House of Exile

In 1933 the author and activist Heinrich Mann and his partner Nelly Kroeger fled Nazi Germany, finding refuge first in the south of France and later, in great despair, in Los Angeles, where Nelly committed suicide in 1944 and Heinrich died in 1950. Born into a wealthy middle class family in Lubeck, Heinrich was one of the leading representatives of Weimar culture Nelly was twenty-seven years younger, the adopted daughter of a fisherman, and a hostess in a Berlin bar. As far as his family was concerned, she was from the wrong side of the tracks. Their story is crossed by others from their circle, including Heinrich's brother Thomas Mann, his sister Carla, their friends Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Doblin, and Joseph Roth. In train compartments, ship's cabins and rented rooms, they called upon what was left to them - their bodies, their minds, their books - and amidst the debris of an era of self-destruction, built their own annexes to the House of Exile.