Tag: Thomas Mann

Rome and Palestrina: “In Search of Oneself”

In June 2019, I was in Rome and Palestrina to explore streets named after Thomas Mann in light of the Mann memori­al in Munich. Look­ing back, it was also inter­est­ing to see how nat­ur­al it was to travel and move around in pub­lic space in con­trast to the present day, 2020.

The road to Thomas Mann is quite long. The street named after him is on the out­skirts of Rome. It takes one and a half hours on the 916 bus—including half an hour’s wait—all the oth­er num­bers pass by sev­er­al times. When the bus finally arrives, it is full, with many com­muters head­ing from the city cen­ter to the outskirts.

The street is in the north­west­ern dis­trict of Quartac­cio on a ridge between flat val­leys. The pejor­at­ive suf­fix “-accio” prob­ably comes from the sur­round­ing damp, marshy low­lands. Cre­ated in the 1980s as a hope­ful and ima­gin­at­ive res­id­en­tial area—with post­mod­ern ref­er­ences to the social hous­ing of the 1920s and 1930s, gar­dens, arched pas­sage­ways, and piaz­zas (used as park­ing lots)—it soon ran into prob­lems, squat­ters, and drug deal­ing. Since the 2000s, the situ­ation has improved with the con­struc­tion of new apart­ment blocks and the influx of oth­er demo­graph­ic groups—but the area’s repu­ta­tion still sticks, and it crops up often in police reports.

After dis­em­bark­ing, you walk over weathered con­crete bor­ders of dry green spaces. On Via Flaubert, you notice a group of con­crete columns that form a square and are inten­ded to evoke an archae­olo­gic­al park. Long rows of ochre-painted apart­ment blocks. People sit­ting on plastic chairs in front of their houses—reminiscent of Naples. At the edge of the house rows are fields, fal­low land, reeds: the street becomes a dirt track, the city seems to be fray­ing; you can see down into a val­ley, in the dis­tance there are more apart­ment blocks.

When I ask about Via Thomas Mann, two girls describe it as “In fondo, dav­anti alla chiesa” (at the end, in front of the church). There is indeed a street sign with this name under a tall street­lamp in front of a church ded­ic­ated to St. Faustina (think Doc­tor Faus­tus). It is quite mod­ern with a wide over­hanging met­al roof on slender met­al pil­lars. Only the cross on the roof and the hint of a temple-like roof identi­fy it as a place of wor­ship. It is con­nec­ted to a sports cen­ter. The ASD Romana (sharks) bas­ket­ball team trains here—an aston­ish­ing com­bin­a­tion, but one that brings togeth­er two of the major social net­works: church and sports.

Thomas Mann, how­ever, was dis­tanced from both. He was social­ized as a Prot­est­ant but iron­ic in his approach to the reli­gi­os­ity of the church and its author­it­ies (see the begin­ning of Bud­den­brooks where Toni reads a chapter of the cat­ech­ism). Aston­ish­ingly, he began Bud­den­brooks in Italy (ini­tially with his broth­er Hein­rich) sur­roun­ded by Cath­oli­cism. The encounter is even more intense when you hear the church’s haunt­ing Ave bells ring on every hour to the tune of the Lourdes melody. At 6:00 pm, a car pulls up in front of the church and nuns dressed in white get out. Time for mass. This is Rome. The con­trasts could not be great­er. The upper middle-class writer, here, in a—to put it mildly—structurally weak neigh­bor­hood. The “north­ern lights” of Lübeck and the cos­mo­pol­it­an city to the south.

Yet, the coin­cid­ence goes bey­ond a street name that would only cov­er the can­on of great European writers: Thomas Mann actu­ally lived in Rome as a young man. Were the street name plan­ners aware of this? Peter de Mendels­sohn, who wrote the bio­graphy The Magi­cian, men­tions the addresses— Torre Argen­tina 34 and Via del Pan­theon 57, 1897—in the chapter “Wait­ing in Rome.” Eight months after all! Mann him­self also men­tions his stay sev­er­al times, includ­ing in his 1904 bio­graphy, but his former addresses are all in the heart of the old city, the centro storico, where tour­ists throng. In a place where everything is occu­pied by cen­tur­ies-old build­ings and names, it makes sense that the Romans did not name a street after the Ger­man writer there.

Here, on the peri­phery, how­ever, there was space and the hope that the names might cul­tur­ally enhance the con­struc­tion pro­ject and give it a pos­it­ive con­nota­tion as well as emphas­ize the uni­fy­ing European cul­ture. Thus, the great nine­teenth-cen­tury writers from France and the north­ern coun­tries are all con­cen­trated here. The ter­minus is named after Ander­sen, there is a Via Fra­telli Grimm, and Thomas Mann encoun­ters, not inap­pro­pri­ately, Flaubert, Sand and Zola. He is thus asso­ci­ated with the 19th rather than the 20th cen­tury, a tra­di­tion­al con­text that he him­self repeatedly emphasized.

