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Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

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In his 1762 treatise "The Social Contract," Rousseau wrote: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Mann's magnum opus, pregnant with bleak symbolism and teeming with lives lived in quiet desperation, highlights this stark fact.

"Buddenbrooks" is the story of a merchant family and their wholesale grain-trading business. It covers the rise of the Buddenbrook firm from the days of the German confederation, to its eventual dissolution during the early years of the Deutsches Reich. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the Buddenbrook firm is an unyielding prison from which escape is nearly impossible. Despite their wealth and status in the community, the Buddenbrooks were not truly free to pursue their own happiness. In the name of business prestige and family honor, Antonie Buddenbrook, daughter of patriarch Jean Buddenbrook, forgoes the love of her life to marry a cunning businessman who marries her for her dowry, which he uses to prop up his failing business. Thomas, the heir to the Buddenbrook empire, witnessing his sister's sacrifice, breaks off his youthful affair with a common girl and decides to focus his energies on learning the ropes of the world of business. Christian, Thomas's brother, was early on marked to be a scholar due to his wit; however, the untimely death of Jean Buddenbrook compels him to take up a position in the firm. In due course, events and personal circumstances unmask Christian's dissipation and mental incapacity for the practical pursuits of commerce. Gotthold, the 'prodigal son' and stepbrother of Jean Buddenbrook, decides to marry beneath his station, and is disowned in a particularly acrimonious manner. Hanno, Thomas's son and heir, longs to be freed from his reprehensible duties to the firm and the family, and takes comfort in his ability to express himself through the piano.

Thus, there is little hyperbole in saying that none of the major characters achieve self-actualization. Furthermore, the conservative nature of their business, encapsulated in the ancestral admonition not to do anything that will hinder one's sleep at night, meant that the entrepreneurial spirit of the early days of the firm would slowly be extinguished, to be replaced by an unwillingness to broaden the firm's horizons. One can only imagine Thomas's anguish when one of his grain trades went against the firm. Indeed, his ill-timed demise, paralleling his father's manner of death, was preceded by painful self-examination while burdened by the realization that the firm and his mercantile abilities were on the wane.

The novel, surprisingly, is timeless. The themes resonate clearly even today. Or perhaps, it should not be surprising to learn that fortunes wax and wane, and that wealth and stature are not preconditions for happiness. "Buddenbrooks" should be a must-read for all business students--and students of life.

This novel (from the hand of Thomas Mann) was published in the early years of the XXth century. It tells the story of the decadence of a burgouise family, from its highest point of economic power, to its desintegration. The beginning of the novel has to do with the new house that has been bought by the patriach of the family. We meet there the three brothers, whose actions will be followed in the novel. Thomas, Cristian and Tony (Antoinnete). As they grow up, they learn the rules to survive their society and maintain their status. Tony has to learn that she cannot follow her love, if it is against the interests of her family. Thomas learns that he must follow the footsteps of his father... and Christian learns that he has no role in the world, but to annoy his brother. The world changes as it brings new rich people to town, with new ways of making business. Slowly the Buddenbrooks begin to lose their economic stability. This novel from Thomas Mann (a somewhat autobiographical one) describes the spaces, making it clear through them the kind of world this family lives in. There is a sharp picture of the characters... not only physical, but mental.
I will always remember Tony's romance in Travemünde, and how an idilic place is beautifully described, only to be soon reminded, that it is only a romantic fantasy... no more than that. Her later marriage is memorable, too. It is heartbreaking and humilliating. Another memorable moment is the realization of Thomas', that his son is not to follow his footsteps into the family business. Finally, watch for that description of the last of the Buddenbrooks' normal day: how terrifying was school for him... his friendships and his ailment. It is just adorable and moving.
Mann's acute use of irony allows the reader to follow these intense and funny moments (like the revolution being put to rest after the senator Buddenbrook tells the people that they already had a revolution) without losing the ability to think these episodes in a broader picture (cultural, social and political).
This book is worth not only buying and having, but to read... and more than that... to read it more than once. It's a real work of art.

I read this book for an Independent Study on the works of Thomas Mann. Although I found the beginning a tad slow, it soon picked up. For a book written so long ago, there is a lot in it that applies to life today. In addition, the characters are highly developed, and come alive on the page. You actually CARE about what happens to this family. Thomas Mann wove in so much symbolism and made everything connect so wonderfully, this book, although long, is sure to become a favorite. I would recommend this book to everyone. I have always been an avid reader, but this was my first real reading of Thomas Mann. He does not disappoint.

