1995, as the sign also says. It is located in the 13th arrondissement, in the modern „Gare“ district, which was redesigned at the same time as the street was named, in the neighbourhood of the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand (National Library of France, BnF), which makes the choice of the writer as the namesake all the more plausible.
The sign symbolises the literary and political Franco-German relationship and the role Thomas Mann played in it. He held the Goncourt brothers, among others, in high esteem and drew decisive inspiration from their works for his family novel „Buddenbrooks“. And he was the first German writer to make a public appearance in Paris after the First World War to give a speech entitled „The intellectual tendencies of contemporary Germany“. In the role of an unofficial cultural ambassador of the Weimar Republic, Mann promoted Franco-German friendship and international understanding – see also his report on the trip and his stay, „Pariser Rechenschaft“[Parisian Account]. The naming is also a reflection of the later political relations between the two countries, which intensified in the 1990s.
The installation on Salvatorplatz was preceded by a lengthy process of research and contact, including via the Goethe-Institut Paris. In the end, the city of Paris approved the reproduction of the sign, which was carried out by the company LACROIX Signalisation/Signaclic, which also works for the city of Paris.
As street signs in Paris are predominantly attached to building facades, it was necessary to find a suitable location in Munich. The façade of the Salvatorgarage was an obvious choice, for which the consent of the Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments was obtained, as well as the tenants and owners, Bavaria Parkgaragen GmbH and Bayerische Hausbau.
The installation itself was carried out by Florian Froese-Peek in collaboration with Albert Coers.
In addition to the street signs with the names of the Mann-familiy from Munich, boards have been completed that provide information about the members of the family and are placed below the signs. Additional information is therefore an integral part of the monument. The texts were created in collaboration with the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, Public History Department. They provide brief biographies of Thomas, Katia, Klaus, Erika, Golo Mann and Elisabeth Mann. The Munich building department took over the technical implementation. Until now, these signs were only available for Thomas, Klaus and Erika Mann. In this respect, it made sense to me to provide all Munich street names with such signs and to add ones for Katia, Golo and Elisabeth Mann. The signs are made of enamelled metal and are therefore quite heavy compared to their size (15 x 45 cm). Reason to place the signs on a bathroom scale – and test the weight of the names and information.
The Salvatorplatz in Munich, where the memorial to the Mann family is to be erected, is „pre-warmed“ and activated: students from the Thomas-Mann-Gymnasium and the middle school on Peslmüllerstrasse, Pasing physically explored the square on March 6, 2024, where they formed, among other things. a living chain around the area where street signs and lights will stand in memory of the members of the Mann family. And that in the rain! The action is part of a program to teach art in public spaces in schools, led by Barbara Dabanoglu.
After a long journey, in October 2023 the last of the signes arrived that will be part of the monument to the Mann family. It came from Brasil: a copy of the sign of Rua Thomas Mann in São Paulo. CSV Sinalização in Campina/São Paulo produced it in close collaboration with Albert Coers. As it arrived, covered with stickers and stamps of customs, mail, delivery, it is an object of Mail Art, too.
In 1941, Katia and Thomas Mann moved from Princeton to the West Coast, to Los Angeles – the decisive factor being the prospect of being able to live in a villa they had built themselves and no longer rented, thus leaving behind their emigrant status and putting down roots in the USA. Added to this are the landscape and the weather: „The sky is bright here almost all year round and sends out an incomparable, all-beautifying light“ (TM to Hermann Hesse).
Haus Thomas Manns, ca. 1942; Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara
LA – a bleak picture?
But in autum 2019, when I planned visiting Thomas Manns home, I had been warned by a driver I was travelling with on the East Coast, in Maine: „You may give going to LA some serious thought. Things there are pretty tough.“
And Georg Blochmann, director of the Goethe-Institut in New York, also paints a bleak picture: LA is a symbol of the failure of the American Dream, with extreme social segregation and the dysfunctionality of public infrastructure, including public transport.
The stay will be about contrasts. In the social aspect, between public and private, the light of the metropolis and its dark sides.
In this respect, I am interested in public transport and how it can be used to get to Thomas Mann’s former home in this car-dominated city – even though he never took the bus in LA, but always drove his own car (he did not have a driving licence, unlike Katia and his children, of whom Erika and Elisabeth in particular were passionate drivers, probably a terrain of the female Manns).
It all takes quite a long time, but works surprisingly well overall. Once again, it takes an hour and a half, which is already typical for other cities, to get from the city centre to the destination associated with the Manns. It’s off to Pacific Palisades, on the hilly western edge of the metropolis. This time there are no problem neighbourhoods or commuter suburbs on the periphery, but villas. By bus towards Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, then another in Westwood;
Get off at the Sunset/Capri stop, up San Remo Drive. Even the name „Drive“ indicates that you normally get around here by (car). Lush gardens, palm trees, sweeping and mowing, mostly by Hispanics or blacks. After several turns, a place that looks familiar to me from my virtual tours via Google Earth, where high hedges and trees form a wall-like corner, behind which the house lies like Sleeping Beauty. Here again the need for privacy seems to manifest itself; and time has done the rest.
