Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles

Stories from Exile 1940–1952

edited by Nikolai Blaumer and Benno Herz / illustrations by Jon Stich

After fleeing Nazi Germany, writer and Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Mann took refuge with his family in the Pacific Palisades, a quiet residential neighborhood in Los Angeles nestled not far from the Pacific Ocean. Mann was one of many European intellectuals who fled to Los Angeles, forming a community of exiles known as “Weimar on the Pacific.” Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles: Stories from Exile 1940–1952 explores Mann’s relationships to the city and the network he found there: writers including Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, and a young Susan Sontag; Hollywood luminaries like Jack Warner, Carl Laemmle, Max Reinhardt, and Ernst Lubitsch; and musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. In addition to the cultural and political life of the city, Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles explores how the formidable Mann adapted to life as an Angeleno, enjoying the city’s many beaches, dining out at the Brown Derby, visiting the Hollywood Bowl, and taking walks through the neighborhood with his poodle, Niko. Short essays on each topic, written by forty-three experts on the subject, provide fascinating insight into Mann’s life in exile.

Among the many contributors and their subjects are:

Alex Ross on Theodor Adorno
Lawrence Weschler on Ernst Toch
Donna Rifkind on Salka Viertel
William Kinderman on Bruno Walter
Rembert Hüser on Mann’s poodle, Niko
...

Details:

208 pages
175+ images
9"h x 9"w
hardcover; ISBN 978-1-62640-112-9; $40.00

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