John von Düffel, Thomas Mann

Who has not read this work? Who does not love them—the Buddenbrooks, the cool Tony, who, under pressure from her father, marries the hated Hamburg businessman Grünlich and suffers a crisis. Or the unequal pair of brothers Thomas and Christian Buddenbrook, the former a struggling merchant who follows in the footsteps of his father and takes over the family business, the latter an unlucky rogue and hypochondriac. Thomas Mann's novel of the century contains wonderful characters and dramatic conflicts, but it is also a story about buying and selling. The Buddenbrooks are not only a family, but also a company, and must be led as such. As in scarcely any other text, the deep contradiction between the living, sprawling family organism and the drastic dictation of economics is present - a contradiction which ultimately destroys the family. (Announcement Thalia Theater Hamburg)

John von Düffel succeeds in capturing the central motifs of this great family romance – compact enough for a presentation on the stage, but complete enough to capture the novel. The great characters of the Buddenbrooks stand for themselves as figures of the stage.