Buddenbrooks is an amazing novel, both in scope and its beautifully rendered characters. The story concerns the Buddenbrook family and their life as prosperous merchants in Lubeck in the 1800s. At the beginning, the main characters are Johann and his son Johann, but as the novel continues both die and the focus shifts to the son of younger Johann, Thomas. All the characters are lifelike, each with their own distinct personalities. The most impressive facet of the novel is how true to life it is. The translation is also excellent, the novel is readable and there are few passages that are tough to decipher. Buddenbrooks is quite long, but with the exceptions of some dry parts near the middle it is an exciting and easy read.

Thomas Mann, whose birthday centennial was celebrated last year not only in German but also all over the world, is the most influential German prose writter from the 20th century and The Budenbrooks is his most important work. He lived a good part of his life outside Geman, due to the persecution of the Nazi regime, in Los Angeles and afterwards in Switzerland. It seems that he never felt too much comfortable to move back to German, and may be to this, he never accomplished anything which could be compaired to the stature attained by his most celebrated book, which was deeply ingrained with the German burgeois way of life of his time. Some people say that is a kind of autobiographic novel , where many of the aspects of Thomas Mann's social sourroundings and family life were portrayed in the book, with an accuracy and sharpness of a genius, who lived life sorrounded by all kinds of problems one could imagine (homosexuality, drugs, family disputes on genius primacy) but who, at the other hand, was, in his own ways, deeply affected by burgeois values and familly affection.

When the book was written Mann had only 25 years, which adds content to some theories that mathematical and other type of geniuses minds are in their prime when one reaches 30 years of age, thus explaining the exclamation of sir Bertrand Russel, that got fame long after he hit his intelectual prime.

Buddenbrooks is superbly written, splendidly elegant fiction of the best kind. The novel follows the life of a family (the Buddenbrook family) for the course of about fifty years, and outlines all the various triumphs, struggles, failures, and heartaches that accompany this upper middle-class family. Much of the action centers around the family firm, run by the eldest male. This firm is the source of the Buddenbrooks' prestige--it is because of the firm, and its blossoming business, that allows the family to travel in the high circle of their community.

Essentially, this book is about the decline of the family (hence the subtitle). But the Buddenbrooks' fall is not abrupt--their decline is not steady. Divorces, bad business deals, and bankruptcies are offset by profitable marriages, years of prosperity, and various other triumphs. The decline is detailed mostly in the character of Thomas, the third consul mentioned in the book. Through him, and his siblings as well, we are able to see the struggle to maintain dignity, the fight for a prosperous family to save face in any circumstance. And, more than that, we see Thomas being trapped, trapped in a lifestyle and a society in which he is not allowed to relax even for a moment, lest everything come crashing down around him.

Thomas Mann is a brilliant author (he wrote this when he was 25!), a wonderful stylist whose elegant prose and smoothly flowing narrative are the real treat of this work. For an entertaining and stimulating read, give Buddenbrooks a try. You won't be disappointed.

Buddenbrooks is the most autobiographical of Mann's works--and the one that most of all, earned Mann the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mann grew up in a prosperous Luebeck family, son of a merchant father who died in 1891. The dissolution of the family firm, the artistic, Southern Creole background of Mann's mother and the struggle between the materialistic merchant side and the wild, artistic side are the backdrop for a deep regret, maybe even self-recrimination, for the family's ultimate decline. The family line ends, in Buddenbrooks with Hanno, son of successful and foppish Senator Thomas Buddenbrooks. When Thomas dies, the family firm is broken up and the family starts the deep decline already in process. Hanno's red-haired, violin-playing mother couldn't care less. ("I live for Art" would seem to have been written with her in mind.) Hanno's aunt Toni is left to mourn the family's end--though Toni's own earnest efforts to hold up family honor also ended in disaster. Some declines, apparently, are natural and cannot be prevented.

Interestingly, Mann puts a bit of himself in Toni as well as Hanno; he worked for a fire insurance company as did Toni's luckless son-in-law, he moved to Munich as Toni did in Buddenbrooks. The other characters, Thomas's ne'er-do-well brother Christian, and especially the grandparents are beautifully drawn and developed.

This is one of the best family chronicles written, and even if you don't love "great literature" you will enjoy this book. It's been filmed as well as a mini-series, but frankly, nothing comes up to reading this for yourself. I couldn't put this novel down once I started it. And it is a hefty book, though not the longest by Mann.

