Thomas Mann House Events Archive
April 2021
Europeans in Exile: Thomas Mann’s L.A.
Los Angeles
Information
Thomas Mann was one of many European artists and intellectuals who made Los Angeles their new home in the 1930s and 40s. This seminar will examine Mann's connections to the city and his network of intellectuals with whom he was in dialogue, including sociologists Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, writers such as Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley, composers Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, and filmmakers Ernst Lubitsch and Jean Renoir.
The seminar will be led by Professor Wendy Perla Kurtz and Anthony Caldwell, Assistant Director of the Digital Research Consortium at UCLA, and offered by Nikolai Blaumer, Program Director of the Thomas Mann House, and Benno Herz, Project and Communications Manager at the Thomas Mann House. Through readings, workshops, and discussions, students will connect practices in digital humanities to the subjects of the course.
For more information visit: https://dh.ucla.edu/undergradcourses/
Partners
The Seminar is a cooperation between the UCLA Digital Humanities Department and the Thomas Mann House.
Counter-Memories
Online
Info
In the United States, Germany, and throughout the world, citizens are questioning conventional historical narratives and reflecting on the meanings and implications of public monuments. Recent protests and interventions around statues of Confederate generals and figures such as Columbus and Bismarck reflect a yearning to correct and critically re-examine dominant histories and their ongoing legacies in the present.
Starting on October 12, 2020, the conversation series Counter-Memories will investigate a number of international monuments and places of remembrance whose symbolic significance often reveals a great deal about our relationship to history. The Thomas Mann House, the Goethe-Institutes in North America, and Onassis LA will convene artists, activists, and intellectuals for illustrated virtual conversations around historical memory.
Counter-Memories is a cooperation between the Goethe-Institutes North-America, the Onassis Foundation Los Angeles and the Thomas Mann House in collaboration with the project “Shaping the Past.”
Previous Episodes
Episode 6 – Ada Pinkston & Angela N. Carroll | Baltimore
The Green Book was established by African-Americans in search of spaces for freedom of movement against a backdrop of white supremacist Jim Crowe policies throughout the U.S. When the Green Book was most circulated, Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland was an energetic hub of African-American arts, culture and entertainment. Artists Ada Pinkston and Angela N Carroll examine the contrast between the cultural vibrancy of this past moment and the lack of resources of this present day.
Watch on YouTube
Episode 5 – Susan Neiman & Paul Holdengräber| Berlin
Philosopher Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum, joins Paul Holdengräber for a conversation about the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park. The monument was erected in 1949 in memory of the thirteen million fallen soldiers of the Soviet Union who gave their lives fighting fascism. On the anniversary of the end of World War II, people commemorate their fallen loved ones there. But despite its monumental size, it has little presence in the collective consciousness of the German capital.
Watch on YouTube
Episode 4 – Veka Duncan & Elianna Kan| Mexico City
The art historian Veka Duncan and author Elianna Kan discuss the Tlatelolco district in Mexico City. After the severe earthquake in 1985, the residents erected a sundial to commemorate the victims. The history of Tlatelolco resembles a palimpsest: historical events have left their traces, and in turn have been covered over by other events but never completely obliterated. Their conversation revolves around collective memory, the appropriation of public space and public remembrance beyond state intervention.
Watch on YouTube
Episode 3 – Mischa Kuball & Paul Holdengräber| Stommeln
The synagogue in Stommeln is one of the few places of public Jewish life in Germany that was not destroyed during the 1938 pogroms. In order to create a new perception and attention among the population, the conceptual artist and professor of public art Mischa Kuball illuminated the synagogue over a period of eight weeks. In a conversation with curator Paul Holdengräber, he takes us to the synagogue and tells us the almost forgotten history of this special place.
Watch on YouTube
Episode 2 – Glenn North, Staci Pratt & Amira El Ahl | Kansas City
This episode focuses on the Levi Harrington Memorial Marker in Kansas City. Harrington was the victim of a racial terror lynching in Kansas City in 1882. To this day, efforts to create a memorial for him are met with denial and vandalism. Poet and activist Glenn North, Staci Pratt (Equal Justice Initiative, Community Remembrance Project of Missouri) and journalist Amira El Ahl discuss how to rectify a lack of recognition of lynching and racial conflict in Missouri.
Watch on YouTube
Episode 1 – Paul Holdengräber & Joel Garcia | Los Angeles
The series started on "Indigenous People's Day," a holiday that is meant to commemorate the history of Native Americans. Curator Paul Holdengräber talked with artist Joel Garcia about the Serra statue in Los Angeles. A statue in honor of Juniper Serra, who was instrumental in building the California mission system during the Spanish colonization. The statue was removed by activists in June 2020.
Watch on YouTube
Partner
Counter-Memories is a cooperation between the Thomas Mann House, the Goethe-Institutes North-America, the Onassis Foundation Los Angeles and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung in collaboration with the project “Shaping the Past.”
"Last Letters: The Prison Correspondence between Helmut James and Freya von Moltke"
Online
Info
Tegel prison, Berlin, in the fall of 1944. Helmuth James von Moltke is awaiting trial for his leading role in the Kreisau Circle, one of the most important German resistance groups against the Nazis. By a near miracle, the prison chaplain at Tegel is Harald Poelchau, a friend and coconspirator of Helmuth and his wife, Freya. From Helmuth’s arrival at Tegel in late September 1944 until the day of his execution by the Nazis on January 23, 1945, Poelchau would carry Helmuth’s and Freya’s letters in and out of prison daily, risking his own life. Freya would safeguard these letters for the rest of her long life.
Dorothea and Johannes von Moltke, grandchildren of Helmuth James von Moltke and his wife, Freya, discuss their 2019 book Last Letters: The Prison Correspondence Between Helmuth James and Freya von Moltke 1944-45. The book is a profoundly personal record of the couple’s love, faith, resistance, and courage in the face of fascism.
Participants
Dorothea von Moltke received her PhD in German literature from Columbia University. She is a co-owner of Labyrinth Books in Princeton and has a sustained engagement with social justice issues, particularly through building libraries in New Jersey prisons and, most recently, through Princeton Mutual Aid.
Johannes von Moltke received his PhD in Literature from Duke University. He is a Professor at the University of Michigan, where he is jointly appointed in German Studies and Film, TV & Media. Professor von Moltke is a member of the Michigan Society of Fellows, Vice President of the American Friends of Marbach, and Past President of the German Studies Association. At Michigan, he has served as the organizer of the biannual German Film Institute.
Partner
The Event is presented by USC Max Kade Institute's Lecture Series Exile and Resistance in cooperation with Thomas Mann House, Goethe Pop Up Seattle, USC Libraries and the Elliott Bay Book Company.
