thomas
mann Museum
Contacts
Address: Skruzdynės g. 17, LT-93123, Neringa.
Tel./fax (+370 ~ 469) 52 260.
E-mail: mann@mann.lt
Thomo Mann Culture Centre
http://www.mann.lt/
Director – Vitalija Teresė Jonušienė.
Information for Visitor
Opening hours:
1 June to 15 September:
Monday to Sunday 10–18.
15
September to 1 June:
Tuesday to Sunday 10–17.
Admission:
adults – 6 Lt (1,74 €);
pupils and students – 3 Lt (0,87 €).
Guided tours
adults (Lithuanian language) – 15 Lt (4,34 €);
adults (foreign language) – 30 Lt (8,69 €);
pupils and students – 10 Lt (2,90 €).
Additional services:
guided tours on Lithuanian, Russian, English and German language.
Collection
Museum's collection is made up of photos, books, and copies of documents
reflecting life and works of T. Mann.
No authentic items have remained in the Museum.
Exposition
Exposition of Thomas Mann Museum "Thomas Mann's Life and Creativity
Pages" is made up of three parts:
Thomas Mann's Biography
This exposition part is illustrated with photos, document duplicates and
books.
Thomas Mann and Nida
Exposition materials connected with T. Mann's spending summers in Nida.
Photos and newspapers cutting are shown, which published interviews in Nida
with T. Mann.
Thomas Mann and Lithuania
This part of exposition helps open T. Mann's relationship with Lithuania.
Relating the history about T. Mann's summer house in Nida, announcing this
building's memorial place, memorial museum, creation of T. Mann Cultural
Center.
Publications connected with T. Mann's works are exhibited.
There is a prospective of enlarging the exhibit in the near future.
Exhibitions
Literature and art exhibits are being arranged at the museum.
Cultural, educational activity
Organizing literature evenings.
Organizing seminars.
Organizing chamber music concerts.
Thomas
Mann
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) came to Nida on holiday and so liked the area that
he built a summer house there to which his family came every year in the
early 1930s.
He spoke out against the fanaticism which was spreading through Germany. He
was in Switzerland when Hitler became chancellor, and his family advised him
not to return. Later he went to work in America. After the war he returned
to Europe, but never returned to Germany to live.
Thomas Mann is probably best known for the novel Dr Faustus (1947) and the
novella Death in Venice (1912). He wrote many more novels, and also essays
on politics, music, literature and philosophy.
In his fiction he wrote, often critically, about the middle classes. His
first novel tells the story of the decline of a family which dabbles in the
arts and as a consequence loses the vitality that had once made it rich. In
1929 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Many people call him the
greatest German novelist of the 20th century.
He married the daughter of a Munich professor in 1905 and, despite the
gloominess of his writing, it appears to have been a very happy marriage.
Their old house in Nida is superbly positioned among pine trees above the
Curonian Lagoon. It is not difficult to imagine how much the family (they
had six children) must have enjoyed the summers there.
The house is now a museum with information about the writer's work. It is
also a venue for conferences and music recitals.
Nida
Nida, seaside resort on the Courish Spit (Kuršiu nerija), 45 km south of
Klaipeda.
Archaeological findings show that people have lived in the area since the
Neolithic period (ca 3 500 BC). They were the ancestors of the Balts who in
time gave rise to the Lithuanians, Prussians, and Latvians. In the 13th
century the Courish Spit, a sandy peninsula, was conquered by the Teutonic
Order. Their chronicles first mention Nida in 1437.
Formerly Nida was further from the shores of the Courish Lagoon. The village
moved to its present location in 1732 when the original site was covered by
drifting sand. A lighthouse was erected in 1745 on a dune 51-m high, and in
1787–1788 a church was built. The old houses of the fishermen, decorated in
typical Lithuanian folk fashion, have survived to the present.
After Lithuania regained the Klaipeda region in 1923, Nida grew in size and
developed as a resort. A post office was opened a school and veterans'
hospital was built, and the Neringa Museum was established. The resort
attracted tourists and vacationers not only from Lithuania but also from
Germany.
Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize, had a house built in the Lithuanian
style and vacationed there in the summers of 1930–1932.
The Curonian Spit and its residential centre Nida are known as the Mecca of
holidaymakers in Lithuania. However, the number of people arriving within
the region is strictly limited, since the picturesque scenery is too fragile
to take a massive influx of tourists.
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