On the morning of Palisades, Claudia Gordon quickly accepted that there was only much that she could do to save everything under her watch.
It helps in managing Pacific Palisades that was owned by Thomas Man and Lion Feuchtwanger, the best -selling German writers who moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s as part of The exit from the European intellectuals fleeing the Nazis. They turned their homes into salons for their refugee colleagues and warned the Americans that what happened in their homelands could happen anywhere.
Today, Man House and Villa Aurora, the Fuchtongger House, are the cultural centers that offer residency programs for writers and artists whose work embraces the spirit of their former owners. The fate of the homes was outside the hands of Gordon, as soon as it became clear that the Palisades fire was angry.
She did what she could to save everything else, and coordinate with employees to make sure everyone is evacuated from homes. At Man’s house, one of them grabbed the full work of Goethe, as well as handwritten Man. Gordon and others took some paintings, and Borim was fun from the Renaissance era from the Aurora Villa, but he had to leave thousands of rare books and personal souvenirs.
Again in her home, Gordon took condolences and strength in the life of the two men. I thought in particular about Feuchtwanger, who refused to submit to despair after losing in Germany and France to the Nazis and then building a new life in the United States
“If the worst happens,” Gordon said, “if the worst happens” and burned the home of Man and the Eurra Villa, this is what we should do ” – start again.
We were standing outside the elegant two -storey Thomas Mann house on Friday morning last week. The United States accompanying, the director of the House of Representatives, Oliver Hartmann, and the director of the program, Banu Hares. Inside, high-energy air filters absorb all the toxic substances that left the fire-the only damage incurred by the house, which was built in 1942 for Man and his family and on It was purchased by the German government in 2016 To keep it from demolition.
“I have never understood how the surgeon could work for 20 hours,” said Gordon, 55, who has been the director of the Aurora Villa, since 2002 and is also a director of the council. “But now I know how adrenaline works to carry you so far.”
I looked at the sparkling white outward appearance in Man, which had to be cleaned by hand after the fire. “It was never clean,” she said.
This was a great year for the German government’s institutions. Mann House had a completely planned program for his birthday 150 of his name. The Aurora Villa was preparing for the thirtieth anniversary of the residence program. All events have been canceled so far, postponed or hosted in other locations throughout Los Angeles
Man’s house hopes to return his colleagues in May. The Eurora Villa also survived, but it is closed indefinitely because it is waiting for her deep cleaning. But the two structures stand at least. Houses of many European refugees in Man and Feuchtwanger.
A room inside Thomas Man’s house, is now a cultural center. He survived Palisades, but he is still closed because he gets deep cleaning.
(David Bhutto / for times)
Herz, who joined Man’s house when the residence program started in 2018, said that the situation reminds him of long years.
“We are a young Foundation,” 35 -year -old, “but with severe experience in crises.”
In 2023, she contributed in a German language book where the book was asked to think about an advantage in the Man of Man, which spoke to Los Angeles in the modern era, focused on a press statement suspended near the stairs to the Mann Bedroom, which quotes it, saying: “In the depths of depths deeply, the background of a harmonious house is of great importance.”
While he loves the book Mike Davis and Joan Didion The truly cited voices were martyred after the fires of Al -Hadawar and Etone, we must pay attention to Man and Fuchuanger, whose words are especially relevant in an era in which the powerful men are increasing all over the world and people flee from the failed countries.
In his lecture in 1938, “The victory of the next democracy,” Man said, “Even America feels today that democracy is not a guaranteed possession, that it has enemies, and that it is threatened from the inside and without it.”
Meanwhile, Feuchtwanger was criticizing the Nazis early in the twenties of the twentieth century, and reached its climax in a trilogy in Wartesaal (“waiting room”), a group of accounts that followed Hitler’s rise and persecution of the Nazis of Jews and others. This prompted the Nazis to burn Feuchtwanger books and imprison him in France under the Vichy regime.
“There is Thomas Mann, but there is also the political man, pending the discovery of each generation,” said Hartmann from the author, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.
“Lion,” 47 -year -old Hartmann continued, “For him it was very important to face stupidity with the mind.”
He led us around the home of Man, where the workers around us woven with ropes and stairs. The electric tape and spray cans were everywhere. At some point, Gordon has almost entered a plastic sheet closed from the hallway from the living room.
We finished studying Man. Among the books that remained a copy of Senkler Lewis’s novel in 1935 “cannot happen here”, “ Who imagined America is governed by fascism.
“It is always dangerous to draw political similarities between the past and the present, but Man has moved from becoming a fan of FDR to the experience of political transformation to McCarthy.” Ultimately returned to Europe, after the non -American activities committee began in the House of Representatives and the FBI started targeting it.
Gordon added: “The ready -made meals that always remain with me are that things can always change,” Gordon added. “Assad never dared to leave the United States because he was afraid that they would not allow him to return. But he wrote about the lack of compassion for the soul in that.
Abroad, Isaac Rosales, 25, was looking at a bronze plate with the face of Man. I asked if he knew who was Man.
“I assume it is really important,” a Coldon resident in Spanish answered. “we [workers] Always ask ourselves, “Who should be this man?”
Rosalis gave a quick overview, highlighting how Man’s strengthening a community of migrants from the house that Rosalis is now helping him to recover. The Mexico citizen smiled.
“Los Angeles has always been a haven for us, right?” He said.
The charred land shows how near Palisades is to Villa Aurora, the former house of the famous German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, who arrived in Los Angeles after his escape from the Nazi regime.
(David Bhutto / for times)
I and Gordon farewell to Hartmann and Hars, then they moved to the Aurora Villa on the other side of Palisades. Soon the fire was revealed to itself.
A healthy residential complex stood on sunset street from another complex destroyed. Palisades village, whose owner Rick Carroso had hired special firefighters for protectionIt looked frighteningly pure. We passed an inspection point run by the National Guard and LAPD, then we had to stop for 20 minutes on the narrow hill road where a rear was emptied of a flat truck.
The smell of smoke received us when we entered a two -storey villa, a palace It was originally built by Los Angeles Times in 1928 As a house model for a planned neighborhood. Ash covered an open guest book on a page with his last signature on January 6.
Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife, Marta, moved here in 1943.
“He had to show a written testimony that he would not be a burden on taxpayers, just like asylum seekers today.” “Lyon was lucky because he was selling at the time.”
Gordon said that Feuchtwanger is not known in the United States like Man, but it is seen as an important figure in Germany, especially for the frankly opposed Nazis as a Jewish man.
Gordon noticed that, by that time, Marta was a widow, climbing the surface with a hose to save the Aurora Villa During the BEL-AIR 1961 fire.
“They are talking to the ability to maintain strength, in the face of the disaster,” Gordon said.
Pictures of German writers Thomas Man, Lyon Viochwanger and Perertol Brecht Hancht at Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisids’s house owned by Fuchtuneger.
(David Bhutto / for times)
We have made our way to an office on the second floor, which included pictures of Mann, Fuzogger and his colleague in German exile Bertolte Brasht, as well as an amazing vision of the Pacific Ocean. From a balcony, I saw that the slope below was burning to the property line Villa Aurora. The eucalyptus tree is still dead. It will be cut and turned into a piece of art by a former Eurorali colleague to celebrate the Palisades disaster.
“This house has gone there,” Gordon said, pointing to the distance. “The other house went.”
I remained calm.
“We are closed, but we are not closed.” “We are still going.”
