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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
