E' la storia, lungo tre generazione, di una ricca famiglia di commercianti, nella Lubecca borghese e intraprendente dell'autore stesso. reception can be attributed in part to a failure to grasp the book's theme. Because the publisher omitted the subtitle (which was later restored in British editions, but not in American ones), early readers did not understand

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.

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Stephen R Covey, in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families (1998), suggests that families write their own mission statement, which may be worth considering, though try explaining your Latin motto – Virtus Repulsae Nescia, say, or Nec pluribus impar – to your Xbox-addicted teen. Versions of the Covey approach can be found in Matthew Kelly's Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children (2008) and Steve Stephens' 20 Surprisingly Simple Rules and Tools for a Great Family (2006), where the first rule is simply, "Plan ahead". Often, the outward and visible material signs and symbols of happiness and success only show themselves when the process of decline has already set in. The outer manifestations take time - like the light of that star up there, which may in reality be already quenched, when it looks to us to be shining its brightest.” From an early age, Thomas Mann was influenced by Schopenhauer's pessimistic notion of the will being a blind force at work in the world. Thus, there is likewise no escape for the Buddenbrooks. They speak of emotions and morality, yet it is money and economics that steer the ship. Failure, decline and even death seem to be the only viable outcome.

Tóibín doesn’t adhere exclusively to the biographical record, and his most decisive intervention comes in the realm of sex. In all likelihood, Mann never engaged in anything resembling what contemporary sensibilities would classify as gay sex. His diaries are reliable in factual matters and do not shy away from embarrassing details; we hear about erections, masturbation, nocturnal emissions. But he clearly has trouble even picturing male-on-male action, let alone participating in it. When, in 1950, he reads Gore Vidal’s “The City and the Pillar,” he asks himself, “How can one sleep with gentlemen?” The Mann of “The Magician,” by contrast, is allowed to have several same-sex encounters, though the details remain vague. The extent of this demise appears linguistically molded and exaggerated. The Buddenbrooks, this proud north German family of refinement, actually speaks the vernacular studded with empty French expressions. "Je, den Düwel ook, c'est la question, ma très chère demoiselle!" The concerns with philosophy and music that Mann developed further in The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus here suggest that the decline in the world is balanced by an inner refinement. That the increasing interior richness of their lives renders them unable to compete with their local rivals, the grossly corporeal Hagenstrom family. For all their status inside the city the new Germany is dominated by the old landed aristocracy - something that will be expressed with more brutality and bitterness in Man of Straw by Tom's brother Henrich Mann.

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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. Life was harsh: and business, with its ruthless unsentimentality, was an epitome of life."(Buddenbrooks, p.363) The story mainly follows two of the children: Thomas, the crown prince who has been prepared to take over the firm and to become the future ruling man in the family, and his beautiful sister Antoine, a spoiled, naive creature with bourgeois airs but good-natured heart who will see her life expectations vanish and her dreams disappear as years go by. El pesimismo invade a Thomas, el cabeza de familia y protagonista principal de la novela, que es consciente de la decadencia y tiene que luchar contra el desaliento que lo invade: