Buddenbrooks - Background & Resources

[Silver]

Please post and additional material and backgtond information about the author and the book that you think will be helpful to the discussion. Please post spoiler warnings where appropriate.

[Madge UK]

No Kindle edition: Any other online English translation? Gutenberg seems to have only German.

[Madge UK]

Some useful background stuff in Wikipedia. Beware of Spoilers:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budde...

[Will]

The John Woods translation published by Vintage is supposed to be an excellent updated version which sticks closer to Mann's use of language.

[Deborah, Moderator]

Some of our members need an ebook version due to eye sight limitations. Anybody know of a good ebook version?

[Will]

There is a site called Kobo books which seems to have a version of Buddenbrooks available in English for sale. One might need a certain app for this, not personally familiar with them.

[Madge UK]

I installed Kobo, bought the Gutenberg version for 61p but it is in German, as are all the other Kobo versions:(

[Silver]

The James Woods translations can be downloaded as an epub here

http://bookzz.org/book/2166232/fdb8fd


I couldn't find anywhere that offered a kindle download in English.

[Will]

I am sorry, as I read the description, it seemed to indicate an English version for 13.99 dollars. I am just inept at negotiating online stuff.

[Madge UK]

That's OK Will, it wasn't clear that it was a German tr.

Can't open the epub one on my tablet either. Seems I am destined not to read it. (I don't mind paying.)

[Kat]

I'm surprised there's no Kindle version. Barnes and Noble has an ebook for its Nook.

[Deborah, Moderator]

Madge can you get a Nook app for your tablet?

[Madge UK]

Tried, not compatible:(

[Everyman]

Silver wrote: "The James Woods translations can be downloaded as an epub here

http://bookzz.org/book/2166232/fdb8fd"

Is anybody familiar with that site? Reputable, reliable?

[Deborah, Moderator]

Marie wrote: "Everyman wrote: "Silver wrote: "The James Woods translations can be downloaded as an epub here

http://bookzz.org/book/2166232/fdb8fd"

Is anybody familiar with that site? Reputable, reliable?"

T..."

Marie you had no way of knowing re the ebook issue. Plus you weren't the only voter :)

[Lily]

We had a similar ebook issue with Magic Mountain on another board. I did find an epub version of that at the time, although it turned out to be awkward to use.

[Lily]

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

May want to take a look at Msg 31 here, as well as other entries from this board which also read Thomas Mann.

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "Some useful background stuff in Wikipedia. Beware of Spoilers:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budde..."

One useful excerpt from wiki:

"Mann began writing the book in October 1897, when he was twenty-two years old. The novel was completed three years later, in July 1900, and published in October 1901. His objective was to write a novel on the conflicts between businessman and artist's worlds, presented as a family saga, continuing in the realist tradition of such 19th-century works as Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir (1830; The Red and the Black). More personally, he hoped to surpass the achievement of his eldest brother Heinrich Mann, who had met relative success with his novel In einer Familie (1894, In a Family) and who was working at the time on another novel about German bourgeois society, Im Schlaraffenland (1900, In the Land of Cockaigne). Buddenbrooks is Mann's most enduringly popular novel, especially in Germany, where it has been cherished for its intimate portrait of 19th-century German bourgeois life."

[Lily]

Here is a list of almost 50 characters from the movie Buddenbrooks (2008):

For length, put in (view spoiler)[

Aline Puvogel
Alois Permaneder
Anna
Antonie 'Tony' Buddenbrook
Bürgermeister Overdieck
Babette
Bendix Grünlich
Berkemeyer
Buddenbrook
Carl Smolt
Christian Buddenbrook
Cook
Diener Anton
Dr. Friedrich Grabow
Dr. Giesecke
Elisabeth 'Betsy' Buddenbrook
Eva Ewers
Folgemädchen
Gerda Arnoldsen
Hanno Buddenbrook
Hermann Hagenström
Hinrich Hagenström
Ida Jungmann
Johann 'Jean' Buddenbrook
Julchen Hagenström
Küchenmagd Trine
Kai von Mölln
Kesselmayer
Konsul Lebrecht Kröger
Leutnant René Maria von Trotha
Lieferant
Man
Martha Huneus
Meneer Arnoldsen
Morten Schwarzkopf
Pastor Pringsheim
Peter Döhlmann
Postbote Telegramm
Prokurist Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus
Sängerin
Senator James Möllendorf
Senatorin Möllendorf
Senatsbote
Sigismund Gosch
Stephan Kistenmaker
Sterbeschwester Leandra
Thomas Buddenbrook
Van Kellen
Zahnrzt Dr. Brecht

http://film.famousfix.com/tpx_617875/...

