For its most important event – the Thomas Mann Festival – the Thomas Mann Cultural Centre selects themes that reflect universal, sensitive contemporary issues. These themes serve as a source of inspiration and leitmotif for the festival’s music, word, art and film programme. For some time now, the centre’s board of trustees has defined a fundamental theme that is valid for several years and is supplemented and developed by the respective annual themes. The last major, four-year theme was “Cultural Landscapes”.
For the coming years, the board of trustees has chosen a quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as the central theme of the festival in 2024. In his description of a world riddled with evil, the Prince of Denmark says: “Time is out of joint.” This formulation reflects a widespread feeling in our present day: that of living in the midst of a profound crisis – a radical and unpredictable change that undermines and calls into question what is supposedly solid, generally recognised and reliable. In such times, people are faced with powerful, uncontrollable, sometimes even incomprehensible forces that make personal decisions necessary, as social norms and values lose their binding force. Such crises have accompanied human history since the beginning. Experiences of dealing with threatening, often tragic upheavals can be found in all cultures.
Classical European culture has elevated humanity and the personal attitude that affirms and represents the value of the individual to its highest virtues. In Plato’s “State”, four cardinal virtues are named: Wisdom, Justice, Valour and Temperance. Christianity has supplemented these ancient virtues with three more, which are considered the “great virtues”: Faith, Hope and Love – with all virtues rooted in faith and crowned by love. The Board of Trustees has selected these virtues as sub-themes for the next three Thomas Mann Festivals. This year’s 2025 festival will therefore be centred on faith.
Faith is often associated with religion. However, it can also be understood outside of religious concepts – less as a virtue and more as a psychological or emotional attitude – which can become a survival strategy under certain circumstances. Faith can be understood as trust, confidence or even as an inner, elusive instinct that people rely on to make existential decisions in the face of an uncertain, threatening or seemingly hopeless future. In this sense, faith is a multi-layered, important cultural theme. The programme dedicated to faith at this year’s festival is intended to enable participants to experience human solidarity in connection with artists and cultural workers and to feel connected to those who have experienced or are experiencing a time that is “out of joint”. It invites you to discover faith in your innermost being.
Dr. Irena Vaišvilaitė