You wouldn't know it by listening to
me, but Buxtehude wasn't the only famous person who lived and worked
in Lübeck. :-)
Today I'd like to tell you about Thomas
Mann, who was born in Lübeck in 1875. He won the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1929, and is famous for novellas like Death in
Venice, and novels such as Buddenbrooks and The Magic
Mountain.
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| Mann in 1937 |
I fell in love with Buddenbrooks at
first reading, sometime in 2005 or so, when I was busily absorbing
'all things Lübeck'. It's an epic novel which details 'the decline
of a family' (the book's subtitle) over three generations. I quickly
came to admire Mann's wry, sly humor and brilliantly concise
characterizations.
The
city itself is never named in the book, but numerous landmarks (St.
Mary's), street names (Breite Straße) and geographical features (the
Trave River) are called by name.
Buddenbrooks is
a work of fiction, but Mann didn't create all of the characters out
of thin air. No, he populated his 'merchant town on the Trave' with
actual people he knew growing up, including many members
of his own family! He got quite a few people rather steamed up about that, since
this is definitely a 'warts and all' kind of book! And the declining
family of the subtitle? The Manns themselves. (He did change
everyone's name, at least!)
It has
always interested me that the decline really picks up speed with the
introduction of a musical foreigner (Gerda Arnoldsen, the
violin-playing Dutchwoman who marries Thomas Buddenbrook). She is
portrayed as being not very strong, with her headaches and 'eyes with
bluish shadows in the corners'.
Gerda
and Thomas have just one child, Hanno, who bears the hopes of the
entire family on his little shoulders. And with Hanno, the fate of
the once-thriving merchant family is sealed. He couldn't care less
about studying hard, eventually taking over the business, or being an upstanding
member of Lübeck society. All he wants to do is play music. Not be a
musician, mind you, since he doesn't have the energy even for that.
No, his only wish is to sit at his harmonium and improvise
interesting harmonies.
Hanno
Buddenbrook was Thomas Mann's characterization of himself. So in his
own mind, foreign influence (his mother was Julia da Silva Bruhns, a
Brazilian of German and Portuguese descent who emigrated to Germany
as a young girl) and artistic natures were the last straw for a
family that was already foundering due to an obsession with status
and a general downturn in business, combined with a few bad financial
decisions.
It's a
terrific book, which I highly recommend. It's also been filmed
several times. The 1979 miniseries is
available in America (you can get the DVDs from Netflix).
There's
also a feature film version that wasn't released in the US, that was
filmed on location here in Lübeck in 2007! I just purchased it at
the Buddenbrookhaus today, and am really looking forward to seeing
it!
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| The Buddenbrookhaus, now a museum. It was originally the home of Thomas Mann's grandparents. |
And when you exit the Buddenbrookhaus, you see this:
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| St Mary's |
The home church of the Mann family, or as I like to call it, Buxtehude's church. ;-)
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