"Weimar under the Palms"

Author Thomas Blubacher in conversation with translator Elisabeth Lauffer.

In English. Part of the Boston Book Festival.

In the early twentieth century, Pacific Palisades was home to America's most modern film studio of the time as well as the proposed site of the world's largest Christian center. But by the end of the 1920s, the Los Angeles neighborhood had become the refuge of the rich and beautiful as cultural and intellectual giants of the Weimar Republic fled Europe. Figures such as Thomas Mann, Salka and Berthold Viertel, and Lion Feuchtwanger, turned Pacific Palisades into a “Weimar under the palm trees.”

Recounting a story of glamor and great minds, Thomas Blubacher tells of the history of German-speaking exiles that is still alive there today, going on a foray through the film industry, taking us on a journey to this special place which was so recently devastated by fire and whose history deserves to be celebrated — now more than ever.

Thomas Blubacher has written over thirty books and has worked as a theater director in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A specialist on theater and film of the 1930s, his books include biographies of the siblings Eleonora and Francesco von Mendelssohn, Gustaf Gründgens, Oscar Wälterlin, Ruth Landshoff-Yorck, and Ruth Hellberg. He has also written essays and travel features, and has published a bestselling book on cruises and several historical crime novels.

Elisabeth (Liz) Lauffer is a German-English literary translator based in the US. She received a B.A. in German Studies from Wesleyan University and Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her career in literary translation began in 2014, when she won the Gutekunst Prize for Emerging Translators.

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