Buddenbrooks

Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty six years old. It was a literary success in Germany.

The Novel

Thomas Mann started writing the book in October 1897, he was at that time twenty-one years old. The novel was completed three years later, in July of 1900. The book was finally published one year later, in October 1901.

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His objective was to write a book presented as a family saga but intended to be a social novel, continuing on the realism tradition of the 19th century, such as Le Rouge et le noir (1830; The Red and the Black) by Stendhal. From a personal point of view he wanted to surpass the literary status already achieved by his eldest brother Heinrich Mann, who had already had relative literary success with the novel In einer Familie (1894, In a Family), and it was working at that time in a novel about the German bourgeois society as well, Im Schlaraffenland (1900, In the Land of Cockaigne). It can be said that all his objectives were satisfied. The novel stands today as one of his most popular novels, especially in Germany, being considered by many, the novel that best captures the 19th century German bourgeoise atmosphere.

Related Topics:
Realism - 19th century - The Red and the Black - Stendhal - Heinrich Mann - Germany

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Buddenbrooks is a transition novel, both the transition between the 19th century realistic style and 20th century symbolisms and a transition novel for the author himself, starting to departure from his 19th century influences to the more essayistic, symbolic and intertextual modern tone of his later works. But Buddenbrooks already presents in full style the perfection of his narrative, and the subtle irony of the author, as well as the complex and obcessively detailed characters description that characterizes it.

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Thomas Mann had up to the time of writing of Buddenbrooks concentrated on smaller stories, almost all refered to his own drama of deciding to live an artistic life in place of continuing the commercial and bourgeoise duties that were expected by his family. Those stories had been already published under the title Der kleine Herr Friedemann (1898, Little Herr Friedmann). They treated about, spiritually and physically, weak figures, portrayed in an ambivalent way by the author in their fight against the moral and social constraints of the bourgeois society of the time. This subject reappears in the context of his first novel, Buddenbrook, and even in different ways in some of his later works.

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The exploration of decadence in the novel can be attributed to the profound influence of Arthur Schopenhauer (see The World as Will and Representation, 1829) on Thomas Mann during his youth. The three generations of the family depicted in the book, experience a continuous and inevitable economical, physical and spiritual decline. True happiness being increasingly unavailable to all the members of the family no matter which decisions they make, or what paths they take. The characters who sacrifice their lives for the sake of the firm meet the same unfortunate ends as those who don't.

Related Topics:
Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation

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The city where the family lives shares many of its street names with Mann's hometown: Lübeck. This, and probably other recognisable episodes, prompted many of the first German readers and critics to attack Mann for writing about the dirty laundry of his hometown and his own family. However, it must be said that the decadent fate of the Buddenbrooks bears no resemblance with the author's family destiny, or with the 19th century German bourgeoisie's fate in general.

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The main period time considered covers 1835 to 1877, and the most dramatic episodes of german history during this time (Revolutions of 1848, Austro-Prussian War, North German Confederation, German Empire) are only alluded by Mann and are not central to the story. In this sense Buddenbrooks is not a historical novel.

Related Topics:
German history - Revolutions of 1848 - Austro-Prussian War - North German Confederation - German Empire

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One of the most famous aspects of Thomas Mann prose style is already present: the use of leitmotifs. He took this from his admiration for the Richard Wagner's operas, and in the case of Buddenbrooks, one the most important is the description of the colour of the skin and of the teeth of the characters. Each colour alluding to different states of health, personality and even destiny of the characters owning it.

Related Topics:
Leitmotifs - Richard Wagner

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Many aspects of Thomas Mann's personality are represented in the two main male representatives of the second and the third generation; Thomas Buddenbrook and his son Hanno Buddenbrook. It should not be considered a coincidence that he shared the same first name with one of them. For example, Thomas Buddenbbrook reads a chapter of Shopenahuer's The World as Will, which, as already mentioned, was an important book for Mann himself. Though the character will forget this reading soon afterwards; another example of the author's fundamental irony. The character of Hanno Buddenbrook escapes from real life worries into music, and in Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung in particular, which is another of Mann's main influences. Wagner himself was a bourgeois descendent who decided to dedicate himself to art. In this sense both characters would symbolise the conflict lived by the author, evading a productive bourgeoise life to pursue an artistic one; though never turning his back on bourgeoise ethics.

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Thomas Mann did not intend to write an epic against the aristocratic society of his time and its conventions, much the opposite, he is very sympathetic many times with their moral and Protestant ethics. And even when a critic is most evident, it is done with much irony and detachment. When Die protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus (1905, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) by Max Weber was published, Thomas Mann himself recognised the affinities with his own novel. The same happened with Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) by R.H. Tawney. Check Hugh Ridley's Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks (Cambridge, 1987).

Related Topics:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - Max Weber - R.H. Tawney

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As usual in Thomas Mann (see Doktor Faustus) the research previous to the writting of the novel is enormous in order for him to depict with immaculate detail the lives of his characters with most accuracy in all aspects including at first side the most irrelevant. In particular, his cousin Marty was responsible for providing him with a very large amount of information on the economics of Lübeck, corn prices, and how the economic decline in the city could occur. Thomas Mann carried out by himself as well a considerable account and financial analysis for presenting the sums and the whole economic information depicted in the book in a coherent manner.

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All occurrences in the lives of the characters are seen by the narrator and the family in general, through the eye of the firm, and the economical consequences that it represents to it. From all, the marriages and the deaths, are the most essencial points, where a sometimes explicit accounting balance of the family's firm status is made. The firm becomes here almost a fetish or a religion, specially for some characters, as it would be the case for Thomas and his sister Tony. The treatment of the female main character Tony Buddenbrook in the novel guards close resemblance to those made by the naturalistic novel writers of the 19th century (Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina), but perhaps from a more ironic and less tragic point of view.

Related Topics:
Flaubert - Madame Bovary - Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

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Though the influence of Buddenbrooks on later novels of the 20th century was probably less than Mann's other novels, this should probably be considered from a relative point of view. It was a 20th century author so fundamental as Faulkner who said of this novel that it was for him 'the greatest novel of the century'.

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