Thomas Mann House in Nida, Curonian Spit

 

Actually, there were supposed to be two museum visits concerning Thomas Mann on this trip, one in Nida (Lithuania) and one in Lübeck (Germany). Lübeck was home to three Nobel Prize winners: Thomas Mann, Willy Brandt and Günter Grass. Unfortunately, the Buddenbrook House [1] was closed due to renovation work, which is why I was all the more pleased about the visit to the Thomas Mann House in Nida.

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck in 1875 and was a German writer [2]. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. In 1901, the novel “Buddenbrooks” was published, which told the story of a patrician family. Thomas Mann came from the respected Lübeck patrician and merchant family Mann, so you can see a direct connection to the novel. Perhaps also well-known are “The Magic Mountain” (German: Der Zauberberg) and “Death in Venice” (German: Der Tod in Venedig), which I remember better from Visconti's movie [3]. With the beginning of the National Socialist regime in 1933, Mann emigrated to Switzerland and from there to the USA in 1938. He took US citizenship in 1944, but lived in Switzerland again from 1952 until  1955, i.e. his death.

Let us first look at the Curonian Lagoon (German: Kurisches Haff, Lithuanian: Kuršių marios, Russian: Куршский заливund) [4] and the Curonian Spit (German: Kurische Nehrung, Lithuanian: Kuršių nerija, Russian: Куршская коса) [5]. In German, the word "Haff" is used for lagoon, which comes from Middle Low German and is used for the lagoons in the Baltic Sea. The lagoon consists of fresh water, although brackish water can be found at the open connection to the Baltic Sea (near Klaipėda). Freshwater fish are fished, currently more on the Russian side, as the lagoon is a little deeper there and the water is therefore colder (climate change). The lagoon is separated from the Baltic Sea by the spit. The Curonian Spit is 98 km long, of which 46 km are on the Russian side (Kaliningrad) and 52 km belong to Lithuania. The dune is up to 60 m high and at its widest point it measures 3.8 km. Large parts are forested and this is important for the Thomas Mann House.

In his lecture “My Summer House” (German: „Mein Sommerhaus“) [6], Thomas Mann refers to Wilhelm von Humboldt: “I would like to refer here to Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was there and was so impressed by Nidden [now Nida] in particular that he declared that one must have seen this area, just as one must have seen Italy or Spain (“if one does not want to miss an image in one’s soul”).” Thomas Mann and his family fell in love with the summer landscape with the deep blue lagoon, the white coast and the pines that are reminiscent of pine trees. Overall, one had the impression of staying on southern shores. There he had a house built in the local style with a straw or reed roof and a gable with pagan crossed horse heads. Unfortunately, the family was only able to use the house for about five years during the summer.

Look at the boy on the right side, it must be Thomas Mann's son Michael -
I have pictures on which I looked much the same at this age

Today the Thomas Mann Memorial Museum and the Thomas Mann Cultural Center are located there [7]. “The diverse activities of the Thomas Mann Cultural Center are characterized by European thinking, because the care of Thomas Mann's creative legacy in Lithuania shows how highly pan-European values and responsibility for Europe's cultural heritage are valued.”

The Thomas Mann House and surrounding area are worth a visit and I wish we had stayed there longer.

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://buddenbrookhaus.de/
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann
[3] Death in Venice (Italian: Morte a Venezia) is a 1971 historical drama film by Luchino Visconti, starring Dirk Bogarde.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Venice_(film)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonian_Lagoon
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonian_Spit
[6] Der Vortrag „Mein Sommerhaus“ wurde von Thomas Mann bei der Zusammenkunft des Rotary Clubs München am 1.Dezember 1931 gehalten. Erstmals erschienen in: „Beilage zum Wochenbericht IV/22 des Rotary Clubs München“, Dezember 1931. [The lecture “My Summer House” was given by Thomas Mann at the meeting of the Rotary Club Munich on December 1, 1931. First published in: “Supplement to the Weekly Report IV/22 of the Rotary Club Munich”, December 1931.]
[7] https://www.mann.lt/de/einfuhrung/ueber-uns and https://www.mann.lt/en/lets-meet/about-us (The texts are not identical!)

.

Stefan George as presented on POETS The Original

The following text was written for POETS The Original. It didn't contain the pictures.

Yesterday +Jasmine reminded us of Pablo Neruda and I thought of introducing Stefan George, who was born in Büdesheim (Germany) on July 12^th 1868 (150^th  Birthday) and died in Minusio (Switzerland) on December 4^th 1933. But then I didn’t do it because “George's concepts of "the thousand year Reich" and "fire of the blood" were adopted by the NSDAP and incorporated into the party's propaganda” [1]. I never liked the heroism and self-sacrifice in his poetry, not his styled appearance as the master or the George-circle. The Nazi offered George the presidency of the new Academy of Literature, which he refused. He also didn’t attend the pompous 65^th birthday reception, the Nazis had staged, but had been on his way to Switzerland, already fatally ill.

Today I’ve seen an ad while on my way to a shopping mall. The whole story is here: [2]. After 1904 George had his poetry published in a special typography, which is form of grotesque. Grotesque fonts are sans serif – and actually I prefer sans serif fonts myself. The Stefan-George-Grotesque had been styled after his hand writing. His E looked more like an ɛ. Have a look at a facsimile [3]. And have a look at the advertisement here.

So this made me telling you about Stefan George. What can we learn from George? Structure, formalism, symbolism – maybe.

Here’s part of a poem by Stefan George:

„Und übers jahr als sie im dunkel / Einst attich suchte und ranunkel / Da sah man wie sie sank im torf – / Und andere schwuren dass vorm dorf / Sie auf dem mitten weg verschwand .. / Sie liess das knäblein nur als pfand / So schwarz wie nacht so bleich wie lein / Das sie gebar im hornungschein.“ [4]

If you put this text to automatic translation, you’ll get:

"And over the year when she was looking for dark / once attich and ranunculus / There you saw how she sank in the peat - / And others swore that in front of the village / she disappeared in the middle .. / She left the boy only as a pledge / So black as night as pale as linen / Which she gave birth in hornungschein."

Maybe it reads better like this:

“And through the year when she in darkness / Once searched for dane weed and ranunculus / There you saw her as she sank into the peat - / And others sware that before the village / She disappeared in the middle of the path .. / She left the boy child only as a pledge / So black as night so pale as linnen / The she gave birth in February glow."

(schwuren is a lost form, meaning schwörten, so I used sware instead of swore; auf dem mitten weg would be mitten auf dem weg; Hornung is old German for February, old English had hornungsunu)

You can find something here: [5] – only don’t listen to the German, because it’s wrong – automatic reading of a German text assuming it is English. Here’s a song: [6] – good translation, but you can see the difficulties, as some lines are longer than the German one and it should be vice versa.

Is Stefan George important? For a German yes, as he was the first to overcome epigonism at the end of the 19^th century. For the rest of the world, probably not.

Links:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_George

[2] http://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/07/stefan-george-und-die-werbung.html

[3] https://ia802502.us.archive.org/27/items/hymnenpilgerfah00georgoog/hymnenpilgerfah00georgoog.pdf

[4] https://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article179198506/150-Geburtstag-Vergesst-sein-Getue-Lest-Stefan-Georges-Gedichte.html

[5] https://www.poemhunter.com/stefan-anton-george/

[6] https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/2222