Rue Thomas Mann, Paris – in Munich

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.

Weighty information – additional signs for the Mann family

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.

„Warming up“ Salvatorplatz – memorial to the Mann family

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.

Photo: Jad­ranka Kosorcic

Luminaire from Sanary arrived

A few days ago, the muni­cip­al­ity of San­ary-sur-Mer in the south of France made a con­tri­bu­tion to the memori­al for the Mann fam­ily with the lamp or can­de­labra, as his­tor­ic­al lamps are often called. In autumn 2020, I vis­ited the former emig­ra­tion site of the Mann family.

The can­de­labra came well packed from the Fonder­ie de Roquevaire, which had restored it, and was received at the Bauhof in Munich, meas­ured – and labelled. As a small side effect, the let­ters in my name got mixed up and I became a „Cors(ican)“.

Lecture: A Memorial for the Mann Family, Conference „On Site: Memory, Exile, Migration“, 3.9.2021

Dieses Bild hat ein leeres Alt-Attribut. Der Dateiname ist Screenshot-2021-08-30-at-17-08-56-Erinnerung-Exil-Migration-1024x214.png

On 3.9.2021 Albert Coers will give a lec­ture on the memori­al for the Mann fam­ily, at the online con­fer­ence „Vor Ort: Erin­ner­ung, Exil, Migra­tion“, annu­al con­fer­ence of the Gesell­schaft für Exil­forschung in cooper­a­tion with the NS-Dok­u­ment­a­tion­szen­trum München, 3.–4.9.2021.

The annu­al con­fer­ence 2021 deals with places of exile and migra­tion and their rela­tion to cul­tures of memory and stim­u­lates exchange between exile research and oth­er research fields deal­ing with (forced) migra­tion and flight.

More inform­a­tion, pro­gram and regis­tra­tion here.

Concept

The monu­ment to the Mann fam­ily con­sists of an assembly of street signs named after mem­bers of the Mann fam­ily as well as street­lamps from those streets. The signs and lamps come from Munich, where Mann spent a major­ity of his life, but also from oth­er cit­ies and places related to the Mann fam­ily world­wide.
The real­iz­a­tion of the monu­ment is planned for spring/summer 2024.

The inter­na­tion­al­ity of the fam­ily is reflec­ted in the signs and lights – begin­ning in Munich and radi­at­ing out to oth­er cit­ies in Europe, the USA, and South Amer­ica – as well as the family’s world­wide lit­er­ary pres­ence and sig­ni­fic­ance. This is also evid­ent from the dif­fer­ent street names (Via, Rue, Rua). The arrange­ment is based on the topo­graph­ic­al pos­i­tion of the indi­vidu­al cit­ies in rela­tion to one anoth­er and forms an ima­gin­ary map. The monu­ment addresses the com­mit­ment to a spe­cif­ic place but also aspects of emig­ra­tion, mobil­ity and fre­quent change of place as well as transna­tion­al cos­mo­pol­it­an­ism, for which the fam­ily can be regarded as a fore­run­ner and example. 

The point of depar­ture is Munich, the cen­ter of the family’s life for many years, where there are sev­er­al streets and squares named after mem­bers of the fam­ily: Thomas Mann but also Erika, Klaus, Elisa­beth and Golo. Some of these streets are loc­ated in less-fre­quen­ted neigh­bor­hoods, new hous­ing estates or on the peri­phery and thus have little pres­ence in the col­lect­ive memory. These street signs, togeth­er with the street­lamps to which they are attached, are brought to the cen­ter of the city and assembled as a group at the Sal­vat­or­platz (Sal­vat­or Square), where they are more vis­ible and come into con­tact with one anoth­er in a kind of “fam­ily reunion.” At the same time, they refer back to their ori­gin­al loc­a­tions so that the monu­ment as a whole emphas­izes its con­nec­tion to urb­an structures.

Names

A new sign will be cre­ated for Katia Mann, for whom no street has yet been named. This will make “Mrs. Thomas Mann” more vis­ible in rela­tion to the city in which she was born and whose fam­ily – the  Jew­ish Pring­sheim fam­ily – like the Manns, lost their prop­erty and had to emig­rate. Giv­ing her a street name in the monu­ment anti­cip­ates what would oth­er­wise be a lengthy pro­cess. This mix­ture of real­ity and fic­tion ref­er­ences lit­er­ary pro­ced­ures prac­ticed by Thomas and Klaus Mann. 

