Thomas Mann's Summerhouse at Nida, Lithuania

The Watcher, Klaipeda sculpture

 
I head up to Vytautis, Palanga’s main street. Every Lithuanian city that I have seen has a Vytautis street as he was a famous historical figure, Grand Duke of Lithuania, back in the middle ages.

In Renžes gatve there's the scent of lilies. All streets as far as I can see, have wide pavements, big enough for pedestrians and cyclists, though the main streets like Vytautis have cycle lanes. But there is only one other person walking up Renžes in front of me and he too turned off Vytautis at the white building which is clearly a restaurant as you can see the stacked chairs and tables through the windows, but this is not an open restaurant because it is not yet ‘the season’.

The sun shines and the air tastes like honey and the big white building with the curved rounded corners in the art deco style  has a name like Karpo so I have called it the carpe diem building and it's my landmark, where to turn off for the most direct and enjoyable route to the bus station, part of it is pedestrianised and it is flanked by trees or house gardens and at one point there is a grassy park with trees, all parks here have trees, and a small river, and it lifts the heart in sunshine with the trees and bushes all shimmering in green and flowers and blossoms in pink and red. 

All around these parks and flowerbeds there are the gardeners at work, not this morning it's too early but later in the day they are to be seen at work, tending, weeding, pruning and clearing. For all those parks and trees and flowerbeds, an army of gardeners are needed.

Klaipeda. I like the feeling of this town even more in morning light. Walking up over the bridge to reach the ferry there are bright red brick buildings in front of me. Klaipeda seems to specialise in this deep red colour which goes so well with the blue of sky. It used to be part of East Prussia, and it seems to have retained, if not the buildings, something of the style, the atmosphere.

Donelaičio gatve is an alleyway of lime trees, pale green in the morning sun. A glass fronted building reflects the one opposite in Vytauto gatve and I head along the main boulevard to reach the Old Ferry Terminal. 

I later find that there is a more pleasant route with less traffic and that is to go through the Old Town, along Turgaus gatve then through Theatre Square, when you simply have to cross the road and go over the bridge, then walk to the Terminal. This is one of the important things about getting to know a city or area – finding the best way from A to B, the scenic routes, the alternative routes, the shortcuts, the little-known back alleys. When you know where you are going, that’s when a city becomes yours or you become part of it, that’s when I feel we have connected, there is a relationship, we are no longer strangers.

The ferry crossing to the Curonian Spit only takes a few minutes. A bus is waiting. But that’s when the driver tells me that there is eine Stunde Pause, and I walk along the lagoon promenade then sit on a bench and watch the boats moving through the water. There are not many, although there is a huge one parked at a different terminal, where ferries sail to Germany and Sweden and Denmark. All along the shoreline on the mainland as far as I can see, there are port buildings, chunky windowless blocks, sheds and storage units and slender, elegant cranes to lift cargo from ship to shore.

The bus leaves shortly after midday, picking up a few passengers from the next ferry which has just come in. And we drive along a narrow road through a forest, trees on either side, mainly pine but a few birch. This affinity with trees must be Lithuania’s greatest gift. They have not separated from nature in the way some other countries have. They have not waged war on it or exploited it, they have adapted, shared. We are surrounded by trees, almost covered, as they meet overhead and form a canopy.

At Nida I acquire a map. The house of Thomas Mann, now a museum, is clearly marked about 1 kilometre away, with a paved pathway alongside the water.

There are few people around. Some ongoing restorations of houses, some of which have thickly-thatched roofs, but apart from the builders and roofers, only a couple of young people on bicycles go past on the walk. The streets, pavements, walkways and cycleways, gardens – all are immaculate – but there are few people. Of course, as the young man at the ticket counter in the museum says, it is not the season, not yet, once that comes there will be many visiting groups. But I’m thinking of local people. I later see a couple of young women pushing prams. But where are all the others, the people who live in these sumptuous houses?

I wonder what Thomas Mann would think if he knew that so many people were to come to his house now, the house he chose, that he was enabled to buy with the Nobel prize money, that he and Katia furnished and decorated themselves, and was lost to them once the Nazi regime was installed in Germany in 1933.

Upper part of Thomas Mann's former house at Nida

Thomas Mann spoke out against the regime and was rewarded apparently, according to the audio guide, by being sent an anonymous parcel containing the ashes of one of his books inside it. Later, his books were publicly burned along with those of Klaus, his son, and many other writers. Thomas and his family only enjoyed the house for three summers before they had to go into exile, first to France, then the USA. When they finally returned to Europe after they war, they lived in Switzerland.

During the war German soldiers were billeted in the house and after the war it was abandoned and became derelict.

Movement and migration, shifting boundaries and rulerships are so much part of the history of this place. For Thomas Mann part of its attraction was its isolation, its emptiness, the feeling that you were living in another world, indifferent to the recent Great War and its aftermath, to the carving up of old empires, to changing national boundaries and languages as if this narrow strip of land could extend itself far enough away from the ruinous and self-defeating violence of humanity, to remain untouched, serene, surrounded by its pine forests and its wild life.

But this land was itself a traveller, created by sand dunes that the tides and currents had caused to move and shift. It may not have been on the front line but the Curonian Spit was not unaffected by the war. Thomas Mann’s house remained dilapidated until Antanas Venclova, a Lithuanian writer, decided to put a plan into action to turn it into a museum. He had met Thomas Mann at a writers’ conference in Weimar, celebrating the poet Schiller and mentioned the idea to him. Mann was enthusiastic, not so, the Lithuanian Soviet authorities. At this time, the mid 1950s, their plan had been to destroy the house, they feared that restoration could lead to a process of ‘germanization’. But Antanas was influential enough with the Lithuanian Soviet government, and managed to persuade them not to do that and to win them round to his idea.
Probably, the young man at the desk said, he knew the right people, that’s how things always work, isn’t it?

The house has been tastefully restored, along the lines of descriptions Mann and other wrote about at the time, complete with a wooden staircase, door entrances and floorboards with wooden floorboards, and the colours of the walls in different rooms, but the walls are covered with old photographs of the family, and text about their time here, Thomas Mann’s books, facsimiles of letters he wrote, and talks he gave. But there is no desk where the writer worked, no table he dined at, no typewriter or notebooks, no books he used to read, for nothing that was used by the Mann family survived the occupation and the war.

room with a view out onto the terrace

I wonder if Thomas Mann would find it surprising, amusing even, that so many people would come to his renovated house to pay homage to his art, his life, his times, his multi-talented family, or simply out of curiosity, to view the past in its renovated form, perhaps to tread in his footsteps, to admire the view from his balcony of the pine trees and the lagoon.

I bought some postcards from the woman who had replaced the young man at the desk, and asked her about some which were too high up for me to reach. She replied to me in German. I’m used to being mistaken for German, but particularly in Thomas Mann’s house it makes sense as everyone clearly, who visits his house is going to be German aren’t they? And then, it gives me a chance to practise my German, meagre as it is.

The public toilets are situated a few meters downhill, at the parking area for cars. They are spotlessly clean, like everything else in Lithuania – streets, pavements, parks, beaches. There is also a couple of stalls selling T shirts, amber jewellery, linen tablecloths. The woman on the latter stall snatches at my interest and persuades me into buying a cloth, tea towel size, decorated with a typically Lithuanian motif, a moose with spreading magnificent antlers.

Bird community at Nida: seagulls, cormorants, crows, a heron