In Consciousness and Society: the Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930(1) H. Stuart Hughes identifies several themes in the European thought of the fin-de-siecle period that are present in Thomas Mann's 1901 novel Buddenbrooks.(2) According to Hughes, Marx cast a wide shadow over the fin-de-siecle period, as thinkers responded to various aspects of Marxism. Marxist themes and ideas are reflected in Buddenbrooks in a number of ways. Another trend in the thought of this period identified by Hughes is the resurgence of the German idealist tradition. Idealist ideas are present in Mann's novel on several different levels. While an enduring work of literature, Buddenbrooks reflects the intellectual environment in which it was written.
Mann's Buddenbrooks is a novel rich in autobiographical elements. It covers the history of an elite merchant family in the Baltic port city of Luebeck from 1835 until 1880. The first generation that is the subject of the novel in Johann Buddenbrook, who inherited the grain-dealing firm founded by his father; his Protestant work-ethic links his deep religious faith with his devotion to business. His children include Tony, who has two disastrous marriages, Christian, who goes on to lead a life of bohemian dissipation, and Thomas, who is usually a model of bourgeois respectability and a member of the city's Senate. Thomas Buddenbrook's son, Hanno, is a shy and sensitive child whose premature death marks the end of the Buddenbrook family lineage. Aside from these main characters, there are a host of minor figures, each of whom is a stereotype representing a particular aspect of life in Luebeck. For instance, the plump pastor represents Protestantism, Tony's second husband represents Catholic moral laxness, one of little Hanno's teachers represents German nationalism. The Luebeck of the Buddenbrooks is a thoroughly bourgeois community, and through their faults, the characters illustrate the defects of bourgeois society.
Mann was from Luebeck and came from a merchant family very similar to the Buddenbrooks. The autobiographical element is particularly strong as Hanno Buddenbrook represents the author himself. In addition to being autobiographical, Buddenbrooks is a highly introspective work. The author devotes considerable space to describing not just the actions of characters but their inner life, their feelings and philosophy. Much of the plot development in Buddenbrooks rests not on external changes or new developments in material reality but in changes that occur within the minds of individual characters, especially in the subconscious. The characters' actions and feelings are often motivated by irrational drives or desires that often seem left over from childhood. At one party held in the family home, Thomas Buddenbrook, now a member of the Senate, feels the sudden urge to hold his head close to his mother's chest. He manages to resist this urge to revert to infantile behavior and continues to behave as an adult for the rest of the party. Like Freud and other contemporary psychoanalysts, Hughes appreciates the role of the irrational in the mind.
Over the course of the novel, Senator Buddenbrook becomes more and more despondent, despite the fact that materially his circumstances are good. His health is excellent and the house of Buddenbrook not only remains solvent but is quite prosperous. Senator Buddenbrook has surpassed his deceased father in social prestige, who only ranked as a Consul, titles and gradations of status being very important to the burghers of Luebeck. The Senator has moved the family to a spacious new residence that combines bourgeois comfort, artisocratic pretensions, and the most up-to-date electrical conveniences. Despite the fact that by any criteria his life is going well, the Senator feels a sense of ennui. He suffers from insomnia and is increasingly frightened of death.
In keeping with the internal cause of Senator Buddenbrook's despair, it is his reflection upon philosophical issues that proves to be a crucial event in the course of his fight for the will to live. Senator Buddenbrook regrets that he does not have the simple faith that sustained his father and is self-analytical enough to realize that his ennui is the result of a lack of some type of belief system. Searching for answers, Senator Buddenbrook looks to an unnamed volume of philosophy. The Senator skims most of the book, but after reading a chapter entitled "On Death and its Relation to our Personal Immortality", he experiences an incredible revelation, sensing that "his whole being had unaccountably expanded." (Mann, Vol. 2., 257)
Senator Buddenbrook suddenly realizes that his soul will be immortal, and that his death will merely mark his passage into a vastly superior world. He concludes that before the soul is liberated from its "prison" of fresh, the mind's consciousness of reality is stunted by the limitations of terrestrial existence. "The human being stares hopelessly through the barred windows of his personality at the high wall of outside circumstances." Individuality implies a degree of subjectivity; leaving the physical organism behind allows one to achieve objective knowledge, to "float free in spaceless, timeless night" rather than remain in a captivity "illumined by the feeble power of the intellect." (Mann, Vol. 2., 258) After reading this book of philosophy, the Senator realizes that our imperfect senses and intellect are, in fact, barriers to true awareness of reality; in his rambling monologue that follows his epiphany, Senator Buddenbrook repeatedly uses the metaphor of brilliant light and clear vision to illuminate the superiority of our perception of reality in the next life as compared to this one. Soon after this philosophical epiphany reconciles the Senator to death, he dies of an apparently ridiculously minor cause, a toothache. External, material factors do not play an important role in the life and death of Senator Buddenbrook; rather, it is internal mental events that are decisive.
In attributing these ideas to the words of his characters, Mann shows that he shares some of the main preoccupations of fin-de-siecle thought outlined by Hughes, especially the German idealist tradition and the criticism of positivism. The positivists had adhered strongly to the observer-reality dualism; for positivists, the focus in considering how to study external reality was on external reality itself and not on how the observer's mind processed the information supplied by the senses. The ability of the mind to study reality was simply assumed, and little attention needed to be focus on the study of the mind of the observer, even if that observer was oneself. The mind was a perfect mirror, a tabula rasa that accurately transcribed reality.
The late nineteenth-century reaction to positivism focused on what went on inside the mind: the bias and distortions of the mind were increasingly considered the proper study. Psychoanalysis attempted to illuminate the unconscious foundation of the mind so that the conscious mind would be able to understand and deal with this powerful force. In the social sciences, observers became increasingly aware of their own bias and limitations in perceiving reality. Judging from Buddenbrooks, these issues were increasingly reflected in literature itself. The subconscious, particularly the heritage left in the mind by childhood experiences, such an important part of Freud's work, is a theme present in this novel, as seen in Senator Buddenbrook's urge to wrap his arms around his mother. Much more important for the plot however conscious and highly philosophical introspection. Introspection plays an important role in this novel; without it, the plot and the actions of the principal characters would be absurd. A product of the idealist tradition of Dilthey, Meinecke, and Croce identified by Hughes, (Hughes, Chapter 6) Mann sees the interior world of the intellect as being more important than the material world.
A certain points, Mann passes from being merely autobiographical in his choice of setting and characters to being highly introspective about his own life. While Mann never talks about himself explicitly, the reader becomes aware that the character Hanno Buddenbrook likely represents the author as a young man. Thomas Mann and his character Hanno Buddenbrook were born at roughly the same time. Hanno Buddenbrook secretly laughs at his society and the individuals that surround him, just as Mann mocks the same people and values. While Mann retains the third-person omniscient form of narration throughout the novel in discussing the inner life of his characters, Mann's treatment of the thoughts and emotions of Hanno is the most complete and the most sympathetic. One has the impression that he is the only character for whom the reader is supposed to feel great empathy. Through a character, Mann is able to look back on his adolescence with an obvious sense of nostalgia.
Mann devotes considerable space to criticizing social norms. The primary target for Mann's social criticism are bourgeois values and institutions. The intellectual environment in which Buddenbrooks was written is a reflected in the political values that are conveyed in this novel; many of the obvious preoccupations of the author evidences the influence of Marxism. Marxist concerns underlie much of this novel; in satirizing bourgeois society and values, Mann partially associates himself with the socialist critique of capitalism. However, Mann does not accept the Marxist or revolutionary traditions uncritically; Mann owes intellectual debts to Marx, but his ideas diverge from those of many Marxists.
The materialism of the Buddenbrooks is continually mocked throughout the course of the novel. Consul Buddenbrook (the Senator's father) constantly frets about the financial health of the house of Buddenbrook; it seems that an estimate of the firm's worth in "marks current" is hanging constantly before his eyes. The conflict between the impulses that underlay romantic love and the bourgeois emphasis on the financial aspects of a marriage is a recurring theme in Buddenbrooks; the view of life acquired after years spent in the counting-house is presented as unnatural. As a young women, Tony Buddenbrook falls in love with Morden, the son a Norwegian sea captain whom she meets during a summer vacation in the country. However, at the same time, her father is negotiating with a man from Hamburg for her hand in marriage. The repulsive Herr Gruenlich shows financial records to demonstrate his prosperity to Consul Buddenbrook, thereby convincing him that he is a suitable match for his daughter. The negotiations preceding the engagement to her first husband are remarkable for the remarkable crassness of the bargaining about the size of the dowry; for a respectable businessman like Consul Buddenbrook, marriage is a commercial transaction like any other. Tony is at first shocked by the news that she will marry Herr Permaneder, whom she finds physically repulsive. However, her sense of duty and the prospect of living in wealth in a large city lead her to accept her betrothal to Premaneder. Several letters that the Buddenbrooks in Luebeck receive from Tony suggest that she accepts her new circumstances. The letters and what the reader sees of Tony's life with her husband reveal that she is as materialistic as the rest of her family; she pesters her husband for more luxuries and more servants, things he is unwilling to provide for inexplicable reasons. In one letter to her father she complains that the chairs in her new house only cost twenty-five marks.