It is notice­able that his “col­leagues” are usu­ally rep­res­en­ted only by their last names. This makes sense in terms of the sys­tem of city maps, as it avoids the dilemma of wheth­er to sort a street by a first name (as is gen­er­ally the case in street dir­ect­or­ies) or a sur­name. Thomas Mann, how­ever, is rep­res­en­ted by both his first and last names. This demon­strates that there were more than just one writer named Mann, there were sev­er­al, and that there is a need to des­ig­nate indi­vidu­als with­in the fam­ily by their first names. One cer­tainly thinks of his broth­er Hein­rich, who breaks with the restrict­ive use of the Mann name to only Thomas’ family.

Thomas was with Hein­rich in Rome and for two sum­mers in Palestrina, a small town about forty kilo­met­ers from Rome. There is a Via Thomas Mann there, too. And it is inter­est­ing to note that the broth­ers make a joint appear­ance there: Hein­rich is also com­mem­or­ated with a street name. That’s where we’re going next.

It takes about the same amount of time to get to Palestrina as it does to the Roman Quartac­cio, only in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion to the east. It is an hour and a half by sub­way to the Anagn­ina stop, then by inter­city bus through Rome’s coun­tryside, which even­tu­ally merges into Cam­pagna, with stops in small vil­lages such as Zagarolo.

In Palestrina, Via Thomas Mann refers back to the Manns’ place of res­id­ence on this very street, mak­ing it the rare case where name and res­id­ence coin­cide. In 1895, Thomas and Hein­rich lived in a board­ing house here, in the sum­mer fresh­ness of the town, which is high­er and cool­er than Rome and from which you can look down onto the plain. The name of the street—at the top of a stair­case-like alley that leads up steeply from the piazza next to the church—is a mosa­ic that alludes to those found in the excav­a­tions of ancient Preneste. In this way, Thomas Mann is drawn into the his­tory and archae­ology of the place just like the Roman finds in the Museo Arche­olo­gi­co next door. Cables and pipes next to and below the sign estab­lish a con­nec­tion to the present.

The stone plaque fur­ther up is in the style of memori­al plaques found through­out Italy: large Roman cap­it­al let­ters carved in stone, traced in black. The inscrip­tion emphas­izes the length of the stay, places it in his­tor­ic­al con­text with a ref­er­ence to the end of the 19th cen­tury, and inter­prets its pur­pose psy­cho­lo­gic­ally with a cer­tain pathos: alla ricerca di se stessi (in search of one­self). There is also an inter­est­ing typo­graph­ic­al detail: the space between “Thomas” and “Mann” is quite large. The inten­tion was to ensure that the broth­ers’ first names, which appear on dif­fer­ent lines, are more closely con­nec­ted and clearly dis­tin­guish­able from the fam­ily name—so that one does not read “Hein­rich” and “Thomas Mann,” which would have made Thomas alone the rep­res­ent­at­ive of the Mann family.…

Around the corner there is an inform­a­tion board on a met­al stand, a stop on the town’s archae­olo­gic­al trail. That’s how you find most of the inform­a­tion in Palestrina. The pic­ture on it of Hein­rich Mann has sur­vived bet­ter than the one of Thomas.

Like­wise, the broth­ers aren’t equally depic­ted in terms of street names either: a few steps up the Via Thomas Mann you come across an elev­ated travertine plaque for Largo Hein­rich Mann. The term “Largo” is a bit exag­ger­ated; it is a small park with ter­races, benches, pine trees, and roses that is quite nice but lit­er­ally falls a little short of Via Thomas Mann. This con­trast also struck archi­tec­tur­al and cul­tur­al his­tor­i­an Erik Weger­hoff in 2005, when he rode his Vespa through Palestrina dur­ing his con­tem­por­ary reen­act­ment of the Grand Tour and just as the homage to the Mann broth­ers was being com­pleted. He notes iron­ic­ally: “The Via Thomas Mann was freshly scrubbed, the Largo Hein­rich Mann nat­ur­ally a little grubby.”

The Via Thomas Mann takes a turn at the point where the Largo Hein­rich Mann is loc­ated, fur­ther uphill, where anoth­er plaque shifts the bal­ance of the Mann broth­ers’ names even fur­ther, in favor of Thomas. Per­haps this is due to the fact that Thomas Mann expli­citly chose Palestrina as the place where Adri­an Leverkühn, the prot­ag­on­ist in his nov­el Doc­tor Faus­tus, resides, thereby secur­ing the town’s lit­er­ary fame. Adrian’s encounter with the dev­il takes place behind one of these doors, in a vaul­ted hall that is cold even in sum­mer, and in which he is prom­ised music­al geni­us and artist­ic creativity.

