Haven of Exile Becomes One of Exchange

Filmmaker Christian Frosch is winding up his residency at Villa Aurora, a hilltop mansion in Pacific Palisades that has housed the Foundation for European-American Relations for the past 4 1/2 years. His stay in Los Angeles has heightened his sense of Austrian identity, he says--and his awareness of his country’s past.

“You look at yourself through others’ eyes,” says the 34-year-old Frosch, sipping coffee with colleagues in the villa’s library. “And given our history, your self-image can’t be purely positive. I’ve witnessed the impact of fascism--on the German movie industry, for instance. The loss of talent in the ‘30s and ‘40s left a massive hole.”

Acknowledging that loss and the corresponding emigre contribution to Southern California is part of the mission of Villa Aurora. So is keeping the exiles’ spirit of cultural interchange alive. Supported primarily by German government funding, the villa is a working retreat for European writers, composers, filmmakers and visual artists who share their output and ideas with the local community through screenings, exhibitions, readings and panel discussions such as the annual American-European Film Talk symposium.

The site--a graceful, Spanish-flavored structure located at 520 Paseo Miramar--was the inspiration for the project. Built in 1927 as a “Los Angeles Times demonstration home” featuring the latest in modern technology, it was purchased by German emigre novelist and playwright Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife, Marta, in 1943. Given its remote location, the wartime gas shortage and the state of disrepair, the property sold for $9,000--a bargain price, even then. It soon became a cultural hub of an area dubbed “Weimar by the Sea.”

The Feuchtwangers, both Jews, had fled the Nazis in 1933, taking refuge in Southern France. Seven years later, when they arrived in Los Angeles, a sizable exile community was already in place. Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger and Billy Wilder were here, as were conductor Otto Klemperer and composers Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Feuchtwanger was a leading historical novelist of his time who explored ancient Rome and Jerusalem in his Josephus trilogy and personalities ranging from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Ben Franklin in his biographies.

“It was the greatest diaspora in European cultural history,” says Cornelius Schnauber, 60, head of USC’s Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss studies. “Hitler destroyed German culture, and the Jewish emigres carried it on. They came here because of the weather--and the film industry. Many of the big names were immediately signed by the studios, while, starting in 1939, others were offered one-year, $100-a-week contracts so they could get visas to the U.S.”

At the villa from 1943 until his death in 1958, Lion Feuchtwanger turned out some of his most important works, including a novel based on Spanish painter Goya. Marta became a doyenne on the L.A. cultural scene, known for her exotic costumes. The couple’s twice-a-year readings and frequent tea parties were attended by Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Aldous Huxley, Bertolt Brecht, philosopher Ludwig Marcuse and composer Hanns Eisler. Charlie Chaplin and, occasionally, Charles Laughton also attended. A pockmarked portrait of Hitler, at which guests threw darts, is still in the villa’s office.

Marta lived in the house until she died in 1987, at age 96. At that point, the property--and its 32,000-volume library of rare books--went to USC, as her husband’s will had specified. Because the Feuchtwangers’ archive--and the deteriorating house--required millions of dollars in upkeep, USC considered selling the property. “The building must be preserved to mark the resilience and vigor of humanism in the face of barbarism,” said an L.A. Times editorial, fueling public opposition to a sale--and the possibility that the house would be destroyed.

Meanwhile, German journalists and politicians were fighting the battle on their own front. Former Chancellor Willy Brandt, novelist Gunter Grass and the current Minister of Culture Michael Naumann lent their support. Closer to home, the Pacific Palisades Historical Society and local artists and intellectuals also weighed in.

A Berlin-based organization, Friends of Villa Aurora, was formed. In 1989, it bought the house from USC, with $1.9 million it had raised. Two years later, with money donated by the Berlin Lottery Foundation, a three-year, $1.6-million renovation got underway. After the villa officially opened in December 1995, the lottery pledged an additional $750,000 as a three-year start-up fund.

The German foreign office now channels $250,000 a year into Villa Aurora programs, while the Berlin Mayor’s office and the federal Cultural Ministry chip in about $75,000 between them. The salary of the Villa’s executive director, Joachim Bernauer, is paid for by the Goethe Institute, a nonprofit organization partially funded by the German government that promotes German culture.

