The “Straßen Namen Leuchten” (“Streets Names Streetlights”) project by Albert Coers creates a place of remembrance in the public space of the City of Munich for the Mann literary family – the Nobel prize winner Thomas Mann, his wife Katia, and their children Klaus, Erika, Golo, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, Michael and Monika Mann – fittingly, in the year that marks Thomas Mann’s 150th birthday.
The artwork consists of signs from streets and squares in Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich, Rome, São Paulo and other places that are named after members of the family, as well as streetlights from places where the Manns lived or found themselves in exile, such as Lübeck, Nida, Sanary-Sur-Mer, New York, Los Angeles and Kilchberg.
These elements reflect the internationality of the family, whose members lived and worked in Europe, the USA and South America, and they highlight the worldwide literary influence and significance of this family of writers. At the same time, the motif of the streetlight evokes associations with the literary, political and social influence of the Mann family’s life and work and alludes to the sentence “Munich was radiant,” with which Thomas Mann began his novella “Gladius Dei.”
A location was found in the heart of the city, directly at Munich’s Literaturhaus. This project aims to create an anchor here for the Manns’ biographies, while acknowledging the responsibility that the City of Munich bears with regard to their forced exile during the Nazi regime.
Albert Coers, born in 1975 in Lauingen, lives and works in Berlin and Munich.
