Antonie Buddenbrook
Tony, as she is called, is urged by family members into not just one, but two marriages of convenience. Thus she becomes situated as the symbolic sacrificial lamb who must forego her own emotional contentment for the sake of preserving the alleged greatness of the Buddenbrook lineage.
Christian Buddenbrook
Brother of Thomas and perhaps nothing short of an actual psychopath; certainly he is neurotic and this leads to excessive displays of hypochondria. Moody and with a taste for British finery, ultimately he winds up in a mental institution and becomes a symbol of devastation of the Buddenbrook family in both physical and mental terms.
Johan Buddenbrook
The no-nonsense patriarch of the clan. Wills control of the grain business to Jean as well as the idea that success is only possible through multiple generations working in collaboration.
Thomas Buddenbrook
Successfully runs the family business, represents a change in direction with his interest in fashion consciousness, public affairs and high culture. He is also not above acting without ethics or morals, yet views his brother Christian with increasing distaste. The extraction of a rotten tooth will set in motion a series of events that eventually leads to his premature death.
Little Johann “Hanno” Buddenbrook
Following that premature death, Thomas’s son Hanno inherits control of the family business far too prematurely. Typhus takes the life of Hanno when he is just 15 years old and with his Uncle Christian a mental case, his death brings the Buddenbrook family line to a skidding, sudden halt.
Johann “Jean” Buddenbrook
Nicknamed The Consul, he is the offspring of the patriarch’s second marriage and displays a sort of appreciation for deeply held religious values that is viewed with a sort of dumbfounded suspicion by other members of the Buddenbrook clan.
