The Los Angeles Times recently highlighted Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger's Villa Aurora in an article on L.A.’s “German accent." The German-Jewish couple settled in the 6,000 square-foot Pacific Palisades house after escaping from Europe and persecution by the Nazis in 1941. The villa soon became a hub of cultural fellowship among public intellectuals and fellow émigrés, including Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann. The villa was also featured in an earlier story by Paul K. Sholar on Examiner.com.
After her husband's death, Marta Feuchtwanger donated the couple's 30,000 volume library to the University of Southern California to create the Lion Feuchtwanger Memorial Library. Eight thousand of the rarest books are now housed at USC, but the rest remain at Villa Aurora.
This summer, the USC Libraries are releasing a refined English-language translation of Feuchtwanger's The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940. In conjunction with the book release, the libraries will host two Visions and Voices events as part of the series, "Enemy Number One": Lion Feuchtwanger and the Literature of Exile, in the coming months:
Panel Discussion
Wednesday, September 29, 12:00 p.m.
Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, 2nd floor
Doheny Memorial Library
Tour and Performance at Villa Aurora
Tuesday, October 26
Buses leave campus at 12:00 p.m. and return at 5:00 p.m.
RSVP required
Contact Michaela Ullmann at ullmann@usc.edu or 213-740-8185 for more information.