Seven Palms: The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades reconstructs the Los Angeles exile of one of the twentieth century's great literary figures, tracing the decade Thomas Mann and his family spent in wartime America through the house that sheltered them.
About This Book
Between 1942 and 1952, Thomas Mann lived in a house in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles — a period of creative productivity shaped by displacement and political urgency. Francis Nenik's archival research draws out not only the Mann family's story but also the largely unrecorded lives of the people who built and worked in the house, restoring a fuller cast of characters to the historical record. Sebastian Stumpf's photographs, taken in January 2017 when the property sat vacant following its purchase by the German government, document the house in a peculiar threshold state: stripped of its famous occupants, yet on the verge of institutional preservation. Together, text and image create a layered portrait of domestic exile, cultural memory, and architectural heritage.
Key Features
- 320 pages of archival narrative history and contemporary documentary photography
- Text by Francis Nenik; photographs by Sebastian Stumpf
- Published by Spector, 2017
What You'll Discover
- The social history of the house's construction and domestic staff, recovered through archival research and largely absent from prior accounts of the Mann exile
- How a house reads — or fails to read — as a site of historical significance once its famous inhabitants have departed, captured in Stumpf's photographs of an emptied interior
- The German government's acquisition and preservation of the property, situating the house within a contemporary politics of cultural memory and national heritage
- The interplay between literary biography and architectural place — how a specific domestic environment shaped and was shaped by one of the most important periods in twentieth-century German literature
About the Author
Francis Nenik is the author of the historical narrative, drawing on extensive archival research to reconstruct the story of the Thomas Mann house and its occupants. Sebastian Stumpf is a photographer whose images of the vacant Pacific Palisades property were taken in January 2017, providing a contemporary visual record of the house at the moment of its transition to government ownership.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 320
- Dimensions: 230 x 175 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783959053358
- Publisher: Spector
- Publication Date: 2017
Perfect For: Architects, historians, and cultural theorists interested in the intersections of domestic space, exile, and memory; readers drawn to literary biography with a strong sense of place; those working on preservation, heritage, and the politics of cultural sites.