Marta Feuchtwanger lived at Villa Aurora until her death in 1987. After Marta's death the University of Southern California was looking to sell the property. The sale of the dilapidated Villa seemed imminent and USC professor Harold von Hofe asked the journalist and Feuchtwanger biographer Volker Skierka to launch an initiative to save the Villa Aurora. He also won the support of many public figures in politics and the media, such as the former head of the publishing house
Rowohlt, Fritz J. Raddatz, and member of the
German parliament,
Freimut Duve. The goal was to create a "Villa Massimo on the Pacific" modeled after the artists residency
Villa Massimo in
Rome. In order to preserve the house as the only existing monument to European and German exiles to the West Coast of the United States, the association "Friends and Supporters of Villa Aurora" was founded in Berlin. The non-profit organization secured public funding from the
German Federal Foreign Office, the
Berlin Senate, the Berlin Lottery Foundation and the
Tagesspiegel Foundation and was able to purchase and renovate the house. Frank Dimster,
FAIA, restored the house and received the City of Los Angeles Historic Preservation Award in 1996. The Feuchtwanger House was landmarked as one of the
Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments and also by the Pacific Palisades Historical Society. The historic organ that in addition to Marta Feuchtwanger, Bruno Walter,
Ernst Toch and
Hanns Eisler had played on, was restored in 2010. The historic furniture, including the beds of Marta and Lion, and their desks and chairs, are still on the premises. Villa Aurora serves as an artists' retreat offering
residency fellowships for German-based writers, visual artists, composers, and filmmakers.The villa is still owned by the Berlin-based non-profit, but is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the
Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. In 2015, filmmaker
Edward Berger was awarded a fellowship to spend six months at Villa Aurora. Together with the USC Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, the organization awards an annual Feuchtwanger Fellowship to artists who are persecuted in their home countries in memory of the history of German
emigration in the 1930s. Sponsors and private donations further help to maintain the historic property. The Villa stands as a reminder of German exile in the United States and is a memorial to German-Exile-Culture and the persecution of the German Jews. Villa Aurora is a place for cultural encounters, creative debates and joint projects. Since 1995 around 300 artists have enlivened this place and have themselves been inspired by U.S. culture and the exiles' traces. The Villa Aurora Forum in Berlin organizes the meetings of the selection committees which choose the fellows of Villa Aurora. The Forum also presents the results of the artists' works to the German public through exhibitions, screenings, readings, concerts and the publishing of editions. At the annual 'Villa Aurora Nacht' in Berlin, the newly chosen fellows are presented along with the work of the ones from the previous year. == Berlin office==