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.
Tag: Klaus Mann
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)
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.