(hide spoiler)]

May be useful if you want to create your own character list. I don't know how close the match is to the book. I have not found a site with a character list and brief descriptions or a family tree. (I.e., such as are available for War and Peace.) Various sites do describe a number of the characters, often with story line information.

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "Here is a list of almost 50 characters from the movie Buddenbrooks (2008):

Useful, thanks. But I would still love to find a site with a complete family tree, as is the case for many W&P sites.

[Everyman]

I did find this brief discussion of the characters, from Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Revised Third Edition; February 1998, p1-2

In spoiler because of length and spoilers:

(view spoiler)[
Characters Discussed

Johann Buddenbrook Johann Buddenbrook (YOH-hahn BOO-dehn-brohk), the stout, rosy-faced, benevolent-looking patriarch of the Buddenbrook family. He is the wealthy, successful senior partner of a grain-trading firm inherited from his father.

Johann “Jean” Buddenbrook, Jr. Johann “Jean” Buddenbrook, Jr., called The Consul, his serious-looking, aquiline-nosed, blond-bearded first son by his second wife. Jean combines the sentimentalist and the businessman. He rejoices over a happy family gathering, worries about the alienation of his half brother, Gotthold, from the family, and then advises coolly that Gotthold’s request for money be denied because of likely future results to both family and firm. Jean’s pietism seems foreign to the other Buddenbrooks, whose religion is superficial and confined to conventional sentiments proper to people of their class.

Antonie (Tony) Buddenbrook Antonie (Tony) Buddenbrook (AHN-toh-nee), later Frau Grünlich, and Frau Permaneder, Jean’s oldest child. She has ash-blonde hair, gray-blue eyes, and finely shaped but stumpy hands. Impetuous in youth, she becomes conventional in maturity, but to her brother Tom she always remains a child in her reactions to the incidents in her life. She easily adapts herself to any situation; she is not humiliated by the dissolution of her marriage to Grünlich and is proud of the fact that she becomes a person of importance in the family. She adapts as readily to the breaking up of her marriage to Permaneder. As she develops a closer intimacy with her father following her first divorce, she recognizes and establishes closer ties with Tom after the death of their father. She sees the two of them as true Buddenbrooks, for their brother Christian does not really seem one of the family, and young Clara remains an unimportant sister. The retention of dignity for both herself and the family becomes almost a religion with Tony.

Tom Buddenbrook Tom Buddenbrook, Jean’s older son (modeled upon Thomas Mann’s father). A quick-witted, intelligent, even-tempered boy, he becomes a strong, sturdy youth resembling his grandfather Johann. As he matures, he develops a stocky, broad-shouldered figure and a military air. His excessive clothes consciousness seems out of character for a Buddenbrook. An earnest, responsible businessman, he is proud of his burgher ancestry, and he contrasts his own desire to preserve the family name with the lack of imagination and idealism shown by Gotthold, his father’s half brother. He is increasingly disgusted with Christian’s business irresponsibility and his reputation as a strange kind of clown. He cannot forgive Christian’s joking observation in company that all businessmen are swindlers. In his prime, Tom is more aggressive than the earlier Buddenbrooks, but occasionally a little less scrupulous. His participation in public affairs and his interest in culture set him somewhat apart from his ancestors and his business associates. Early in his forties, he becomes increasingly aware that he has grown prematurely old, and he thinks more and more of death. At forty-eight he feels that death is stalking him. He dies not many months later following a fall in a snowy street after the partial extraction of a rotted tooth.

Christian Buddenbrook Christian Buddenbrook (KRIHS-tee-ahn), Jean’s younger son. A born mimic, he is a moody, whimsical, sometimes extravagantly silly boy. As a youth, he first betrays his weakness for pretty women and his deep interest in the theater. During an eight-year absence from home, principally in South America, he becomes lean and pallid, his large humped nose more prominent, his neck thinner, his hair sparse. Through association with Englishmen abroad, he himself grows to look like an Englishman. His self-absorption and his lack of dignity in his social manners disturb Tom Buddenbrook’s sense of propriety. Christian becomes more and more a neurotic and a hypochondriac as he ages. After Tom’s death, Christian marries his mistress, who not long afterward has to put him in a mental institution. Like Tom’s son Hanno, he symbolizes the decay of the Buddenbrook family.