The Palestrini­ans have thanked him.

Back to the Beginning ‑ Berlin

In June 2018, I cycle to Thomas-Mann-Straße in Ber­lin. In my diary, I’ll write after­wards: ”Idea for monu­ment takes shape: street signs.“ The vis­it is about gath­er­ing ideas, get­ting inspir­a­tion from the loc­a­tion. I had seen that there was a swim­ming pool named after Thomas Mann there, and I had many asso­ci­ations: swim­ming, waves, water, Death in Venice …

The street is loc­ated in former East Ber­lin, in Pren­zlauer­berg, branch­ing off from Gre­if­swalder Straße. It was named after Thomas Mann in 1976, dur­ing the GDR era. This loc­a­tion can also be seen in terms of memory polit­ics in the oth­er street names, in Man­n’s neigh­bors: the name of the com­poser Hanns Eisler is affixed to the same post. Like Mann, he fled Nation­al Social­ism and emig­rated to the USA. The two knew each oth­er, met in exile, and had some sim­il­ar interests, e.g. in the Faust mater­i­al. In this respect, their spa­tial prox­im­ity makes sense. Bey­ond Gre­if­swalder Straße, the street con­tin­ues as Erich-Wein­ert-Straße, named after the writer who fled to the Soviet Uni­on dur­ing the Nazi regime and took on offi­cial roles in the GDR after his return.

Thomas Mann, whose polit­ic­al pos­i­tion was not entirely straight­for­ward, some­where between con­ser­vat­ism and social­ism, is thus placed in a con­text of left-wing, anti-fas­cist cul­tur­al fig­ures. In every city, as research and travel will show, this con­text looks dif­fer­ent, some­times it is inter­na­tion­al fel­low writers, such as Gust­ave Flaubert and George Sand in Rome, some­times it is the fam­ily circle, as in Munich with Hein­rich Mann. These con­nec­tions and neigh­bor­hoods are part of the cul­ture of remem­brance. Street signs and the names on them express appreciation—but also polit­ic­al pos­i­tions and the men­tal­ity of the time.

A street name stands apart from such con­scious arrange­ments in the every­day urb­an envir­on­ment, but is influ­enced and over­laid by it. This res­ults in bizarre rela­tion­ships; in Ber­lin, for example, the street name stands in the shad­ow of a huge red arrow with a phar­macy sign. One might asso­ci­ate lit­er­at­ure with a remedy.

Street signs are primar­ily func­tion­al signs, used for ori­ent­a­tion and to indic­ate an address. In Ber­lin, house num­bers are loc­ated below the name sign in order to divide a street into sec­tions. When you remove it from this func­tion­al con­text, isol­ate it, I later real­ize, its memory func­tion becomes clearer.

The typo­graph­ic design is also inter­est­ing: black on white, in con­trast to the white on blue vari­ant used in most cit­ies, such as Munich; a sans serif font, which con­veys aus­ter­ity and a cer­tain harsh­ness. The font is eleg­ant, with the sharp-angled ‘ß’. This is a New Objectiv­ity sans serif font from the 1920s, thus dur­ing Thomas Man­n’s lifetime …

The writ­ing, but also the mater­i­al­ity and con­di­tion of the signs, reveal their his­tor­icity. They weath­er, dust accu­mu­lates, black marks form, the sun bleaches the let­ter­ing, which has almost dis­ap­peared on one sign, and is barely legible, like inscrip­tions on old gravestones.

On the way back, I pass a cemetery in Mitte, the Old Gar­ris­on Cemetery, where years ago, bey­ond the cemetery wall, I saw a pile of street signs that had been dis­mantled for a con­struc­tion site. I remem­ber this now and look for pho­tos I had taken back then, in 2008.

And the idea ger­min­ates that an install­a­tion with street signs could be a memori­al to the Manns. But first I want to find oth­er streets named after the Manns in oth­er cities.

“Deep is the well of the past.”- excavations

“Deep is the well of the past.” Thus begins Thomas Man­n’s nov­el “Joseph and His Broth­ers”. And indeed, for the monu­ment to the Mann fam­ily and its found­a­tions, excav­a­tions are being car­ried out, archae­olo­gic­al invest­ig­a­tions are tak­ing place, and soil samples are being taken. Con­struc­tion work has been under­way again on Sal­vat­or­platz since Septem­ber 22, 2025.

The plans are based on designs by Frosch Woll­mann Architek­tur. The archae­olo­gic­al work is once again being car­ried out with great expert­ise by the archae­ology firm Neu­pert, Kozik & Simm. The con­struc­tion com­pany K&M Ramaj has been com­mis­sioned to carry out the work. The masts, lights, and signs are being pre­pared by the Munich Build­ing Department.