Lights

Circa fif­teen street signs and street­lights are planned. In addi­tion to those from Munich, oth­ers will demon­strate the span between Europe and North and South Amer­ica and will estab­lish con­nec­tions. One street sign comes from Par­is. Anoth­er from the city of Lübeck, the birth­place of Thomas Mann as well as the set­ting for Bud­den­brooks. A street­lamp and sign from Klaus-Mann-Platz in Frank­furt (the loc­a­tion of a monu­ment to per­se­cuted homo­sexu­als) serves as a ref­er­ence to an aspect of the iden­tity of sev­er­al fam­ily mem­bers. Rome is present as the res­id­ence of Thomas (and Hein­rich) Mann at a young age. The South Amer­ic­an link (Thomas Mann’s moth­er Julia came from Brazil) is rep­res­en­ted by a street­lamp and sign from São Paulo. One lamp will come from Nida, Lithuania, the pre­ferred sum­mer retreat of the Mann fam­ily. A lamp from San­ary-Sur-Mer on the Côte d’Azur, the first place the fam­ily emig­rated to in the 1930s, rep­res­ents the fam­ily as a whole. Two street­lamps come from the United States: one from New York, near the former Hotel Bed­ford, where mem­bers of the Mann fam­ily stayed, most fre­quently Erika and Klaus. Anoth­er from San Remo Drive in Los Angeles refers to the villa Thomas Mann built there in 1942, in which he lived until his return to Europe. A street­lamp from Kilch­berg near Zurich estab­lishes a link to the res­id­ence of Thomas and Katia as well as Erika (for whom a street in Zurich is named) and finally Golo.

Research trips to the respect­ive loc­a­tions are part of the pro­ject, as is a book pub­lic­a­tion that doc­u­ments, con­veys and sup­ple­ments the back­ground and devel­op­ment of the monu­ment, includ­ing the cur­rent situ­ations of the street signs and street­lights on site.

Competition

On April 10, 2019, Munich’s City Coun­cil voted to real­ize artist Albert Coers’ design for a monu­ment in hon­or of the Mann fam­ily at the Sal­vat­or­platz (Sal­vat­or Square) in Munich. Coers’concept, entitled Streets Names Lights, was selec­ted by an expert jury with­in the frame­work of a com­pet­i­tion for Art in Pub­lic Space organ­ized by Munich’s Cul­tur­al Depart­ment. Coers was one of eight inter­na­tion­al artists invited to sub­mit a pro­pos­al (Clegg & Guttmann, Albert Coers, Annika Kahrs, Michaela Meise, Michaela Melián, Olaf Nic­olai, Timm Ulrichs, Paloma Varga Weisz).
The real­iz­a­tion of the monu­ment is planned for spring/summer 2024.

The erec­tion of a memori­al to Thomas Mann was first ini­ti­ated by the City Coun­cil in 2015: “The Munich cit­izen and import­ant author Thomas Mann deserves a vis­ible place of hon­or in the city which he made the cen­ter of his life. He lived here for a very long time, mar­ried here, built a house. He wanted to stay here.” 

Since then, the scope of the memori­al has expan­ded to include his fam­ily: “In addi­tion to Thomas Mann’s his­tor­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance for Munich, it has become clear that the them­at­ic focus must not be lim­ited to Thomas Mann alone. An artist­ic appre­ci­ation of the Nobel Prize win­ner without regard to his fam­ily con­text would be an exclu­sion of many inter­est­ing facets. For a broad­er, per­man­ent artist­ic upgrad­ing of pub­lic space, the lit­er­ary sig­ni­fic­ance of the entire Mann fam­ily must now be taken into account.” (com­pet­i­tion brief)

Monika, Michael, Golo, Katia, Thomas, Elisa­beth, Erika, Klaus Mann, 1927, Mon­acensia Archive 


Loc­a­tion

The site for the monu­ment, Sal­vat­or­platz, is situ­ated in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of the Lit­er­at­urhaus (Lit­er­at­ure House), one of Munich’s cent­ral addresses for lit­er­at­ure and lit­er­ary exchange. The square is loc­ated in the old town between the Lit­er­at­urhaus, the Sal­vat­or­gar­a­gen (a land­marked park­ing gar­age from the 1960s) and the Sal­vat­orkirche (Sal­vat­or Church) to the southeast. 

The Manns and Munich

The idea of erect­ing a monu­ment to Thomas Mann and his fam­ily at a cent­ral loc­a­tion in Munich has its roots in the import­ance of the city for the fam­ily – includ­ing the family’s ambi­val­ent rela­tion­ship to it – as well as the fact that the fam­ily has not yet had the pres­ence it deserves in the vis­ible cul­ture of memory.

Born in Lübeck in 1875, Thomas Mann came to Munich as a young man in 1894 and lived here for over 30 years. Here he met his wife Katia Pring­sheim and here is where their chil­dren – Erika, Klaus, Golo, Monika, Elisa­beth and Michael – were born. Most of Mann’s lit­er­ary works were writ­ten here.

After the Nation­al Social­ists seized power in 1933, the Mann fam­ily was forced to emig­rate and lived in exile for almost twenty years – first in Europe, then in the USA. The family’s villa in Munich’s Poschin­gen­straße was con­fis­cated and Thomas Mann expropriated.

In 1952, Mann finally returned to Europe, to Switzer­land – a return to Munich was com­pletely out of the ques­tion for him. Already in decay, his former res­id­ence was torn down by the City of Munich with his per­son­al con­sent. Thomas Mann’s estate was bequeathed to the ETH (Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy) in Zurich. The extens­ive lit­er­ary her­it­age of his chil­dren Klaus, Erika, Michael, Monika and Elisa­beth Mann is archived in the Hildebrand­haus of the Mon­acensia (lit­er­ary archives and research lib­rary) in Munich’s Bogen­hausen neighborhood.