Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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BBC Radio
26 August 2012

Dramatised by Judith Adams with original music by Nico Muhly.

Michael Maloney, Barbara Flynn. Joseph Millson and Clare Corbett star in this story of an old Hanseatic merchant family fighting to keep their commercial supremacy in the changing world of 1840s Europe.

Four generations of Buddenbrooks try to sustain their inheritance - a once highly successful trading company in the port of Lubeck on the Baltic Sea - in a world where the old ways no longer seem to work. It's 1848, and the revolutionary tide running through Europe has finally reached Lubeck. Will the old merchant families hold on to power? Of the Buddenbrook children, only Tom remains to learn the business. Toni is in Hamburg married to Herr Grunlich, and Christian has gone to England but would rather be in Valparaiso.

Harmonium and Flute by Rick Juckes
Technical Presentation by David Fleming Williams

Directed by Chris Wallis
An Autolycus production for BBC Radio 4.

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