Decadence and the Decline of the Family: Buddenbrooks

Abstract

Thomas Mann’s first novel Buddenbrooks has remained his most popular; its publication in 1901 secured the basis for a literary reputation that was eventually to place Mann amongst the major novelists of modern European literature. One reason for the success of the novel lies in the fact that it can be read and enjoyed on a number of levels. At its simplest, it can be approached as a saga of the decline of a family, a process that is sensitively described in terms of the personal and domestic crises that befall that family over a period of almost half a century; on another level, it can be seen as a novel that bears witness to the crisis of an entire social class, the conservative burgher (Bürger) class, which, unable to come to terms with the accelerating historical changes that characterized the mid to late nineteenth century, eventually finds itself replaced by a more ruthless and pragmatic class of entrepreneurs; and, finally, the novel can be viewed as an exploration of a number of moral and philosophical themes, such as the desire for self-fulfilment versus duty to society, self-expression versus restraint, appearance versus reality and the fateful affinities between art and death. Buddenbrooks can also be seen as Mann’s most autobiographical novel; not only are there obvious parallels between the Christian names of the central male members of the family and Mann’s own, but the type of business they are engaged in (the buying and selling of wheat), and even the town they live in are drawn from the social background and personal circumstances of Mann’s own life. The autobiographical dimension of the novel is, however, most evident in the very subject matter of the novel, which, in telling of an old established merchant family that comes to grief because