It later becomes apparent to the reader that her new husband is a penniless fraud who has only married her for her money. The theme of respectability plays a crucial role in the development of the plot at this point. Gruenlich and the financier who has cooperated in his deceit attempt to manipulate the Consul's desire to retain his respectability into a willingness to give Gruenlich a transfusion of money that will allow him to remain solvent. Consul Buddenbrook calls Gruenlich's bluff and decides to let his son-in-law become bankrupt and brings his daughter and her child home. The Consul decides that the stain a divorce would place on the family reputation would be less costly than the sums Gruenlich is demanding. Consul Buddenbrook goes to talk to his daughter in private and asks her if she loves her husband deeply and is willing to remain with him through any difficult times he may experience. Tony states that she loves her husband unconditionally. The Consul then reveals to her the extent of her husband's financial difficulties, to which she has been oblivious, and repeats his question as to whether or not she is willing to follow her husband into misery. Comically, Tony's position immediately changes with the news of her husband's impending bankruptcy and she hurriedly packs her belongings and returns to Luebeck with her father, where she lives as respectably as a divorcee can, becoming something of a recluse.
The uneasy relationship between conventional morality and capitalism is explored by Mann, with the author stressing the unneighbourly and nasty nature of capitalist competition. Small incidents are used to illustrate this; for instance, when Senator Buddenbrook takes his son to the harbour to inspect the firm's operations, they rapidly move past the warehouses belonging to a competing firm, which are presented as a hostile territory. The out-right fraud involved in Tony's first marriage also serves to illustrate the negative aspects of capitalism, as does Tony's third marriage to Herr Director Weinschenk, the head of a local insurance company. Herr Director Weinschenck is a man with a fair amount of respectability in the community and his full title is always included with his name. The Director is charged with a "business maneuver" that is illegal; after receiving advance word of a fire at a property in remote area, he would switch the client's insurance policy to another firm so that they absorbed the loss. Senator Buddenbrook is asked by his mother what he thinks of charges being laid against the Director.
The Senator's response shows the amorality that underlies capitalism's thin veneer of respectability. He explains learnedly to his mother, "in the modern style of business, there is a thing they call usance," which he defines as "something that looks dishonest to the man from the street, yet perhaps is quite customary and taken for granted in the business world." For the Senator, business involves entry into areas of moral greyness: "the boundary line between usuance and actual dishonesty is hard to draw." Having stated that morality is irrelevant to this case, the Senator then proceeds to consider the situation from a purely legal view and estimates the Director's chances of acquittal, which he sees as being hampered by the Director's choice of a famous lawyer from Berlin to defend him. ( Mann, Vol. 2, 134) The Senator's strategy to deal with this situation is avoid any action that would strengthen the association between himself and his brother-in-law and vows not to attend the trial. This he deeply regrets, not because he is failing to support a family member but because his thinks that the famous lawyer from Berlin would be very interesting to watch.
The reader is lead to question the morality of the Senator's own business practices. Senator Buddenbrook is a man with divided loyalties, a practical man of business who accepts the loose code of ethics of the business world but who also thinks about philosophical issues. Until his epiphany after reading the essay on the subject of death, Senator Buddenbrook consciously subordinated the philosophical side of his personality to the demands of business. A grain dealer, Thomas Buddenbrook is accused by his sister of "fleecing the poor land-owners." The Senator agrees that on a theoretical level, these accusations may be true, but he questions whether "this is just the right time for so many large words." He poses the question to his sister, "was he -Thomas Buddenbrook, a man of action, a business man- or was he a finicking dreamer?" Senator Buddenbrook believes that "life is harsh, and business, with its ruthless unsentimentally, was an epitome of life." (Mann, Vol. 2, 80) Sentimentality is a barrier to success in business, and Thomas Buddenbrook attributes his success in business to his having "sternly brought his feelings into line." The firm's most trusted executive, the penny-pinching and cautious Herr Marcus epitomizes the denial of feelings inherent in business; symbolically, Herr Marcus often leaves his office and runs cold water over his head.
