European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 05, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Germany the brother s Mann Hometown finally pays tribute to literary treasures Brilliant writers both the Brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann were widely despised in their Homeland for depicting the dark Side of Germany. But now they have been honoured in a singular Way in their Hometown of Lubeck with the open  a Monument to them called the Budde Brooks House. By Larry Thorson the associated press a Century ago As the prosperous German merchant Thomas Heinrich Mann approached death he begged his trustees to prevent his dreamy older son Heinrich from becoming a writer and to keep his second son Thomas on track to a practical profession. Little More than a decade later the Brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann were famous writers and infamous in their native Linbeck which served As a setting for their novels satirizing and illuminating the dark Side of Germany. Thomas Mann won the Nobel prize for literature in 1929, 28 years after his first. Novel Budde Brooks subtitled the decline of a family was published. The Book still Sells 400,000 copies a year in German alone and is listed among the greatest German language books of the 20th Century. Heinrich Mann s Best known character is the temptress in his 1905 novel professor Unrath Oder Das ende Eines Tyranne professor muck or the end of a tyrant. It was later filmed As the Blue Angel the classic movie that launched Marlene Dietrich to world Fame. The Brothers fought bitterly Over politics in world War i but when Adolf Hitler s nazis Rose to Power in 1933,.Thomas and Heinrich Mann both went into exile and spent much of their later lives in the United states. Heinrich died at age 79 in 1950 in los Angeles Thomas at age 80 in 1955 in Switzerland. Thomas Mann earned lasting hostility in Lubeck because he approved of the Allied air raids that pulverized much of the medieval City Center in 1942. The bombs left standing Only the facade of the 18th Century town House where the Mann Brothers aristocratic grandparents lived and where the boys spent much of their youth basking in wealth and influence. The House was rebuilt and served As a Bank office disappointing literary pilgrims who hoped to find traces of the two great writers at the House on men Strasse a Cobblestone court facing the massive Brick gothic St. Mary s Church. Finally the building known As Budde Brooks House has been acquired by the City and turned into the $2.5 million Heinrich and Thomas Mann Center. It has exhibits on the Brothers lives and meeting places for the academics and fans in the Thomas Mann society and the Heinrich Mann Circle. It was dedicated May 6 amid Lubeck s celebrations of 850 years of existence As a trading City facing the Baltic sea. Ism and the Bank of Tokyo were among donors to the revamping of the four Story House that Thomas Mann shown in this 1955 photo won the 1929 Nobel prize for literature. Owner said he believes that Thomas Mann s books will grow in significance not Only the classics Budde Brooks and the magic Mountain and popular novellas such As death in Venice but also the late novel doctor faustus published in 1947. It is about literature and music but More about Thomas Mann s dark View of his native land. In faustus he said a lot about the mentality of Germany that sometimes is irrational summer said. Germans love order and perfection and discipline and also sometimes Are overpowered by the romantic and the occult. That is big in the figure of  Wolfgang Mertz a Board member at s. Fischer publishers said sales figures for Thomas Mann s books Are astonishingly  Hile the German authors Bertolt Brecht and Hermann Hesse had new International popularity in the 1960s and 70s, they have faded. But nowadays with the Renaissance of literature As Art Thomas Mann is As Strong As he was 10 years ago and i think books on Thomas Mann and examinations of his works in universities will increase Mertz said. There was a new flare of interest last year when s. Fischer issued the eighth of 10 planned volumes of Mann s diaries. It illuminated the death in Venice Story published in 1912, of a writer s homosexual yearning for a Beautiful boy. The last volume had a big love Story of the old Thomas Mann who was really inflamed for a Young waiter in a famous Zurich hotel Mertz said. Everyone in the literary world was talking about the bisexual attitude of Thomas Mann. In this sense he s one of the most modern  Merle said Budde Brooks has been writer Heinrich Mann brother of Thomas has Dominus provide bit the lord will provide inscribed Over the door just like the House in Budde Brooks. I always have had a special inner relationship to the Brothers Mann German president Richard von Weizsacker said at the dedication giving the official sign of reconciliation with the Brothers who went into exile. Also forgotten now Are anguished local complaints like that of Friedrich Mann who published an advertisement in 1913 accusing his Nephew Thomas of dragging his closest relatives into the dirt with the novel Budde Brooks. Ulf Sorner a Lubeck Bookstore translated into some 30 languages and was popular outside Germany for the strength of the Story and the theme. The Story of the decline and fall of a German family was an important experience for people abroad too he said. The Buddenbrock family members Are repeatedly thwarted in their lives and loves fruitless notions of aristocratic duly pile up Over three generations in the mid to late-19th Century. The characters tear each other apart in arguments that scream in the Reader s head. The last Buddenbrock is a musically talented teen age boy Hanno who has no Chance against the guidelines of Bismarck Ian Germany authority duty Power service and career. The Story is grounded in evocative descriptions of the setting which Thomas Mann recalled in a 1945 speech at the Library of Congress in Washington . Then a . Citizen speaking about his recently Defeated Homeland and the Complex world of German psychology Mann said he understood it All from his childhood in Lubeck. It was a Modem sober commercial City Mann said but an antique neurotic underground was tangible an emotional secretiveness whose expression was in the Many characters always found in such cities the Cranks and harmless half crazies. And the children the Alley boys who were drawn to taunt these figures and if they turned around would run from them in superstitious  in 1993, As the Heinrich and Thomas Mann Center was dedicated such characters were still to be seen in Lubeck swigging Beer and sitting on Stone benches near Budde Brooks House trading jokes and jibes. August 5, 1993 stripes Magazine