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Part 1, Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
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
Dinner is underway. The men chat. Herr Hoffstede asks when the house was built, and the consul explains that it was completed in 1682, when Ratenkamp and Co. was just becoming prosperous. The consul laments Ratenkamp’s subsequent demise, and everyone falls silent to acknowledge the formerly successful family who built the house. After a long pause, the broker Grätjens adds that it was “madness” that undid that family. It was obvious when things started to go downhill, when Ratenkamp started doing business with Geelmaack, and Grätjens wisely decided to distance himself from the Ratenkamps. Eventually, no bank would lend them money.
Even at a family dinner, the conversation among the men remains focused on business. This underscores how centrally business figures in the Buddenbrook family’s life. The slow decline of the Ratenkamps (another wealthy merchant family like the Buddenbrooks) foreshadows the similar decline the Buddenbrooks will subsequently undergo over the course of generations. The novel’s subtitle is “The Decline of a Family,” after all, so that decline is a sure thing from the start.
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Lebrecht Kröger suggests they talk about something happier. Pastor Wunderlich lifts a “heavy silver spoon” from the table and explains that objects such as this remind him of a fateful meeting he and Madame Antoinette had on Alf Strasse many years ago. Antoinette looks down, somewhat embarrassed, as Wunderlich recalls his attempt to help Antoinette ward off a group of French militia men that had forced their way into the Buddenbrook home and rudely made off with Antoinette’s finery, including her silverware.
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