Budenbrooks House

The year 2000 will be a milestone in the history of the Buddenbrook house in Lübeck. In this house you can go back to the family-roots of the two famous writers and brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann who were grown in the Hanseatic city. In his first novel "B u d d e n b r o o k s" Thomas Mann describes the decline of an old traditional family of tradesmen. Through the generations they start to lose interest in the family's business and develop a fascination for religion, philosophy, literature and music. The novel is full of autobiographic allusions. In his grandparents house most parts of the novel are situated. Therefore we call it Buddenbrook house.

In 2000 Lübeck celebrates Thomas Mann 125^th birthday, as well as the centenary of "Buddenbrooks" for which he received the Literary Nobel Prize. In June 2000 the Buddenbrook house reopened new exhibitions. It was possible to discover the boundaries between the real Hanseatic world and fiction. Reality and fiction merge together. The visitors can follow the trail of world literature upon previously unknown ways and come across allusions to the fascinating novel. The atmosphere of "Buddenbrooks" can be found anywhere in the city, in the Buddenbrook house, of course, with the reconstructed "Bel Etage". The main living rooms are modelled after the descriptions in the novel. Thus literature becomes reality. Based upon a large library you will get new information about the Nobel-prize-winning novel and its background. Also, in the city you can find traces of the novel in the external stations that will lead the visitor to the Town Hall, mediaeval churches, Thomas Mann's school and even to Travemünde, the Baltic Sea Spa town. A wide range of events will highlight the summer of 2000 in Lübeck.

The Buddenbrook house also presents a new documentary exhibition on the Mann-family. You can follow the traces of this fascinating family via sound and film, as well as see many previously unpublished photographs and documents.