Hiermit begannen schöne Sommerwochen für Tony Buddenbrook, kurzweiligere und angenehmere, als sie jemals in Travemünde erlebt hatte. […]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/Main
Nõnda algasid Tooni Buddenbrookil kaunid suvenädalad, lõbusamad ja meeldivamad, mis ta iial veetnud Travemündes. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Tästä alkoivat Tony Buddenbrookin kauniit kesäviikot, rattoisimmat ja miellyttävimmät hänen koskaan Travemündessä viettämänsä. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Nú hófst fögur sumartíđ fyrir Toný Búddenbrook, skemmtilegri og ljúfari en nokkru sinni fyrr í Travemünde. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Sākās jaukas un gaišas vasaras dienas, interesantākas un patīkamākas, kāadas Tonija Budenbroka Trāvemindējebkad bija piedzīvojusi. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Taip prasidėjo Antonijai Budenbrok gražiosios vasaros savaitės, greičiau prabėgusios ir malonesnės už visas bet kada anksčiau praleistas Travemiundėje. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Og nå begynte noen herlige sommeruker for Tony, hyggeligere og morsommere enn hun før hadde opplevd i Travemünde. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Gyldendal
Dla Toni rozpoczęly się piękne dni letnie, weselsze i milsze od wszystkich, jakie kiedykolwiek spędziła w Travemünde. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Так начались для Тони Будденброк эти летние дни, счастливые и быстролетные, каких она еще не знавала в Травемюнде. [...]
© S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt /
Härmed började för Tony Buddenbrook sköna sommarveckor, nöjsammare och angenämare än hon någonsin hade upplevt i Travemünde. [...]
The novel portrays the fate of a patrician family in Lübeck between 1835 and 1877. Over four generations the family’s “decline” accelerates as the men become increasingly alienated from their inherited profession as merchants due to their increasing refinement and attraction to the life of the mind (music, philosophy). Their lifespan decreases from generation to generation. Along with her brothers Thomas and Christian, Tony Buddenbrooks belongs to the third generation and ultimately proves the most vital and hardy of the siblings. But she too is forced to make sacrifices. Shortly after coming of age she faces pressure from her family to marry a man she does not love, Bendix Grünlich, who is presented almost as a caricature of a businessman. However, Tony is permitted a brief hiatus in Travemünde, where she finds true love for only time in her life, a relationship she subsequently sacrifices for the “firm.”
When writing about himself, Thomas Mann frequently refers to Buddenbrooks, his most popular novel and the one that saw his breakthrough as an author. The texts Bilse und ich (1906) and Lübeck als Geistige Lebensform (1926) are essential reading for any interpretation of Buddenbrooks. In both these texts Mann argues against an overly ‘realistic,’ autobiographic interpretation of the novel and particularly against seeing the work as somehow “peeking” into Lübeck society. In his portrayal of student-fraternity (Burschenschaft) member Morten Schwarzkopf, Mann seems to have drawn on the work of esteemed Danish literary critic Georg Brandes: Die Hauptströmungen der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts (Danish 1871 ff, German 1897, see vol.6: Das Junge Deutschland)
Nobel Prize 1929 “in particular for [...] Buddenbrooks [...] as a classic work of modern times“, by 1930 the number of copies published had crossed the one-million mark.
Hans Peter Neureuter
On a symbolic level the Baltic Sea—like love—comes to represent Tony’s experience of the infinite, the sea becomes the experience of the endless abyss.
Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks. Verfall einer Familie. Novel. Edited and revised by Eckhard Heftrich in cooperation with Stephan Stachorski and Herbert Lehnert. Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe. Werke – Briefe – Tagebücher, vol. 1.1, p.145-158 (part 3, chapters 8-9); Kommentarband 1.2; Frankfurt am Main 2002.
Language | Year | Translator |
Danish | 1903 | L. Stange |
Danish | 1953 | Johannes Wulff |
Danish | 2002 | Niels Brunse |
English | 1935 | Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter |
English | 1994 | John E. Woods |
Estonian | 1936 | Jaan Kangilaski |
Finnish | 1925 | Siiri Siegberg |
Finnish | 2010 | Ilona Nykyri |
Icelandic | 1999 | Þorbjörg Bjarnar Friðriksdó́ttir |
Latvian | 1929 | Lizete Skalbe, Kārlis Štrāls, Zelma Kroder |
Lithuanian | 1930 | K. Karnauskas |
Lithuanian | 1968 | J. Vaznelis |
Norwegian | 1952 | Margrethe Kjær |
Norwegian | 2005 | Per Paulsen |
Polish | 1931 | Ewa Librowiczowa |
Polish | 1971 | Ewa Librowiczowa, rev. by Jan Bokiewicz, Wojciech Freudenreich |
Russian | 1935 | V. A. Zorgenfreja |
Russian | 1953 | Natalia Man |
Swedish | 1904 | Walborg Hedberg |
Swedish | 1930 | Alfred Wingren |
Swedish | 1934 | Curt Munthe |
Swedish | 1952 | Walborg Hedberg, rev. by Irma Nordvang |
Swedish | 1975 | Walborg Hedberg, rev. by Nils Holmberg |
Swedish | 2005 | Ulrika Wallenström |