92km (57 miles) SE of Kiel, 66km (41 miles) NE of Hamburg
Lübeck is a city of high-gabled houses, massive gates, strong towers, and towering steeples. It was made a free imperial city in 1226, and was the capital of the Hanseatic League, which controlled trade along the Baltic as far as Russia.
The Hanseatic merchants decorated their churches with art treasures and gilded their spires to show off their wealth. Many of these survivors of history stand side by side with postwar housing developments, and the neon lights of the business district shine on the streets and narrow passageways of bygone days.
Lübeck has had several famous sons. As a young man, Willy Brandt, who later became West German chancellor and won the Nobel Peace Prize, opposed the Nazis so vehemently that he had to flee on a boat to Norway. Thomas Mann's 1902 novel Buddenbrooks, set here, catapulted the 27-year-old author to international fame. In 1929, he won the Nobel Prize for literature.
