Opening hours:
I–VII 10:00–17:00
The exhibition is open on public holidays
Free entry
Contact information:
+370 469 52260
info@neringosmuziejai.lt
www.neringosmuziejai.lt
Friedrich Blode founded the hotel in 1867 in the eastern part of the fishing village of Nida. Around 1885, Hermann Blode took over his father's hotel and over time became the famous "patron of artists". In his notorious "artists' veranda", the first painters gathered for convivial meetings and serious conversations. More and more artists discovered the beauty of the Curonian Spit and Nida, and so, around 1890, the Nida Artists' Colony was born in Hermann Blode's hotel, first flourishing before the First World War.
Not only painters - more than 200 of them visited Nida - but also writers, composers, musicians and actors gathered at the Artists' Veranda. Ernst Bischoff-Culm, Walther Heymann, Max Pechstein, Lovis Corinth, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Hans Beppo-Borschke, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, and others have all visited.
In 1923, Klaipėda, along with the northern part of the Curonian Spit, became part of Lithuania. Soon after, economic difficulties forced Hermann Blode to consider closing the hotel, which was rich in tradition. At the end of the second decade, Hermann Blode passed away, so Ernst Mollenhauer, Hermann Blode's son-in-law, gradually supported the artists' residence, which was already famous outside Germany. Hermann Blode died in 1934 and was laid to rest in the old fishermen's cemetery in Nida.
In 1944, the front line approached Nida. Trenches were dug around Hermann Blode's hotel, and soldiers and refugees who had escaped through the ice of the Curonian Lagoon were housed in rooms and halls. The entire village was evacuated, except for the fishermen who had been conscripted into the army. The studio's treasure trove and collection rotted away in the Soviet soldiers' sauna, which became the studio itself. The old house of Hermann Blode's family, the nucleus of the Nida artists' colony, which had stood since 1867, was demolished in the early 1960s to make way for a new building. All that remains of this beautiful, well-kept artists' dwelling is the heavily altered south flank. Today, a small historical exhibition in the Nida Banga Hotel reminds us of the former artists' colony.
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