Senator Buddenbrook's business practices are juxtaposed with those of his father and grandfather, allowing the reader to conclude that business morality has degenerated over time as capitalism has become more developed. Senator Buddenbrook lacks many of the moral inhibitions of his father, Consul Buddenbrook, whose dictum was "attend to thy business during the day, but do nothing that hinders thy sleep at night." But even the founder of the firm of Buddenbrook shown to have subordinated non-economic considerations to business, having traveled with wagons of grain to Southern Germany so that he could sell them to the forces of Napoleon, the invader of Germany. In an argument with his bohemian brother who has failed in business, Thomas is told that "at bottom every business man is a rascal," a statement with which Senator Buddenbrook secretly agrees.
In many ways, Senator Buddenbrook is a hypocrite on economic matters. When his sister comes into his office at one point and describes the sad story of an land-owning family that his being exploited by a commercial middle-man and is now forced to sell its estate, Senator Buddenbrook expresses empathy for the plight of Germany's aristocratic families and mentions the fact that many "of the landed gentry are in the hands of the Jews" and other cut-throats. Tony then reveals that he is the exploitative middleman who has forced this family to liquidate their assets. The Senator is shocked by this accusation and it takes him some time to recover his composure, whereupon he tells his sister "I know your weakness for the nobility, and for the Meckelenburg nobility in particular" but reminds her that some nobles do not "treat the merchant classes with any great respect." (Mann, Vol. 2, 70)
The transition from the feudal to the capitalist stage and the replacement of the domination of society by the aristocracy by the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie are themes in both the writings of Marx and Mann's Buddenbrooks. As a grain-dealing firm, the house of Buddenbrook comes into constant contact with the grain-raising land-owners who live around the Baltic; in purchasing their grain and transporting it to export market, especially England, the family business plays an important role in several developments Marx associates with capitalism: the development of commodity markets and the integration of remote areas into capitalist economies. Many thinkers in the period following Marx sought to relate the abstract generalizations made by Marx about the development of capitalism to particular examples. Mann does this through a novel about a representative family firm.
While the Buddenbrooks are a bourgeois family that deals with land-owners who live in an aristocratic society, they do not live in a state that is politically dominated by a titular, land-owning nobility. Until German Unification in 1871, which occurs near the end of the novel, Luebeck is a sovereign city-state, an independent commercial republic with a heritage extending back to the Hanseatic League, a medieval Baltic trading confederation. The legislative bodies of the city, including the Senate, are composed of men who owe their wealth to success in business and the professions. Luebeck has close commercial relations with the countries where capitalism is most advanced, such as France, Holland, and especially England; the Buddenbrooks refer to London as if it is the centre of the world.
Outside of the walls of the city, however, the decaying feudal aristocracy still manages to cling to vestiges of its former power. The decline in the fortunes of the old nobility is represented by Hanno Buddenbrook's school-mate and best friend Kai, whose family lives just outside the city boundaries in a decrepit but still impressive manor house. Kai's father is a Count and he can expect to inherit the title one day, but while the family enjoys a degree of respect and status, its means are no longer commensurate with this. Kai wears ragged, over-sized clothing that has been passed down from his father, presenting a striking visual contrast with the his better dressed schoolmates who come from solidly middle-class backgrounds. Despite Kai's poverty, Hanno is allowed to associate with him because his social background commands respect.
Hanno, a shy but musically creative boy, and Kai are both social misfits and have little respect for their school. The style of education at Hanno's school is very different than it was in the days when his father and uncle went there. A Prussian schoolmaster who was hired, symbolically, in 1871, has refashioned the school, making it "a state within a state", with classical studies being de-emphasized and military drill introduced. Mann does not restrict his satirical social commentary just to the bourgeoisie, but mocks German militarism and imperialism as well.
