The denotation ″Buddenbrook-Nobility″ traces back to Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks which won Mann the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Mann portrayed the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatics in the 19th century. The city where the Buddenbrook family lives shares so many of its street names and other details with Mann's hometown of Lübeck that the identification is perfect, although Mann carefully avoids explicit pronunciation of the name throughout the novel. In spite of this fact, many German readers, in particular such from Lübeck, and critics attacked Mann for writing about the "dirty laundry" of his hometown and his own family. However, for a long time that what had been attacked in the past was later regarded being an ennoblement. Those who have a close or distant relative, who has been portrayed in the Buddenbrooks, are half-ironically but at the same time respectfully counted among the "Buddenbrook-nobility".