When German exiles found a home in the Pacific Palisades

Villa Aurora is a sprawling home that sits atop a hillside in the Pacific Palisades. Built in 1927 as a demonstration of innovation, the Spanish-inspired house sweeps across a 19,000-square-foot lot overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The red clay tiles and wood ceilings recall the architecture of Andalusia and cement the home as a premiere example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture.

But its construction wasn't just for show. It was also meant to attract people to the area, draw them outside the city center to the more rustic terrain and coastal bluffs just west of Beverly Hills — to a neighborhood whose roads were not yet paved.

Villa Aurora in the Pacific Palisades, a convening place for German and Austrian exiles

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USC Libraries

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Lion Feuchtwanger Papers Collection

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But in 1929, it all came crashing down as the economy did the same. The owners were forced to sell and Villa Aurora sat empty for years. That is, until a German couple arrived, exiles who fled Nazi German and remade Villa Aurora into a sanctuary for other émigrés.

"The house hosted intellectual gatherings, salons and artistic exchanges, a tradition that continues today," Claudia Gordon, the Villa's director told LAist 89.3's AirTalk host Larry Mantle on a recent show. She joined the program alongside author Thomas Blubacher, whose new book Weimar Under the Palms tells the story of German exiles who settled in the Pacific Palisades.

Why the Pacific Palisades?

Cheaper than New York, an unbeatable climate, the allure of Hollywood — there were many reasons to settle here.

" Between the time of the monarchy and the Nazi dictatorship, so many people gathered here," Blubacher said of the Pacific Palisades. "It became the center of German-speaking exiles."

That time was the early 1900s during the Weimar Republic, a historical period in Germany when free speech and intellectualism were still celebrated bastions of public life.

Many of the early émigrés from Germany to the Palisades were people of the film industry, like Ernst Lubitsch and Fritz Lang, who became prominent Hollywood directors.

 "In the 30s and 40s, the film people wanted to start a new life," Blubacher told AirTalk. "They wanted to be American and a part of the American culture."

Influencing an industry

During the height of Nazism, another wave of German and Austrian exiles would make their way to the Palisades. Vicki Baum, Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger are just some of those people, not only exiles but intellectuals in their own right who made their mark on Hollywood.

But as Blubacher recounts, the transition from Europe to Southern California wasn't easy. What they had left behind as intellectuals was a culture of coffeeshops and salons, where likeminded creatives would meet up to generate ideas and possibly collaborate on them. That was not the case in their new home.

"When they came here, it was very strange for them that that doesn't exist here," Blubacher added. "They needed a car, they needed a private invitation to meet other people. This was a total different culture."

Finding a home in Villa Aurora

In this vacuum of communal spaces to gather, German emigres created them by opening up their homes.

" Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann house were centers where people could meet and congregate," Gordon said. Salka Viertel, a German immigrant as well as an actress and screenwriter, "was one of the salonnieres that brought people together," Gordon added.

Viertel held weekly salons on Sundays through the late 1940s, and welcomed the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo into her home.

Like any other immigrant community, the Germans had a steely resolve to build community. In 1987, Villa Aurora opened a residency program for German artists and intellectuals, supported by the German government.

 "It's an opportunity to honor the German exiles, which hadn't been possible before," said Gordon, "and to kind of keep the spirit of the salons of the get togethers of this transatlantic cultural exchange alive."

Today, the homes to the right and left of Villa Aurora are gone, burned to the ground by the January fires.

"It's a miracle that Villa Aurora is still standing," Gordon said.

The hillside is charred and the villa suffered some smoke damage. But somehow, the sprawling home in the hills and hub for cultural fellowship still stands.

Listen to the full conversation with Blubacher and Gordon below: