One of the most popular museums!
Writer Thomas Mann Memorial Museum is one of the most popular museums in the west of Lithuania.
According to the writer Thomas Mann, he and his wife Katia were ‘seized by the indescribable peculiarity and beauty of nature, and the fantastic world of shifting dunes’ on their first visit to Nida in the summer of 1929, and they quickly made up their minds to ‘build a permanent residence’ here. A summer house based on a design by Herbert Reissmann, an architect from Klaipėda, was built on Mother-in-Law Hill in Nida in 1930, where Mann spent three summers with his family (1930 to 1932). In 1939, the summer house was nationalised and converted into a hunting lodge called Elk Wood. It suffered severe damage after the war.
The house was repaired in the 1950s on the initiative of Antanas Venclova, the chairman of the Lithuanian Writer’s Union. It served as accommodation for professionals arriving to work in Neringa and in 1965, it was taken over by the municipal library of Klaipėda.
The house was refurbished once again in 1995–1996 based on surviving drawings of Reissman and the reminiscences of Thomas Mann’s daughter Elisabeth, in an effort to restore the authentic atmosphere.
Since 2014, the museum has housed a new exhibition. Thanks to the state-of-the-art technologies, the exhibition presents the life and work of the Nobel Prize winner and poetically recreates the atmosphere of the days that the writer spent in the summer house.
Today the Thomas Mann House accommodates two institutions:
- Neringa Museums
- Public Institution Thomas Mann Cultural Centre
The main room of the museum serves as a venue for performances of chamber music, literary gatherings, international forums organised by the Thomas Mann Cultural Centre, and the events of the Thomas Mann Festival.