Frau Consul Elizabeth Kröger Buddenbrook Frau Consul Elizabeth Kröger Buddenbrook (ay-LEE-sah-bat KROH-gehr), the wife of Jean Buddenbrook. A woman of the world and a lover of life, she becomes well known in her later years for her piety and her numerous charities. After a long life with her family, she dies of pneumonia.

Clara Buddenbrook Clara Buddenbrook (KLAH-rah), the fourth and youngest child of Jean and Elizabeth. Hawk-nosed, dark-haired, and firm-mouthed, she is at times haughty. She marries Pastor Tiburtius, a minister from Riga, and dies childless a few years later.

Gotthold Buddenbrook Gotthold Buddenbrook (GOT-hohld), the elder Johann’s unambitious son by his first wife. Having angered his father by a disapproved marriage and by becoming a shopkeeper, he is thereafter shunned by the family. He resents the favored treatment accorded his half-brother Jean. After his father’s death, Gotthold retires and lives on the income from his inheritance and the sale of his shop. He dies at sixty of a heart attack.

Gerda Arnoldsen Buddenbrook Gerda Arnoldsen Buddenbrook (GAYR-dah AHR-nold-sehn), an aristocratic Dutch heiress who attends school with Tony. Her immense dowry later influences Tom’s decision to marry her, though he declares to his mother at the time that he loves Gerda. The marriage is a happy one, but Gerda (perhaps modeled in part on Thomas Mann’s mother), with her high degree of refinement, her detached nature, and her intense interest in music, remains somewhat a stranger among the Buddenbrooks.

Little Johann (Hanno) Buddenbrook Little Johann (Hanno) Buddenbrook, the pathetic, sickly son of Tom and Gerda. He shares his mother’s love of music, and she thinks him a precocious genius. He dies in his teens of typhoid fever. Like his Uncle Christian, Hanno symbolizes the decadence of the family, and with his death the family itself comes to an end, for no male is left to carry on the Buddenbrook name.

Bendix Grünlich Bendix Grünlich (BEHN-dihks GREWN-lihsh), Tony’s first husband, a well-to-do Hamburg merchant and a pink-faced, blue-eyed, golden-whiskered, obsequious flatterer and rascal. His bogus charm takes in Jean, who urges Tony to marry him despite her disgust for him. When his impending bankruptcy later leads him to seek money from Jean, Buddenbrook angrily discovers that Grünlich, even before marrying Tony, had unscrupulously capitalized on his supposed connection with the family. A divorce follows shortly after Tony’s return to her parents’ home with her daughter.

Morten Schartzkopf Morten Schartzkopf (MOHR-tehn SCHAHRTS-kopf), a charming, serious-minded, liberal-thinking but naïve medical student whose brief romance with Tony is broken up when Grünlich reports to Morten’s father a prior claim on Tony.

Alois Permaneder Alois Permaneder (AH-loh-ees PEHR-mah-nay-dehr), Tony’s second husband, a bullet-headed, walrus-like, fat-cheeked man of forty, a Munich brewer. Vulgar in speech and desirous of an easy life, he gets no sympathy from Tony regarding his decision to retire from the brewing business to live on his income from rents and investments. After Tony finds him one night drunkenly forcing his attentions on Babette, the cook, she leaves him. When she seeks a divorce, he willingly agrees to it and returns her dowry because he has no need of it.

Erica Grünlich Erica Grünlich (AY-rih-kah), the daughter of Tony and her first husband. Tall, fresh-colored, pretty, healthy, and strong, she is occasionally inclined to melancholy moods. Her marriage, after the birth of a daughter, ends in disaster.

Hugo Weinschenk Hugo Weinschenk (WIN-shank), Erica’s husband, a crude, pompous, self-made man, the middle-aged Silesian director of a fire insurance company. Convicted of unscrupulous business practices, he goes to prison. Upon his release and after a brief visit with the Buddenbrooks, he disappears.

Friederick Wilhelm Marcus Friederick Wilhelm Marcus (FREE-deh-rihk WIHL-hehlm MAHR-kos), Jean’s confidential clerk. After Jean’s death, he becomes a junior partner in the Buddenbrook firm. His conservatism counteracts Tom’s occasional tendency to overreach himself.
(hide spoiler)]

[Wendel]

A family tree - link from the German wikipedia.

[Hedi]

I read the novel 8-9 months ago in German and was mostly impressed by the use of language. I hope this will not get lost in your translations as I did have a brief discussion with Cleo about that at the time.

[Silver]

Wendel wrote: "A family tree - link from the German wikipedia."

That is very helpful. I tried to Google search for one but wasn't able to find it.

[Bonnie]

Western Fashion & Clothing:


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