The Berghof as a Symbol of Decadence in European Society Prior to World War I Darin Heinz College

The International Sanatorium Berghof is the setting where the entire story in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain takes place. Here, high in the Swiss Alps, the sanatorium houses a broad representation of medically ill Europeans from different countries. This setting allowed Thomas Mann to use the Berghof as a microcosm of European culture and its societally diseased condition that would explode in full transparence with the outbreak of World War I.

Mann presents different aspects of national and civilizational decay through an assortment of patients at the Berghof, the fact that they are sick thus requiring a stay and care at the sanatorium, and their own personal and philosophical peculiarities. These combinations overlap and complement each other to give a panorama of Europe’s insidious and spreading pre-World War I decline.

The main character of Magic Mountain is a young German man named Hans Castorp. He goes to the Berghof for a 3-week visit of his cousin Joachim, who has been a patient there for months, and ends up staying. Mann gives an indication that a central theme of Magic Mountain is illness when he writes about Castorp’s cousin Joachim:

“Joachim Ziemessen was ill-not ill like Hans Castorp, but in all seriousness,...