Born in Bad Doberan, from 1974 Buddrus completed a three-year locksmithing apprenticeship in Warnemünde.
Afterwards he worked as a research assistant at the Schiffbau- und Schifffahrtsmuseum Rostock.
With a doctoral thesis on the history of the Hitler Youth he succeeded in 1989 in obtaining the Promotion A.
[1][2] He then worked until 1991 as a research assistant at the Institute for German History of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, then until 1993 as a research assistant at the University of Siegen.
In October 2013 he was appointed to the Historische Kommission für Mecklenburg [de].