A cafe in the city doubly punished by Hitler
BarcelonaAh, those postcard-perfect cities. Places like Lübeck, in northern Germany, with its bridges, pointed cathedrals, and wooden houses with a thousand and one details. Later, you discover that many of the buildings were rebuilt, since Allied bombs destroyed them during World War II. But they had the good sense to rebuild the center exactly as it was, more or less. So, unless they tell you, you might believe that downtown Lübeck has remained roughly the same for centuries. It's not true.
Northern Germany is full of towns like that. Places where a modern way of understanding trade and business was born, with the famous Hanseatic League. Where the world changed with entrepreneurial people. People like the Manns, a family from Lübeck who, thanks to the money made from trade and grain, owned one of the most beautiful houses in the city. The house that young Thomas Mann fell in love with and knew every nook and cranny of, a building that served as both a family residence and business headquarters. This year marks Mann's 150th birthday, and Lübeck celebrates it. It's amusing that this house is known as Buddenbrook House in honor of Mann's magnificent 1901 book, The BuddenbrooksThe young writer turned the house where he grew up into another character in the life of this imagined family, which, logically, was closely inspired by his own. Fiction eventually overtook reality, and people began calling the building "Buddenbrook House" rather than "the Mann House." After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, Thomas Mann converted it into a library open to the public, until the Nazis closed it. Because Lübeck was a stronghold opposed to Nazism. In fact, the city senate even voted to ban Hitler from entering, which would ultimately cost the lives of the brave souls who dared to do so.
Hitler never forgave Lübeck. He stripped it of its status as an independent city, as Hamburg and Bremen also enjoyed, repressed its citizens, and erased all traces of Mann, who was already in exile campaigning against the Nazis. This was the city's double doom, as in 1942 the British bombed it to death because it was home to Nazi troops and arms factories. It was then that the Mann house burned down, taking a long time to rebuild. It's now municipal property and a museum, but it's being renovated.
The house and the entire Lübeck city center, while seemingly beautiful, hide dark stories. Like the life of Mann, who suffered greatly. A man who, as a young man, wandered around the city center, visiting cafés that still exist today, such as the Niederegger, which houses the Museo del Massapà. In The Buddenbrooks Marzipan is mentioned, since in Lübeck they say that they invented it. Or the Café Maret, where Mann remembered his father doing business right next to the City Senate, a beautiful building from 1320. Fortunately, Lübeck was reborn. And this year, 2025, commemorates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Mann, the man who made it immortal.
Recommendation for traveling to Lübeck
Book: The Buddenbrooks
Author: Thomas Mann
Year: 1901