7.37 Thomas Mann — «Tonio Kröger» (chapter 1) — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the first chapter of Thomas Mann's story Tonio Kröger (1903): a fourteen-year-old boy who writes poems walks home with the school friend he loves and envies. Follow a narrator who moves in and out of a character's mind: reported thoughts, questions the character asks himself, and silent speeches addressed to someone else, Wer so blaue Augen hätte, dachte er, … wie du! Read the subjunctive in reported thought, Ich glaubte schon, du seist nach Hause gegangen , and als + Konjunktiv I , als sei es dumm und gemein . Recognise Mann's style: balanced long sentences, sentences that trail off in three dots, and repeated phrases that become motifs. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English Und er selbst hatte sich seit der Verabredung beinahe unausgesetzt darauf gefreut! And he himself had been looking forward to it almost without stopping since they had arranged it! daß jener nur halb soviel Gewicht auf diesen Spaziergang zu zweien legte wie er that the other attached only half as much importance to this walk together as he did Wer am meisten liebt, ist der Unterlegene und muß leiden Whoever loves most is the weaker one and must suffer seiner Mutter waren die Zeugnisse grundeinerlei his mother did not care at all about the school reports aber auch manche Pein der Eifersucht, der Enttäuschung und der vergeblichen Mühe but also many pangs of jealousy, disappointment and vain effort Sehnsucht war darin und schwermütiger Neid There was longing in it and melancholy envy Prerequisites : 7.36 — you need reported speech from 2.26 Grammar , the subjunctive of comparison from 7.31 Reading and 7.36 Reading , and the vocabulary of school from 5.9 Vocabulary . About this text Thomas Mann (1875–1955) was born in Lübeck into a family of grain merchants. His first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), about the decline of such a family, made him famous; he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, went into exile in 1933, lived in the United States, and died in Zurich in 1955. His works entered the public domain in Germany and the European Union on 1 January 2026, seventy years after his death. Tonio Kröger appeared in 1903 and was the story Mann himself loved best among his early works. It is partly autobiographical. Like Mann, Tonio is the son of a northern merchant and consul and of a mother from the south: Mann's mother was born in Brazil. The story follows Tonio from his schooldays, through his life as a successful writer in Munich, where he argues with a painter friend about whether an artist can belong to ordinary life, to a journey back to his northern home town and to Denmark. The question at its heart is whether art and life, the writer's sharp, lonely understanding and the warm, unreflecting happiness of ordinary people, can ever meet. The text here is the first of nine chapters, complete, about 3,300 words, from the S. Fischer school edition of 1964 as transcribed by Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders. The plain-text conventions of that transcription have been restored: the dash, written there as two hyphens, and the single guillemets around titles, ›Don Carlos‹ . The town is not named, but its walls, gates and the Holstenwall are those of Lübeck . Grammar in the text Inside a character's head. The narrator often reports Tonio's thoughts without dachte er , as questions in the past: Hatte Hans es vergessen, fiel es ihm erst jetzt wieder ein, daß sie heute mittag ein wenig zusammen spazierengehen wollten? This is free indirect thought: the words are Tonio's, the tense and person are the narrator's. At other moments Tonio speaks to Hans in his mind, with du and the present tense: Wer so blaue Augen hätte, dachte er, und so in Ordnung und glücklicher Gemeinschaft mit aller Welt lebte wie du! Reported thought in the subjunctive. Hans says: Ich glaubte schon, du seist nach Hause gegangen . seist is Konjunktiv I of sein ; in everyday speech you would hear du wärst . The narrator uses als + Konjunktiv I for Tonio's feelings: Dem Sohne Konsul Krögers schien es einerseits, als sei es dumm und gemein, daran Anstoß zu nehmen . Balanced sentences. Mann likes pairs and contrasts: einerseits … andererseits , sowohl … wie , and long sentences built in two halves. Hans and Tonio are described in exactly parallel sentences, one light, one dark: Hans trug eine dänische Matrosenmütze … and Aber unter Tonios runder Pelzmütze blickten … dunkle und zart umschattete Augen … The three dots. Many sentences end in ... : a thought that the character does not finish, an atmosphere that lingers, an irony the reader should complete. Read them as a small pause and a lowered voice. Motifs. Phrases return like musical themes: Hans's blond hair, seines bastblonden Haares , and blue eyes, the Zigeuner im grünen Wagen , the king who wept. Tonio's phrase Wir sind doch keine Zigeuner im grünen Wagen uses a word for the Sinti and Roma that was common in 1903 and is now regarded as a slur; Mann uses it as Tonio's image of the rootless artist, an outsider to respectable society. Older forms. ward for wurde , indes for während , ob seiner zweifelhaften Stellung with ob + genitive meaning because of , and the genitive before the noun: seiner Vorfahren großes altes Haus , des Meeres Antlitz . Reading it a second time, section by section After school (paragraphs 1–7). A wet winter day in a narrow northern town. Tonio Kröger has been waiting for Hans Hansen, who almost leaves with other boys and then remembers their arrangement to walk together. The two are sons of the town's most important merchants. Hans is blond, blue-eyed, athletic and popular; Tonio is dark, dreamy and slow. The reconciliation (paragraphs 8–13). Hans takes Tonio's arm and explains that he had not forgotten; he only thought the weather was too bad. Tonio is overjoyed, though he knows that Hans cares only half as much about the walk as he does. Tonio and Hans (paragraph