Thomas Mann House Events

Generations, Class, and Collapse—What We Owe Each Other

December 4, 2025 7:00 pm

Thomas Mann House (1550 N San Remo Drive, CA 90272)

Language: English ・ By invitation only

Info

Join us at the Thomas Mann House for a lively conversation with bestselling-author and journalist George Packer and Thomas Mann Fellow Sandra Kegel, journalist and head of the feuilleton at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

In his new novel The Emergency (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), George Packer turns from his prizewinning nonfiction to fiction, creating a gripping story of collapse, rebellion, and the search for renewal. An empire has fallen not through conquest but through exhaustion and loss of belief in itself. In the turmoil that follows, new social factions emerge, families fracture, and individuals are forced to ask what bonds, across generations, classes, and communities, can still hold in a time of upheaval. His new book brings us into the heart of questions that resonate far beyond its imagined world: What do we owe one another when societies fall apart? At the Thomas Mann House, Packer will discuss his novel and its broader implications with 2025 Thomas Mann Fellow Sandra Kegel, literary critic, journalist, and author. Their conversation will not only illuminate the literary world of The Emergency, but will also engage pressing contemporary concerns: the decline of trust in democratic institutions, the fragility of public discourse, and the possibilities for solidarity across the divides of class, generation, and geography. In line with the Thomas Mann House 2025 annual theme, “Across Boundaries,” the conversation will explore how divisions within our societies might be bridged and how interdisciplinary and creative approaches can foster more accessible democratic dialogue.

Participants

Sandra Kegel

Sandra Kegel studied literature, theater, film and media studies in Aix-en-Provence, Vienna and Frankfurt. She has been an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1999. She worked in the media and literature departments for many years and has been head of the FAZ features section since 2019. She also works as a juror and presenter and is a regular critic on the literary program “Buchzeit” (3sat). In 2005, she was awarded the Ravensburg Media Prize.

George Packer

George Packer is an award-winning author and a staff writer at The Atlantic. He has written many books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award) and, most recently, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. He is also the author of two previous novels and a play, and is the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell.

What is Home? An Interactive Workshop

December 13, 2025

Los Angeles Poverty Department (250 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90012)

Language: English ・ By invitation only

Info

This workshop explores our need of belonging, especially in times when our sense of “home” has grown fragile—because of uncertain futures, voluntary exile, forced displacements, or natural disasters. What is home or the loss of home for us? And what has it been for generations before us who made their home in a new place/country? In this interactive workshop, participants are invited to explore these questions together in a setting where we talk about and focus on these issues in open conversations and through non-verbal components and movement. No prior expertise is required—just an openness to explore a difficult issue in a supportive and creative setting.

Participants

Susanne Beyer

Susanne Beyer studied German literature, history and journalism in Bamberg and Vienna. After her vocational training at Deutsche Journalistenschule (DJS), she initially worked as a culture editor at SPIEGEL, a German weekly news magazine and one of the largest such publications in Europe, where she was deputy head of department. She was deputy editor-in-chief of SPIEGEL for four years, then worked as a journalist in SPIEGEL's Berlin office and now writes for the editorial team. Alongside her job, Susanne Beyer is currently training to become a mediator. Beyer is a 2025 Thomas Mann Fellow.

Bjorn Krondorfer

Bjorn Krondorfer has worked with different groups in interactive settings exploring sensitive issues, including memory and trauma relating to the Holocaust, racial diversity on university campuses, and Palestinian/Israeli encounter groups (pre-October 5). He is Regents’ Professor and Director of the Martin-Springer Institute at Northen Arizona University in Flagstaff.

Los Angeles Poverty Department

Los Angeles Poverty Department, founded in 1985 by director, performer, and activist John Malpede, is the first arts organization in the nation created by and with people experiencing homelessness, and the first cultural program of any kind for Skid Row, Los Angeles. Rooted in the conviction that the imagination and creativity of Skid Row residents are vital forces for change, LAPD uses theater and other arts to challenge stereotypes, amplify community voices, and address pressing social issues such as housing, drug policy, mass incarceration, and displacement. Through performances, festivals, parades, exhibitions, and its Skid Row History Museum & Archive, LAPD celebrates the resilience and achievements of neighborhood residents while shaping broader policy conversations around poverty and urban development. Its pioneering work has inspired service providers, informed public policy, and created a model for grassroots, arts-based civic engagement recognized nationally and internationally.