Albert Vigoleis Thelen wrote The Island of the Second Face during his stay in Mallorca. Considered one of the great German novels of the mid-twentieth century, it represents representative figures of the island's cultural environment of the 1930s.
Of the three streets, the Avenue of Solitude was the shabbiest. The presentable side of the house faced the Borne. The residents on this side, landlords and tenants alike, could gaze out on spreading palms, rather onto the grubby halls and sorting departments of the Municipal Post Office.
[...]
This shop is very important for an understanding of further developments in my chronicle, and so I shall proceed to describe it. It occupied the respectable corner of the cluster. To the right of the door, the Calle del Conquistador began its ascent; to the left, one turned into a short street that opened onto the square where Julietta was accustomed to flaunt her nascent charms to the street urchins. Diagonally opposite the shop was the open terrace of a high-class men’s club, where the members were always sitting at dominoes, drinking coffee or just snoozing.
Die Insel des zweiten Gesichts, The Island of Second Sight, 1953
Translated by Rachel Waters.
(Süchteln am Niederrhein (Germany) 1903 – Dulken am Niederrhein, 1989). Albert Vigoleis Thelen was a German writer and translator. He studied journalism and Dutch at Münster University. In the early 1930s, he and his Swiss girlfriend, Beatrice Bruckner, took voluntarily exile in Mallorca. They remained on the island until the Spanish Civil War broke out, when they left for Portugal where they met the writer Teixeira de Pascoes. Vigoleis Thelen translated this Portuguese writer’s work into German and Dutch. In 1947, he moved to Amsterdam, where he published most of his books, later settling in Switzerland and Germany.
His most important novel is autobiographical. The Island of Second Sight (1953), written during his stay on the island of Mallorca, recounts his personal odyssey during the years prior to the Spanish Civil War and Second World War. In the novel, which together with The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, is considered to be one of the great 20th century German novels, figures representative of the island’s cultural societyare featured: the Sureda family, Villalonga brothers, George Bernanos, and the Verdaguer brothers. In addition to its autobiographical value, the novel also offers a portrayal of 1930s Mallorca, recounting experiences and memories.
Clustered around the boulevard known as Paseo del Born are streets, squares and buildings whose original morphology or use has, in some cases, changed. The current area, made up of the two streets Calle Constitución and Calle Soledad and Plaza del Rosario, was planned by urban developers to link this section of the city to its top part.
In 1946, the Post Office headquarters were built in Calle Constitución, formerly known as Calle Gran Vía. This street also contains the state government representative’s building, which once housed the telephone company, in addition to another building where the well-known Bar Formentor used to stand, inaugurated in 1929 and designed by architect Gaspar Bennàzar. Calle Constitución links up with Plaza del Rosario via a network ofalleys from the three 1950s buildings that standin the said square.
