Lübeck’s most famous son is Thomas Mann, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 specifically for his youth novel Buddenbrooks—Verfall einer Familie (Buddenbrooks—The Decline of a Family). (Mann was slightly irritated by this, as he considered his later works of higher quality, and his novel Zauberberg, which appeared in the late 1920s, was specifically criticized by influential Scandinavian academics just days prior to the award of the prize.)

Thomas Mann was world-famous in the 1930s, and his severe criticism of the Nazis made him unpopular at home. In 1933, he decided not to return from a foreign lecture tour and settled in Switzerland. The Nazis confiscated his property and forced the University of Bonn to strip Mann of his honorary Doctorate. It is hard to imagine what the Nazis thought such a petty act would achieve—certainly not that Harvard, Oxford, Lund, and Cambridge would soon offer him honorary Doctorates instead. During the Second World War, Thomas Mann lived in the U.S., but he returned to Switzerland in 1952, where he died in 1955.

Thomas Mann wrote Buddenbrooks when he was 26. It was published in October 1901 in two volumes—Mann had refused his publisher’s request to reduce the hefty work (758 pages in modern German print) by half. The work was initially not that well-received, although a single critic predicted that it would grow with time and that many future generations would still read it. The work was well-known by the time the Nobel Prize was awarded, but its circulation obviously ballooned afterwards. It is still considered a classical work in German literature and a standard work read in German high schools. It is a surprisingly easy book to read, with the language used still modern and fresh more than a century later.

The book is set in the Buddenbrookhaus in Mengstraße 4, which once belonged to Mann’s grandfather. Thomas and his brother Heinrich, also a prolific writer, spent part of their youth here. It tells the story of a rich Lübeck patrician family, the Buddenbrooks, and the decline of the family’s fortunes and morals during the 19th century.

The house was damaged during the Second World War, but its beautiful façade was restored, and the modern interior now houses the Thomas and Heinrich Mann Center—highly recommended, but only for those interested in German literature.

No less famous is Danzig-born writer Günther Grass (Die Blechtrommel/The Tin Drum), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. In the Günther Grass Haus, Glockengießerstraße 21, literature is not ignored, but the focus is on the lesser-known aspects of his artistic genre: drawings, paintings, and sculptures. An interesting museum, but mostly of interest to dedicated Grass fans (there are many).

Amazon sales ranks at time of writing of current best-selling editions:
Buddenbrooks - 118,658 (USA) / 2,563 (Germany)
Tin Drum - 17,826 (USA) / 1,238 (Germany)