The differences between the various regions of the united Germany are used by Mann to illustrate key themes. Mann plays on the contrasting stereotypes of the Protestant Germans of the Baltic coast and the people of the Catholic south, especially Bavaria. The Protestant in his most extreme form is typified by the firm's long-time executive, Herr Marcus, though several members of the Buddenbrooks family approach this ideal type. Excessively rational, the Protestant represses his emotions and animalistic drives and is almost ascetic in his devotion to business to and penny-pinching. Herr Marcus' habit of dousing his head with cold water represents this way of life. A sharp contrast is provided by way of Tony's second husband, Pretender, a Bavarian who represents a brewery. He takes a more relaxed attitude towards work than the more driven Northerners and lives a generally bohemian life, haunting cafes and taverns. Tony moves with him to Bavaria but returns after her husband decides that he would rather have more leisure time and less money and retires from the business world, condemning the family to a low standard of living.
Mann's examination of the religiously-based differences in attitudes towards work and leisure in Catholic and Protestant Germany is interesting for a number of reasons. Mann's contemporary, Max Weber, saw the "Protestant work ethic" as playing a crucial role in the emergence of capitalism and argued this thesis which Weber in academic writing; Mann illustrates this idea in a work of fiction. Moreover, attributing economic change to psychological-cultural factors is coherent with Mann's emphasis on internal or psychological rather than external factors in the causally important in the lives of his characters.
Hughes identifies "the collapse of accepted standards" and an increasing sense of moral relativism. Hughes states that in early years of this century, relativism "became almost a cliché."(Hughes, 365) Mann's Buddenbrooks confirms this statements. There is a clash between the bohemian and the bourgeois codes of morality in Buddenbrooks. Senator Buddenbrook's brother Christian represents the bohemian life; he travels around the world, dissipating his portion of his inheritance and fathering illegitimate children. Senator Buddenbrook on the other hand is outwardly a model of bourgeois respectability, and serves as the perfect foil for his brother. Of the two brothers, Christian Buddenbrooks appears to have the happier, and while he ends his days institutionalized with syphilis, he outlives his respectable brother, who dies of an apparently minor cause.
Like Marx, Mann attacks bourgeois values and institutions. But while Marx posits socialism as a superior form of social organization to capitalism, Mann compares bourgeois life unfavourably with bohemian subcultures. For Mann, class conflict is between bourgeois and bohemian, not bourgeois and proletarian. Working-class individuals appear only occasionally in Buddenbrooks and rarely involved with plot development. The presentation of the working class in Buddenbrooks suggests that Mann holds the working classes in low esteem. The few workers the reader is shown by Mann are the oafish clowns who speak to Buddenbrook family members in thick dialect. The only real conflict between the workers and the bourgeoisie in the novel occurs during the life of the first generation of Buddenbrooks, when the Revolutions of 1848 in other European cities are rather pathetically imitated by the workers of Luebeck, who mass outside the city hall in a disorganized way. In an act considered by his fellows to be very brave, Consul Buddenbrook addresses the crowd in the thickest dialect he can manage and asks to speak to their leader. The closest thing to a leader the mob can produce steps forward and is asked by the Consul what the crowd's demands or aims are. The leader apparently has given this question little thought, and in the course of his discussion with the Consul he reveals his utter ignorance of all matters political: some of his demands are for institutions that the city already has. Their spokesman made to appear ridiculously, the crowd disperses and revolution in Luebeck has been averted. For Mann, only a minority within society have the innate abilities needed for political leadership. His elitist view has striking parallels with those of some his contemporaries, including Pareto and Michels.
Decades after writing Buddenbrooks, Mann entitled a memoir "Reflections of an Unpolitical Man." (Hughes, 406) Ironically, Buddenbrooks is a very political novel. The long period it covers means that it is as much a work of political and economic history as it is the simple narrative of a family. Moreover, it is a very philosophical novel as well. It is clear from reading it that Mann has a clear philosophy of life, a philosophy that is very similar to the German idealist tradition. Materialist explanations for both changes in society and in the lives of individuals are eschewed by Mann, who prefers to focus on the spirit as the most causally important factor. Many of the ideas which Hughes sees as current in the period in which this book was written are reflected in Buddenbrooks, confirming Hughes' analysis.
Bibliography
Hughes, H. Stuart. Consciousness and Society: the Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930, Revised Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Mann, Thomas. Buddenbrooks. Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter. Toronto: MacMillan Canada, 1924.
1. 1H. Stuart Hughes. Consciousness and Society: the Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1980-1930. New York: Vintage Book, 1977. 2Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks. Originally published 1901. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Toronto: MacMillan Canada, 1924.