[issybird]

Originally Posted by desertblues

Thomas Buddenbrooks speaks rather nasty about the Jewish people in p.466/470 of the Gutenberg version. There had been for centuries a more or less accepted anti-Semitism in East and Central Europe

There was an early instance that revealed underlying anti-Semitism, as I recall. When Thomas takes Tony to Travemüunde, he talks about the people there:

"And then there's the Möllendorpfs and the Kistenmakers--all at full strength, I would think--and the Hagenströms...."

"Ha!--Naturally. How could we do without Sarah Semlinger?"

"Her names's Laura, my girl, let's be fair."

Laura Semlinger having married Hagenström, and there's a later reference I can't find to the Semlingers' murky origins. A little uncomfortably close to the Nazi era when the state gave all Jewish women and girls the middle name of Sarah.

I read in a short piece by Peter Gay that Mann wrote an anti-Semitic story early in his career which he later suppressed; according to Gay, very few have read it or know of it, I assume.

Originally Posted by caleb72

Do you think that it's deliberate that the consul is always called Johann except for Thomas? I noticed it when the 100 year anniversary plaque was presented.

I didn't know what to make of the name Thomas. The obvious reference is to doubting Thomas, but nothing occured to me to develop that, and then it's Mann's name, too, which is a little odd.

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

“Buddenbrooks depicts the decline of the Hanseatic city-state . . . and the rise of the German National-state . . . . Buddenbrooks also reflects the development of global trade and overseas colonies, particularly in the trans-Atlantic realm. Mann’s novel . . . thus engages the panoply of fears that accompanied the process of German nationalization in an age of empire, including anxiety about the collapse of traditional social hierarchies, the inversion of gender roles, and the danger of racial contamination.”

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Thanks a lot for that background Fantasyfan. I did in fact see a lot of that in Buddenbrooks.

I really liked that, the way huge shifts in politics took place in the background (a passing reference only to unification!). It largely didn't affect life day-to-day, but a huge shift had occured by the end. Similarly, the industrial revolution happened on the periphery; in the course of the book, society changed from one that traveled by horse or by sail and could only communicate as fast as those methods, to one that moved by railroad and steamship and communicated instantly by telegraph. There was the one scene emblematic of major changes (there may have been others that aren't occuring to me) where Thomas notes with approval that the streetlamps are being replaced with gas. But Thomas was falling behind the times and his downfall was partially attributable to that.