Martin Mittelmeier: Heimweh im Paradies

Thomas Mann in California

Los Angeles in the 1940s: The West Coast is a dream place, the exiles from Europe cannot believe their senses, the play of colors, the light, the sea. All those who no longer have or want a home in Nazi Germany are stranded here: Arnold Schönberg, Vicki Baum, Theodor W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Helene Weigel, Max Horkheimer, Hanns Eisler, Franz and Alma Werfel - and above all: Thomas Mann. They celebrate, talk their heads off, get bored, argue about what a democratic Germany after Hitler might look like. Thomas Mann is the king of émigrés, admired, envied, hostile. In his house in Pacific Palisades, he wants to bring the genuinely German roots of National Socialism to light in 'Doctor Faustus'. And takes on the role of a figurehead of good Germany.
Martin Mittelmeier tells the story of the hopes, encounters, hostilities and triumphs of the Nobel Prize winner, who asks himself under palm trees what it is and how it could work: to be German, to make art and to love people.

"How can you write about Thomas Mann today? Like this: witty, funny and with casual seriousness." SAŠA STANIŠIĆ

MARTIN MITTELMEIER, born in 1971, was an editor and program manager at renowned publishing houses. He has worked as a freelance editor and author since 2014. In 2019, he was a visiting scholar at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is also an honorary professor at the Institute for Modern German Literature at the University of Cologne. His most recent publication is 'Freiheit und Finsternis - Wie die Dialektik der Aufklärung zum Jahrhundertbuch wurde' (2021).