Dissonance Among the Exiles

This excellent story from Anthony Mostrom at the LA Times about the expats from Nazi Germany in 1933 and how many of Germany's creative geniuses wound up living in Pacific Palisades and socializing with each other at a palatial villa known as Miramar.

Some of Germany's and Austria's most creative minds fled the Nazis and settled in Los Angeles. They would gather at a Pacific Palisades villa, but not all was harmonious.

By Anthony Mostrom
October 10, 2010

Originally known as Miramar and now dubbed Villa Aurora, this Pacific Palisades estate was a gathering place for German and Austrian expatriates during World War II. It was owned by author Lion Feuchtwanger and frequented by some of Europe's greatest artists, musicians and thinkers. (Annie Wells, Los Angeles Times / March 15, 2005)

"I have made a discovery," the composer Arnold Schoenberg said in 1921, "which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next one hundred years!" These ecstatic words ushered in the birth of the Austrian's radically innovative 12-tone method of composition and unleashed a near-century's worth of dissonance and atonality in avant-garde classical music. But if Expressionism in music was considered disturbing and "decadent" by many in Weimar Germany, Schoenberg was just one of many cultural avant-gardists who were marked for harassment, imprisonment or even death once Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists rose to power.

When that day arrived Jan. 30, 1933, the exodus of German (and later, Austrian) musicians, painters, writers and scientists started out as a trickle and by the late 1930s had become a flood tide.

California soon gained a bumper crop of geniuses. One of the first to arrive in Los Angeles along with Schoenberg was Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a Jewish Viennese composer of lush, traditionally flavored music who arrived here in 1934 to write film scores for Warner Bros. Otto Klemperer, the towering conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic at the Kroll Opera House, gave up his initial naivete about "the new Germany" and accepted a post as conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1933. And some of the most famous German writers of the 20th century — Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger and the 1929 Nobel Prize winner for literature, Thomas Mann — all would call Los Angeles home for the duration of World War II.

Feuchtwanger had seen the coming danger earlier than most. In 1930 he wrote "Erfolg" (Success), a work that many consider to be the first anti-Hitler novel. His best-selling historical novel, "Jud Suess," an unflattering portrait of an 18th century Jewish financier named Josef Suess Oppenheimer, could have made him a hero to the Nazis, but they hated him anyway because he was Jewish. Later, the Nazis produced a vicious film portrayal of "Suess" without mentioning Feuchtwanger's novel at all.

After arriving in L.A. in 1940, the Feuchtwangers learned of a palatial three-story house, then standing vacant, on Paseo Miramar in Pacific Palisades.

Originally christened "Miramar" when it was built by The Times in 1928 as a "demonstration house" to attract interest in Palisades development, the house was in serious disrepair. The Feuchtwangers got it for a song, $9,000, and proceeded to fill several rooms with books. Mann moved to the Palisades a year later.

According to Imogen von Tannenberg, who today oversees the artist-in-residence program for European artists at the former Feuchtwanger estate (now known as Villa Aurora), not all of the exiles in Los Angeles got on well with each other.

Story continues here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1010-then-20101010,0,4600988.story

That is it for this post and as always, if I can be of any assistance to you or any of your friends, family or colleagues with any of your real estate needs (residential, commercial or otherwise) or if I can help find a real estate professional for you to work with in your local community, please let me know.  It would be my pleasure to help.

A Little Marquez Knolls History

I was talking with Sid Galanty at the most recent Marquez Knolls Property Owner's Association (MKPOA) board meeting.  Sid is a long time resident - he's been up in Marquez Knolls for more than 30 years and he was telling me about Earl Lachman, the developer who built Marquez Knolls.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Marquez Knolls, it is a large neighborhood in Pacific Palisades that is literally built up the side of a mountain, offering its residents stunning, sweeping views of the Santa Monica Bay from Palos Verdes to Malibu.  The whole area was once part of the expansive property owned by the Conway family.  Earl Lachman, who didn't have any money at the time went to Mrs. Conway and asked if he could divide up part of her property and sell lots.  He would take part of the proceeds from each sale and give that back to her as his payment for the land.  She agreed and Marquez Knolls was born.

Dedication of Marquez Knolls Historical Marker - September, 1953

So that got Earl Lachman in the game.  As he continued to develop the Marquez Knolls area, his construction crews moved farther and farther up the side of the mountain.  He finally came to  a point where he wanted to go higher, but was told he couldn't because it was impossible to pump water any higher and you have to have water in adequate supply to build a new neighborhood.  Lachman has clearly demonstrated by now that "You can't do that" is not the answer he is interested in hearing.  He said "I'll just go find water at the top of the mountain."  He took an exploration team up to the top of the mountain and sure enough, there he found his precious water.  He built himself a water tower that I believe still stands today and began to pump water DOWN HILL to his construction crews.

Thanks to his ingenuity, we have the beautiful Marquez Knolls subdivision in Pacific Palisades today to enjoy some of the most beautiful views of the Santa Monica Bay, Catalina Island and the Queen's Necklace.

That is it for this post and as always, if I can be of any assistance to you or any of your friends, family or colleagues with any of your real estate needs (residential, commercial or otherwise) or if I can help find a real estate professional for you to work with in your local community, please let me know.  It would be my pleasure to help.