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.