“We have a national obligation to preserve a place like this,” says the 38-year-old Bernauer, a tall, lean former opera singer and arts administrator for the Goethe Institute. “Here, we experience 20th century German history, with its light side--the intellectual richness--and its dark one--the Holocaust. It’s important that we remember what went on.”

At the core of the villa activities is the artists-in-residence program. Last year, 130 artists from all over Europe sent work samples and proposals to selection committees in Berlin. Based on talent and the relevance of their projects to Southern California, 12 to 16 are chosen each year. A monthly stipend of $1,800 is provided for each of the three months of their stay.

The setting is dazzling, the visiting Europeans say. Still, many--in the U.S. for the first time--experience “adjustment pains.”

“I don’t have the money to rent a car, so the Pacific Palisades is too isolating,” says poet Gunter Herburger, 67. “I feel like I’m in a [cultural] desert, which is OK, since I’m writing a story set in the Sahara.”

Photographer Thomas Florschuetz, 42, is another villa resident. Though he specializes in sculptural pictures of curtains and flowers, he has asked to shoot a video of the Universal Studios back lot before heading home. His main challenge? Wending his way through the Los Angeles traffic, “which makes everything take three times as long as it should,” he says.

To make the villa a truly “European American” affair, Bernauer would like to add Americans into the mix. In fact, the most recent crop contained an American-born filmmaker, Jan Ralske, who has lived in Berlin since 1983, when he left to study film. Currently writing a screenplay with Frosch, he had his “Not a Love Song” (winner of the 1997 German film critics award) screened at the Directors Guild in March.

“Everyone needs a kick in the ass--a creative boost,” observes the 40-year-old Ralske, “and the villa takes you out of your normal frame of reference. I also like that this is a place where people live and work--not just a memorial.”

The next batch of artists, composer Harald Muenz, writer-playwright Klaus Chatten and visual artist Charlie Kurz, is scheduled to arrive this week.

Each year, the villa also awards a 10-month “scholarship” to a writer persecuted in his or her home country. The literary group PEN Center USA West helps select the recipient, who lives in quarters provided by the Getty Research Institute.

Reaching out to local institutions and Jewish groups is part of the villa’s mission. In 1996, the group collaborated with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on an exile art exhibition. Screenings and lectures are held at venues that include the DGA, UCLA and CalArts.

To heighten Holocaust awareness, the villa helped create a video last year based on farewell letters of concentration camp victims and resistance fighters. The English version (read by Ben Kingsley) was presented at the house in October. A month ago, Villa Aurora co-hosted a round-table with the American Jewish Committee. Local Jewish leaders and German politicians voiced concern about the rise of right-wing elements in Austria and elsewhere before sitting down to a kosher lunch.

“I was warned that this wasn’t an easy landscape--that, given the history, the Jewish community might not be interested in collaborating with Germans,” says Bernauer. “‘So far, however, it has been very receptive.”

Bernauer says this is just the beginning--that the villa’s potential has yet to be tapped.

“I’d like to expand it into a think tank, with conferences and research exploring the exile period,” he says. “Fifty-five years have passed since those artists congregated here--and so little has been documented. Part of the challenge is to get Los Angeles involved. This is a future-oriented city that rarely focuses on the past.”

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Sampling Villa Aurora’s Spring Program

April 17: Concert with German double bass player Peter Kowald, woodwind player Vinny Golia, and dancer Cheryl Banks. Ace Gallery, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Tickets: $10 at the door (no reservations required).

May 14: Concert featuring works from composer-in-residence Harald Muenz. CalArts Central Gallery, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia. 2 p.m.

June 6: Reading/panel discussion “End of the Millennium--End of the Literary Age?,” part of the American-German Writers Conference. Los Angeles Public Library, 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles. 7 p.m.

June 15: Readings from the work of Bulgarian-Jewish Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, at Villa Aurora, 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades. 7:30 p.m.

Reservations required: (310) 454-4231.