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Pretty noble: the old Hanseatic City of Lübeck is not only well known for the production of exquisite marzipan. Two German Nobel Prize winners – Thomas Mann and Willy Brandt – saw the light of day here and a third, Günter Grass, has chosen Lübeck as his adopted town.

"If someone […] wants to poke fun at me, then I can safely say that the standard taunt refers to my Lübeck origins and Lübeck marzipan: […] I am made out to be a Lübeck marzipan confectioner, which is then looked upon as literary satire. But it does not hurt me at all since, as far as Lübeck is concerned, you have to come from somewhere after all, and I cannot see why Lübeck should be a more ridiculous place to have been born than any other – I even count it as being one of the better places to have been born. And I do not feel offended in the slightest by the word marzipan because, firstly, it is a very delicious substance and, secondly, it is nothing less than a trivial, yet absolutely strange and […] mysterious one".

It was not a passionate plea for his home town that Thomas Mann made in his speech "Lübeck as a spiritual way of life" in June 1926 on the occasion of Lübeck's 700-year anniversary. That would not have corresponded to his Hanseatic character either.

Brick and Patrician Houses

Yet Lübeck is certainly deserving of more praise. The Old Town is situated on a little island enclosed by the river Trave. Lübeck's medieval nucleus, with its red brick churches, narrow streets and grand patrician houses, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987.

The best way to explore the ‘capital of brickwork' is on foot over cobblestone streets. Lübeck is dotted with well-preserved gabled houses decorated with clinker brick. Little passageways branch off everywhere – the small hidden living areas are called "Gänge" where in the late Middle Ages the day-labourers used to live in sometimes tiny houses named "Buden".

The centre of the Old Town holds important remains of redbrick Gothic – the Marienkirche (St. Mary's Church) and the Town Hall. From here the redbrick Gothic style is said to have spread along the Baltic coast.

Merchants and Monarch

The stately merchants' houses still bear testimony to Lübeck's past as "Queen of the Hanseatic League". In medieval times Lübeck was considered to be the most important city among the League's towns in northern Germany. For centuries the "Hanse", an association of cities, dominated the entire trade and commerce in the North and Baltic Seas.

The decline of the Hanseatic League from the 16th century onwards also coincided with a gradual end to Lübeck's heyday. It is by no means accidental that the story about a merchant family's demise, as narrated by Thomas Mann in his novel "Buddenbrooks", is set in Lübeck.

Nest Fouler and Nobel Prize

The house at Mengstraße 4 in which the grandparents of Thomas and Heinrich Mann lived today houses a museum. Located close to the Marienkirche, the "Buddenbrookhaus" exhibits photos and letters that allow visitors to become familiar with the life of the artistic family and explore the world of the Buddenbrooks. The living rooms are decorated according to descriptions given in the novel. The book won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.

Honouring the city's most celebrated son with a museum - which today appears to be only natural - was for a long time unthinkable. Even the novel "Buddenbrooks" was seen as an example of fouling one's own nest. Mann's reaction to the bomb raids of the British Air Force, which in April 1942 destroyed one fifth of Lübeck's Old Town, met with outrage.

As stated on the BBC, Mann "had no objection to the doctrine that everything has to be compensated for". It was as late as 1955 that Thomas Mann was made an honorary citizen of the city. In the preceding discussions in the town hall the advocates are said to have had a majority of one single vote. Mann expressed his thanks with the "truly Lübeck-style phrase": "Pleasing everybody – is impossible".

Multitalent and Marzipan

Today Lübeck citizens are very pleased with the fact that another Nobel Prize winner has been living and working close to them for decades. On his 75th birthday, the author, painter and sculptor Günter Grass was fêted with the opening of the Günter Grass Haus in Glockengießerstraße, an exhibition and research centre dedicated to all-round talents and media crossovers. The Grass Collection comprises Grass' literary production after 1995, given as a premature legacy, a selection of his works of fine art and all the graphic prints.

And the Lübeck residents take just as much pride in probably the most renowned speciality of their city – marzipan. The Niederegger company turns out as much as 30 tons of this delicacy every day. Even tiny little Easter eggs display their Lübeck origin with the city's landmark – the Holstentor (Holsten Gate) – printed on the wrappers.

Those interested in learning more about Lübeck's "spiritual way of life" are highly recommended to read the works of the supposed "marzipan confectioner". It was the very same Thomas Mann, who, in his acceptance speech on being made an honorary citizen of his home town in 1955, frankly admitted: "My books are unmistakably German. […] They could only have been written by a German, and, I would go so far as to say, only by someone of Lübeck origins".