Thomas Mann Piano Returns to Pacific Palisades

By LILY TINOCO | Reporter

After nearly 70 years, the Mann family’s Wheelock baby grand piano has found its way back into its former home.

The Thomas Mann House commemorated the return of Thomas Mann’s piano on Saturday, October 16, with an in-house celebration and concert.

A donation from his grandson Frido Mann, the piano now sits outside of Thomas Mann’s study, where it had been between 1944 and 1951 before he and his family left to their home on Lake Zurich in Switzerland.

Nikolai Blaumer, program director of the Thomas Mann House, said the piano was influential for Mann during the time that he worked on his novel “Doctor Faustus,” a novel that unveils thematic threads of music and art in society. Mann also improvised on Wagner’s “Tristan” chord on the instrument.

Blaumer said the piano remained in the Switzerland house where Katia Mann, Thomas’ wife, lived until her death. Mann’s grandson Frido inherited the gift and it followed him from Switzerland, through Italy and Germany. Frido then donated the heirloom to the Federal Republic of Germany, which funds the Thomas Mann House.

“Out of gratitude for the German government’s acquisition and rededication of Thomas Mann’s former California exile home into a site of transatlantic dialogue in the service of democracy and peace, I have returned this historically symbolic and at the same time forward-looking instrument to its original home as a gift to the federal government,” Frido said in a statement.

Blaumer said Frido attended the event on Saturday and was “delighted” to return to a place where he spent a part of his childhood. Although he and his family lived in Northern California at the time, they would spend their summers in Pacific Palisades. Now, he lives as a freelance writer in Munich.

Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann House had the grand piano overhauled with the support of the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung, and it was inaugurated at the house by Igor Levit on Saturday evening.

Blaumer said Levit is one of the most renowned pianists worldwide: He has been named Musical America’s Recording Artist of the Year, Gramophone Classical Music Awards Artist of the Year and, in November 2020, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. He has also been recognized with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

“He’s … from Russia but grew up in Germany and is not only an outstanding musician but also an influential public intellectual in Germany and other European countries,” Blaumer said about Levit. “He’s very outspoken … So Frido Mann thought there [was] no more fitting person to re-inaugurate this instrument because it’s not only about music but also about the social and political circumstances in the background behind it: the time of Thomas Mann in the 1940s and … the fight against fascism in Germany … music and every performance is connected to broader social and political issues.”

Michelle Müntefering, minister of state at the Federal Foreign Office, then accepted the donation from Frido on-site.

“Places like the Thomas Mann House are essential to meet the global challenges we face,” she said about the donation. “I’m sure Thomas Mann would have been pleased that his grand piano is now returning to this special place.”

“A highlight of the year,” Blaumer said about the event to the Palisadian-Post. “We [have] received a lot of donations so far … we’re always looking forward to receiving donations of manuscripts and books that belonged to the Manns’, and who knows? Maybe there will be even more objects that return to Pacific Palisades.”