Archaeology: Finds at Salvatorplatz

In May 2024, dur­ing the man­dat­ory archae­olo­gic­al mon­it­or­ing of the excav­a­tion at Sal­vat­or­platz for the erec­tion of the monu­ment to the Mann fam­ily, remains of buri­als were dis­covered in the cemetery of the nearby Sal­vat­or Church and the cemetery wall. Neu­pert, Kozik & Simm Archae­ology Office was com­mis­sioned to carry out the work and recovered a child’s skel­et­on from the Baroque peri­od. The cemetery was in use until around 1800.

This was actu­ally known, and the cemetery is also des­ig­nated as an archae­olo­gic­al monu­ment, but it was assumed that no finds were to be expec­ted due to the numer­ous con­struc­tion meas­ures on the square after 1945 and an air-raid shel­ter under the square. How­ever, dur­ing an inspec­tion of the base­ment beneath the Sal­vat­or­gar­age, it was dis­covered that it is loc­ated entirely beneath the build­ing, with only a nar­row pas­sage­way beneath the square.

Excav­at­ing the entire site down to the planned found­a­tion depth of up to 1.90 m in some places and hav­ing it archae­olo­gic­ally examined would have been very costly and time-con­sum­ing, so it was neces­sary to halt con­struc­tion and then dis­mantle the build­ing until the situ­ation had been clarified.

The finds, espe­cially at the start of con­struc­tion, were a hard blow and left me in con­flict: on the one hand, I am inter­ested in his­tory and archae­ology myself; view­ing, col­lect­ing, and doc­u­ment­ing finds are part of my artist­ic prac­tice. And the excav­a­tions also attrac­ted the interest of pass­ers-by and employ­ees of the Lit­er­at­urhaus. For a short time, Sal­vat­or­platz was trans­formed into an excav­a­tion site where the remains of past lives and former city dwell­ers became visible—an excit­ing pro­cess in itself. And it seems fit­ting that the Mann fam­ily should have a memori­al here, where traces of oth­er fam­il­ies’ lives are also vis­ible. On the oth­er hand, the finds pre­ven­ted the long-awaited com­ple­tion of the memori­al pro­ject, which has been drag­ging on for sev­er­al years.

The excav­a­tions set in motion a series of renewed coordin­a­tion pro­cesses with the monu­ment pro­tec­tion author­it­ies, includ­ing the Bav­ari­an State Office for Monu­ment Pre­ser­va­tion, where the pro­ject at Sal­vat­or­platz seemed to be called into ques­tion at times, not with regard to the archae­olo­gic­al monu­ment, but in prin­ciple; depart­ments that had appar­ently not been involved before got involved, the State Monu­ment Council—a body I had nev­er heard of before—was asked for its opin­ion and referred the mat­ter back to the monu­ment pre­ser­va­tion author­it­ies, who asked me to sub­mit a new pro­ject descrip­tion with visu­al­iz­a­tions that would more clearly show the effect on the “Munich after 1945” ensemble…

So the cent­ral loc­a­tion in the old town has its pit­falls. Nev­er­the­less, the loc­a­tion remains ideal for the monu­ment in terms of con­tent, in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of the Lit­er­at­urhaus, with its con­nec­tion to lit­er­at­ure and in par­tic­u­lar its “pat­ron saint” Thomas Mann. I had also designed the monu­ment spe­cific­ally for this square, as a gath­er­ing of the signs scattered through­out the city in a cent­ral loc­a­tion, with the tower­ing, light-giv­ing luminar­ies.
At the begin­ning of 2025, the monu­ment pro­tec­tion author­it­ies signaled their fun­da­ment­al agree­ment with the monu­ment, which mani­fes­ted itself in a per­mit for fur­ther (archae­olo­gic­al) excav­a­tions. Now, in accord­ance with the recom­mend­a­tion, the found­a­tions for the lights must be planned to be flat­ter, and tech­nic­al solu­tions must be found for the changed start­ing pos­i­tion. The plan­ning is now con­tinu­ing! Frosch Archi­tects have been on board since May 2025.

I hope that the monu­ment pro­ject will be com­pleted, if not in the Zauber­berg year 2024, then in the Thomas Mann year 2025!

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.

From São Paulo to Munich – Rua Thomas Mann

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. 

Pacific Palisades – Light, Shadow, and Fire

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.

Concept

  • Design, Albert Coers, 2018
  • Visu­al­isa­tion, 2024, Flori­an Froese-Peek

The monu­ment will be inaug­ur­ated on Decem­ber 9, 2025, at 6 p.m. at Sal­vat­or­platz in Munich.

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 Septem­ber-Decem­ber 2025. Archae­olo­gic­al finds at Sal­vat­or­platz in 2024 made it neces­sary to redesign the found­a­tions of the lights.

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 fall 2025.

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.