San Remo Drive
Get off at the Sunset/Capri stop, up San Remo Drive. Even the name „Drive“ indicates that you normally get around here by (car). Lush gardens, palm trees, sweeping and mowing, mostly by Hispanics or blacks. After several turns, a place that looks familiar to me from my virtual tours via Google Earth, where high hedges and trees form a wall-like corner, behind which the house lies like Sleeping Beauty. Here again the need for privacy seems to manifest itself; and time has done the rest.
A light fixture has grown into the bushes. Another one faces the driveway of No. 1550; on it the street names „Monaco Drive“ and „San Remo Drive“, evoking the Mediterranean, the fashionable coastal towns of the Riviera (the neighbourhood is also called that), in whose flair Los Angeles likes to share. But one could also associate (Italian) „Monaco“ with „Munich“, and thus be with Thomas Mann’s former residence.
Original-Reconstruction?
As in New York, it is interesting to know who is responsible for the lights and can provide information about them. It is the city’s Bureau of Lighting, to which I paid a visit. But in this „residential neighbourhood“, the residents themselves also take an interest. Bob Gale, author of the screenplay and co-producer of „Back to the Future“ lives in the area (incidentally, so does Armin Mueller-Stahl, who portrayed Thomas Mann in the series „The Manns“), is president of the local homeowners’ association and is very familiar with the different types of lamps and their history, even sending photos of them. He recommends reconstruction in Germany as the most economical method of obtaining lamps – probably also because he comes from the film industry.
The question of original/reconstruction will continue to occupy me; it is also relevant to Thomas Mann’s former residence and the way it is treated. First of all, however, I am quite happy to see the luminaires in their spatial context on site.
The lamps, especially when they stand so overgrown and ramshackle in the bushes, tell of the city’s ambition, its grandeur, its façade-like quality. Installed in the 1920s to 1940s, they stood here when Thomas Mann moved into his newly built Bauhaus-style residence – which was more modern compared to the historicising, opulent lamps.
Inside Thomas Mann House
In 2016, the German state acquired the house and set it up as the Thomas Mann House as a residence for scholarship holders, a place for meetings and events. Nikolai Blaumer, programme director, leads me through the house and garden. The library is being reconstructed, books are arriving from many places and institutions, including Yale.
The impression: it’s a good place to work. The furnishings are functional, new, comfortable, without excessive luxury. The reference to Thomas Mann is also pleasantly restrained: a few photos, but no hagiographic staging in which the person of the former landlord would follow you at every turn. Meet scholars, including the Germanist Stefan Keppler-Tasaki. Talk about the memorial project. He knows a lot about the Manns and their contemporaries.
As in the garden with its high hedge, there are also elements in the architecture that demarcate and emphasise a space of their own: the wall drawn forward from the corner of the study, which, at Thomas Mann’s request, was to provide protection from view and noise.
From the garden you have a view over to the hill range with the former house of Lion Feuchtwanger, today as Villa Aurora also a residence for artists, writers, musicians. Next to it is the Getty Museum. Even further away, perched on a hill, is the Getty Center. The area is full of big names, institutions and buildings.
As I return from San Remo Drive, I catch the bus heading into the city – with the same bus driver as on the outward journey – and am greeted casually by a man in a mint-coloured shirt: „Take a seat, relax, cold drinks will be served.“ Californian relaxation.
A few days later I’m back at the Manns’ former home. Francis Fukuyama is giving a short talk, along the lines of the radio addresses „German listeners!“ Thomas Mann’s in the 1940s. Fukuyama expects a strengthening of the left/liberals as a reaction to Trump, and is „not too pessimistic“ about the future.
At the small reception afterwards, to my surprise, I meet Thomas Demand, who has lived in LA for ten years. With regard to the memorial, he recommends Chris Burden’s installation of hundreds of street lights in front of LACMA to me. It has become a favourite of the public, a landmark of the museum, even of the city, in that ubiquitous elements of public space with which residents identify are brought together in a concentrated way and strictly ordered according to their size – so that they can be seen from a distance.
For a moment, I feel like I belong to the scholarship holders; besides those from the Thomas Mann House, there are also some from the Villa Aurora. LA turns out to be an interesting hotspot, despite or perhaps because of the stark contrasts, of architectural landmarks and rampant homelessness, of glamour and neglect. I regret that I can’t stay longer. I have to continue my journey to Brazil, to São Paulo, my last stop.
By chance, now, at the end of my stay, I am asked to evacuate: there is a fire. When, during a visit to the Villa Getty, a reconstructed villa from Pompeii, there are clouds of smoke in the sky and it is raining ash, it is strangely fitting.
