Friedrich Mann

Friedrich Mann, the template for Christian Buddenbrook

Friedrich Wilhelm Leberecht Mann (born September 16, 1847 in Lübeck ; † March 31, 1926 there , called Friedel Mann ) was an uncle of Heinrich and Thomas Mann and served the latter as a template for the figure of Christian Buddenbrook in his novel Buddenbrooks , published in 1901 .

Life and fictional character

In the novel he is portrayed as a hypochondriac lazy man who annoys the family with detailed descriptions of his ailments - on his left side are simply "all nerves too short" - and delusions and drives his brother Thomas to despair, because he also has thoughts that he himself hardly allowed to put into words. He is finally deported to a closed institution at the instigation of his wife, the theater actor Aline Puvogel.

In contrast to other characters in the novel, such as Tony Buddenbrook , there are only a few preparatory notes from Thomas Mann on the character of Christian. It is possible that he only knew broadly about his uncle's life because the medical history was taboo within the family .

Today we know that Friedrich Mann received medical treatment as a young man - initially not because of a mental illness, but because of a " varicocele ", an "extensive varicose vein of the veins that accompany both sperm ducts in the man's scrotum". He therefore first went to the Marienberg cold water sanatorium in Boppard , then - possibly his stay in the household of his sister Elisabeth in 1875 - the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart , where treatment was carried out with annealing iron. In 1876 he started a cure in Bad Boll . In the same year, on July 24th, he was admitted to the Kennenburg Sanatorium. Medical files have been preserved in the Kennenburg archive, which clearly remind of Buddenbrooks: "A great hypochondriacal disposition" is attested to him there, and he also has a "passion for dancing". "A real urge to always talk about his ailments, the lack of proper willingness to work and labor that let him start everything and not finish anything", made the patient "uncomfortable company". There are also special features of Friedrich Mann visually: “The left half of his face appears contracted, the left eye is smaller.” In December 1876, Friedrich Mann left the sanatorium and returned to Lübeck; However, he was never considered cured and eventually died in the Strecknitz sanatorium .

After the book of his nephew had come to the market in 1901 and, of course, as especially in Luebeck key novel was read, Friedrich man dropped after twelve years in October 1913 a newspaper ad spread in which he referred to Thomas Mann traitor and distanced himself from his nephew. Later, however, he probably enjoyed becoming "famous" in this way and getting some money back.

literature

• Karsten Blöcker, Christian Buddenbrook on the cure in Bad Boll, Cannstatt and Esslingen: "It is not pain, it is ... an indefinite torment ..." . Schiller National Museum German Literature Archive , Marbach am Neckar 2005, ISBN 3-937384-09-X
• Sonja Wolff-Matthes: An approximation. Friedrich Mann or Christian Buddenbrook . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1997, ISBN 3-8260-1319-0
• Michael Stübbe: The Manns. Genealogy of a German family of writers . Degener & Co, 2004, ISBN 3-7686-5189-4

See also

• Husband (family)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Buddenbrooks, XI, 1
2. ^ Klaus Schröter : Thomas Mann , Rowohlt, Reinbek 2005, p. 94; Lübeck Generalzeiger from October 28, 1913 , bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de, accessed on March 8, 2013