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Part 7, Chapter 7
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
Wars start and end, and rumors of the latest impending war travel throughout town, which goes through periods of occupation by troops that come and go as one war ends and another begins. Prussian officers occupy part of the main floor of Thomas’s new home. They hang out at the Club with Christian, who has since returned from Hamburg. Rieke Severin, Bethsy’s new maid, helps set up mattresses for the soldiers who now occupy the summerhouse. There is a temporary peace in 1865.
The narration is vague about which conflicts it refers to here, but the reference to a period of temporary peace in 1865 places this chapter around the time of the Schleswig-Holstein question, which refers to the fraught political environment that arose as a result of territorial disputes between the Danish Crown and the German Confederation regarding the territories of Schleswig and Holstein in the wake of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 19th century. One war that arose from this broader dispute was the Second Schleswig War of 1864, which saw both territories absorbed into the German Confederation.
Active
Themes
Hanno is four now. He has grown into a happy boy with a vibrant imagination, and he spends hours playing games he concocts in the vast reaches of his young mind. He does not notice the chaos that rages around him. Hanno’s home has sided with Prussia and emerges victorious. Frankfurt sided with Austria and “[i]s no longer a free city.” The Buddenbrook firm suffers more losses.
Active
Themes
