Germany has purchased the Pacific Palisades residence once owned by Thomas Mann, averting demolition of the home where the Nobel Prize-winning novelist lived for a decade after fleeing Adolf Hitler, it was reported Monday.

The home, built in 1941 and designed by modernist architect J.R. Davidson, had been listed this summer for just under $15 million. Sitting on a flat lot measuring almost one acre, it had been labeled as a “tear-down,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

But the prospect of bulldozing the secluded five-bedroom home generated protest. An online petition called on the German government to have the home, describing it as a monument to German exiles in California and resistance to the Nazi regime, according to the newspaper.