May 2021

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/

On the occasion of the anniversary of the book burning on May 10, 1933, led by the National Socialist German Student Association, the app Survivors of the Book Burning tells the stories of eleven writers who fled Germany after that day and continued their work abroad. The free smartphone app uses their homes and places of work in Berlin, as well as five other locations where the events of the time are thematized, to tell the stories of life in the Weimar Republic, the seizure of power, the harassment and persecution by the National Socialists, their flight abroad and life in exile, the return of some to Germany, and the reception of their works to this day, in a richly illustrated way and through a total of 16 audio pieces. In this way, we would like to demonstrate the topicality of the fates and works recounted and raise awareness of the threat to freedom of expression that still persists worldwide today.

In addition to authors such as Irmgard Keun, Nelly Sachs and Anna Seghers, a special focus lies on authors who spent their exile on the West Coast of the USA, the so-called "Weimar on the Pacific": Vicki Baum, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque and Franz Werfel attempted a new start in Hollywood with more or less success. "Survivors of the Book Burning" tells not only of the personal losses of their exile story, but also of new works created in exile that are still world successes in literature and theater today.

The digital program "Survivors of the Book Burning" will launch on May 9 in German and later this month in English in the berlinHistory app for Android and iOS. The author is the literary and cultural scholar Dr. Thomas Schneider. Within the app, the content can be accessed by clicking on the VATMH logo.

• Download at Apple App Store
• Download at Google Play

Online discussion with Mischa Kuball, Lilian Haberer, Steven D. Lavine and Jörn Jacob Rohwer. Introduction: Heike Catherina Mertens / in English

Why is failure a possible and important principle in artistic practice and its teachings? Our guests Steven D. Lavine and Jörn Jacob Rohwer will address this question in conversation with Mischa Kuball and Lilian Haberer. Based on Lavine's experience as long-term president of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts 1988-2017), our guests will connect the teachings of American (private) art schools with those in Germany.

CalArts lived through a long period of insignificance before Steven D. Lavine stepped in and led it to financial prosperity and international renown. Today, the art school is a cradle for Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winners, for Mellon and Guggenheim Fellows: a hotspot of U.S. creativity.

Background and starting point to this discussion is the newly published book "Steven D. Lavine. Failure is What It's All About. A Life Devoted to Leadership in the Arts" (Deutscher Kunstbuchverlag) by Villa Aurora alumnus Jörn Jacob Rohwer. In this book Lavine tells his personal story for the first time. He talks about cultural politics, philanthropy, the avant-garde, and his life in Los Angeles. Prompted by self-doubt and a desire to fail, he emerges as a subtle thinker, visionary, and transatlantic mediator between the worlds of art, education, and politics.

Jörn Jacob Rohwer is well known for biographical conversations with personalities from art, literature, science, and society - among others with Susan Sontag, Tomi Ungerer, Heinrich Hannover, Hans Keilson, Doris Lessing, George Tabori but also Leni Riefenstahl and Daniel Goldhagen or Richard Sennett. In 2004 Rohwer was a resident at the Villa Aurora.

The conversation is prompted by the just-published biography of former CalArts president Steven D. Lavine, written by Villa Aurora alumnus Jörn Jacon Rohwer: Jörn Jacob Rohwer / Steven D. Lavine. Failure is What It's All About. A Life Devoted to Leadership in the Arts. Deutscher Kunstbuchverlag, 2021. ISBN: 978-3-422-98155-3, Price: 34,90 € [D].

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic require the balancing of moral and legal goods. Protection against infection and care for vulnerable groups must be weighed against other goods such as freedom of assembly, the right to education and the right to freedom of religion. Making appropriate trade-offs is part of political negotiation processes. Within federal democracies, but also at the international level, very different results are achieved. For example, different regulations apply in Berlin than in Los Angeles. And while personal freedom of action and individual responsibility are emphasized in Sweden and in individual U.S. states, many other countries prioritize the protection of the weakest and rely on mandatory collective measures.

Constitutional law scholar and Thomas Mann Fellow Christoph Möllers (Humboldt University of Berlin) will be in conversation with philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) and political scientist Simone Chambers (University of California Irvine). What ethical and legal conflicts are significant for corona policies in Germany and the United States? And what can be learned from these conflicts for a democratic renewal? The conversation will be moderated by Georg Diez. Diez is a writer and long-time journalist working for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Die Zeit and as a political columnist for Spiegel Online He is the editor-in-chief of The New Institute.

Livestream on May 22, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. (PST).

Watch here.

Free admission.

Thomas Mann's book Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918) bears witness to how the bourgeois writer Thomas Mann became a fierce advocate of the German cause and a voice of the völkisch German right during the First World War. While the title of the book, published in 1918, suggests a flight from the political, the years of World War I represent the beginning of Thomas Mann's checkered life as a political writer.

Historian Mark Lilla and publicist Thea Dorn will discuss how Thomas Mann went from being a staunch anti-democrat to a champion of the Weimar Republic and what we can learn from this to counter current polarizing tendencies. Edwin Frank (New York Review Books) will moderate the event.

In May 2021, New York Review Books will publish Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man as part of their NYRB Classics edition with an introduction by Mark Lilla.

Livestream on May 23, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. (PST).

Please register here.

Free admission.