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Part 8, Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Buddenbrooks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Sacrifice
Tradition, Modernity, and Change
The Protestant Ethic
Personal Fulfillment and Self-Knowledge
Pretense and Etiquette
Summary
Analysis
One evening in the spring of 1868, Tony, newly returned from a trip to the country to visit her old friend Armgard, drops by Thomas’s house. She finds Thomas all alone this evening: Ida Jungmann is busy with Hanno, and Gerda has gone with Christian to see a violin concert. Gerda and Christian get along quite well—she’s one of the few willing to listen to him go on about his various ailments.
Gerda’s good relationship with Christian makes sense given their mutual love of the performing arts (though Christian’s love is purely as a spectator, not as a performer). Still, their closeness hints at growing fissures in Gerda’s marriage to Thomas, who resents and disapproves of his flaky and self-indulgent younger brother.
Themes
Erika has recently given birth to a baby, Elisabeth. It was a difficult birth, but she’s recovering. After a pause, Tony admits she has some concerns about Weinschenk. He’s a dutiful husband and a hard worker, yes—but he expects Erika to always be in a good mood when he gets home from work. That’s a problem, because Erika tends to be “melancholy” and contemplative a lot of the time. Plus, Weinschenk has a bad temper. Tony recalls a time when he threw a pot of soup to the floor because he thought it was too salty. It’s such moments, Tony muses, that one can tell that Weinschenk doesn’t come from a good family.
Gerda and Thomas’s marriage isn’t the only relationship that is suffering. Predictably, Erika’s marriage to Weinschenk has also turned out to be an unhappy one. His bad temper and lack of respect for Erika resemble Grünlich’s poor treatment of Tony years before. In valuing reputation and social standing over Erika’s wants and needs, Tony has ensured that Erika suffers all the setbacks Tony herself suffered as a young woman. Knowingly or unknowingly, she obtusely blames Weinschenk’s poor behavior on his family’s standing in order to minimize the role her own poor judgment played in Erika’s present marital strife.
Themes
Things could be worse, though. Tony confesses that while she was visiting Armgard, Armgard confessed that her husband, Herr von Maiboom, has a huge gambling problem. In fact, that’s why Armgard invited Tony to visit: the family is buried in debt, and Maiboom needs to come up with a lot of money on short notice. Armgard asked if Tony might arrange for Thomas to buy Maiboom’s entire crop at the Poppenrade estate at a heavily discounted rate so Maiboom has money to pay back a lender. Thomas declines. He's never done any business with Maiboom before, and the Buddenbrooks only rarely do business with landed gentry. Tony pleads with Thomas, but to no avail. He has no interest in exploiting Maiboom. “I have a tradition behind me,” Thomas says.
Thomas’s disinterest in doing business with von Maiboom reflects the disdain that wealthy merchant families like the Buddenbrooks historically had for landed gentry, finding rural nobility to be uncultured or morally suspect. His reticence to help von Maiboom might be cold and unfeeling, but it’s also prudent given his lack of history with the man and the man’s admitted gambling problem. Thomas’s declaration about “tradition” grounds his choice in history as well: his forebearers wouldn’t have done business with von Maiboom, so nor shall he.
Themes
Thomas tells Tony an anecdote about his long-ago dealings with one Count Strelitz, who in their first business meeting treated Thomas very rudely, not even offering him a chair or bothering to look up from his papers while speaking to Thomas. Thomas took it upon himself to take a seat on the aristocrat’s table. When at last the man asked Thomas to sit down, Thomas told him he had “been sitting all along.” From that day forward, the man treated Thomas with the utmost respect. Thomas’s story delights Tony, and it persuades her to see the issue with Herr von Maiboom from Thomas’s side.
Thomas tells this story about Count Strelitz to demonstrate to her that he’s turning her down out to be cruel or petty—it’s just that if he wants to do business with nobility, it has to be on his own terms. He went forward with Count Strelitz only after he put the pompous aristocrat in his place.
Themes
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