Actors Wiechmann,Jordan, Abdullah and Hacker perform during rehearsal for Buddenbrooks on stage at Thalia...
Actors Katrin Wiechmann (L) as Tony, Peter Jordan (2nd L) as Christian, Leila Abdullah as Gerda and Norman Hacker (R) as Thomas perform during a rehearsal of 'Buddenbrooks' at Hamburg's Thalia Theater December 1, 2005. The play is adapted for the stage by John von Dueffel, directed by Stephan Kimmig and will have its premiere on December 3. 'Buddenbrooks' was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty six years old, portraying the downfall of a wealthy mercantile family of the Baltic sea coastal town of Luebeck over four generations. The book is generally understood as a portrait of the German bourgeois society from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century and it was mainly this novel which won Mann the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. REUTERS/Christian Charisius