You can still go see the house on Broad Street (Breitstrasse) (though not go in, it's privately owned) in Luebeck and walk the quaint alleyways where Mann grew up--and even the Waldhotel Riesebusch where the Buddenbrooks family enjoyed an outing is still in operation, with the same sloping lawns, in nearby Schwartau.

A classy, modernistic literary magnum opus that is truly representative of global literature, Thomas Mann's masterpiece about the bourgeois-which is a tornado of unceasing recherche prose and firmly solidified ideas-is a stylish prose epic, a historical and social whirlwind of unimaginable breadth and intelligence that will certainly leave the reader in absolute awe. Considered to be the first 'realistic' novel that dealt unreservedly in the exploration of grim day-to-day truths and harsh realities-divorce, death, social and economic abatement, transgression of conventional and societal norms, loss of ideology, faith, respect and madness-Buddenbrooks is an accurate replication of nineteenth century German aristocracy, small town highbrowism, and internal, familial oligarchic domination. Buddenbrooks is a novel that is framed in the form of generations, the first being the patrician class, the midpoint being the upper middle class and the latter ultimately representing the genteel lower class. The Buddenbrook Family at the start of the novel are a moralistic clan who cloy their materialistic needs whenever they feel the need to do so, whether it be lavish furnishings for their costly homes or vacations to the sea resort of Travemunde, they are a household, who, at the beginning, can afford their 'excesses.' But through a series of misfortunes and bad judgements, each generation becomes a little less well off than before. Coupled with the misfortunes and bad judgements are the inherent vices that some of the characters seem to possess: Christian's poor work ethic and theatre fetish, Antonie's unremitting superciliousness, Thomas Buddenbrook's stringent outlook of how life and society must function, Ida Jung[mann's] incessant coddling of young Hanno... For everything that is good and strong within this family, there is something bad and gnawing with which to combat it. The balance of justice, however, never seems to weigh down in the Buddenbrook's favor. There is a stark divide between the role of men and women; the former are the breadwinners and the latter are dainty butterflies who provide the care. But what happens when Christian and Hanno's perception of how life should be lived clashes with that of Thomas? It becomes a calamitous disaster that slowly takes root in anything and everything. And bit by bit, the decadant lifestyle so enjoyed by the numerous bon vivants, ebbs away until only one side is left standing to live unhappily in a new altered environment. In past novels, authors have tried diligently to tackle the theme of good vs. evil; the forms that good and evil have shown themselves have certainly varied over the years, but in Buddenbrooks, evil seems best represented in the form of social and economic classicism. It is something that has become sanctified to them. Although it represses some or all of the characters (you decide), wealth is something they all fervently strive for, despite the fact that it blatantly obstructs their true inner wants and needs-like drugs or alcohol; it is a cover-up for something deeper and more profound. Money seem to be the core to which the Buddenbrooks revolve, for it comes in many directions: Dowaries, the firm and various inheritances. But as all that happens, it slowly replaces the good qualities of the characters immediately affected. There is a loss of forbearance, empathy and understanding. That is best illustrated when Antonie-by a slow process of guilt-is bargained away like a piece of chattel to Herr Grunlich in the name of family honor. Love is love. Hate is hate. Human foibles can not be fixed so they adhere to other people's perceptions of what respectable is. The Buddenbrooks have many faults, but they do not allow those very human imperfections to take their natural course in life, and because that is so, they steep themselves into further social and economic muck and mire. As an assortment of characters pass away and the level of depression rises, the dignity held so steadfastly at the start becomes quite eroded. And the only thing that is left standing at the end of the novel is faith-the one true possession of value above all the others. Buddenbrooks is fat and wonderful, an unyielding edifice of modernistic writing.

The first third of this novel is wonderful, and the middle third is slow, but the final third was equal to the first. The characters are rich, the story is interesting. My favorite character was Antonie, 'Tony', and she is indeed the center of the novel. (Just like Pizzi's Honor, which is ostensibly about the honor of a mafia family, but ends up really being about its daughter, Mae Rose.) There are no deeper meanings or philosophies to this novel; one might say philosophy is notable for its absence. It is a lovely story of family and history, no more. Mann's 'Death in Venice' is a great philosophical work of literature, and one of my favorites, so I will praise Buddenbrooks' sweep and spirit highly, but withold a fifth star due to its lightness.

In the same league with Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "100 Years of Solitude," and Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace." It's the mighty Buddenbrooks (noble German businessmen) versus the Industrial Revolution, and I won't let on who claims the victory. Mann tackles countless issues in this massive and wonderful novel, which is intricately set up and extremely engaging if you have no trouble immersing yourself in late 19th century Germany.