The Magic Mountain

Characters

Character Map

Who is who, and who belongs to whom. Click a name to open the character page.

Hans Castorp A young engineer from Hamburg, orphaned of father and mother before the age of seven and, a year and a half later, of his grandfather Hans Lorenz Castorp, raised by his great-uncle Tienappel, who climbs to Davos to visit his cousin Joachim Ziemssen for three... Joachim Ziemssen Hans Castorp's cousin, an army officer interned at the Berghof, who already speaks the sanatorium's language when his cousin arrives and who wants only to return to his regiment. Lodovico Settembrini The Italian humanist of the Berghof, a disciple of Giosuè Carducci, whom Hans Castorp classifies before he knows his name. Leo Naphta The second pedagogue of the novel, boarding-house neighbor of Lodovico Settembrini, professor of ancient languages and former student of a Jesuit seminary. The first image the text fixes of him is all in angles. Clavdia Chauchat Patient of the Berghof who enters the novel through the noise of the glass door and the silence of her steps, and whom Hans Castorp first disapproves of and then cannot stop looking at. Pieter Peeperkorn Dutch colonial, born in Java, coffee planter, who arrives on the same train as Clavdia Chauchat and dominates any circle through his presence, almost never finishing a sentence. Dr. Behrens The medical director of the Berghof, who settled in Davos after losing his wife to tuberculosis and falling ill himself, which raises in Chapter IV the question of whether a sick doctor can cure. Dr. Krokowski Assistant physician of the Berghof who gives fortnightly lectures to the patients, first on love as a pathogenic factor and on analysis, then on occultism, and who receives patients for analysis in a dim office in the basement. He appears from Hans Castorp's... Pribislav Hippe Schoolmate of Hans Castorp, with oblique eyes, to whom he asked to borrow a pencil at thirteen. He does not enter the novel's present: he exists as a memory, and is recognized in Clavdia Chauchat's eyes. Hans Lorenz Castorp Hans Castorp's paternal grandfather, a senator in Hamburg, in whose house the grandson, orphaned of father and mother, lived for a year and a half. He appeared to the boy in two forms: the everyday grandfather and the full-length portrait in the room, with...

Other characters

Mrs. Stöhr: Joachim's table companion, whose slips of language the cousins find amusing already on the first night, in In the Restaurant; Hans Castorp meets her at the table in Breakfast.
Miss Engelhart: the table's "seamstress," who turns out to be a teacher at the Königsberg Girls' Lyceum in One Word Too Many; she teases Hans with praise of Madame Chauchat and gives him news of her.
"Tous-les-deux": the Mexican woman in black waiting for the death of her eldest son, nicknamed for the only words that are heard from her, in Breakfast; Hans speaks French with her in Hans Castorp Attempts a Conversation in French.
Hermine Kleefeld: the girl who whistles with the pneumothorax, of the "Half-Lung Society," in A Bad Joke. Viaticum. Laughter Interrupted; years later, the session with the glass takes place in her room.
Little Hujus: the dying girl who screamed hidden under the covers when the viaticum was brought to her, in Joachim's account in A Bad Joke. Viaticum. Laughter Interrupted.
Mr. Albin: the patient who shows the ladies on the porch a knife and a revolver and says he keeps it for the day when "this thing here," life at the sanatorium, bores him too much, and whose shameless freedom Hans envies, in Mr. Albin.
Miss von Mylendonk: the head nurse, who denies Hans's cold and sells him the thermometer in The Thermometer.
Leila Gerngross: a dying girl of sixteen or seventeen to whom the cousins send anonymous flowers, the first of the gravely ill they begin to visit in Danse Macabre.
Karen Karstedt: a patient whom the cousins take to the sled race, to the cinema and to the cemetery of the Dorfberg in Danse Macabre.
Lauro and Mrs. von Mallinckrodt: Lauro is the youngest son of the Mexican woman "Tous-les-deux"; she is a coquettish patient, alone in the world; the cousins visit them, among other gravely ill patients, in Danse Macabre.
Anton Karlovich Ferge: an insurance clerk from Petersburg, who slowly recovers from an attempted pneumothorax when the cousins visit him in Danse Macabre; afterwards, Hans's table and walking companion.
Ferdinand Wehsal: a merchant from Mannheim, whose gaze is fixed on Madame Chauchat, who flatters Hans and keeps asking whether it is worth declaring an unrequited love, in The Assault Repelled.
Uncle James Tienappel: arrives as an emissary from the plain to take Hans back, becomes disoriented at the Berghof and leaves after speaking with Behrens, in The Assault Repelled.
Consul Tienappel: Hans's great-uncle and guardian, who liquidates the Castorp firm and saves the inheritance in The House of the Tienappels and the Moral State of Hans Castorp; his death is told in The Thunder.
Prosecutor Paravant: devoted to squaring the circle, one of the collective manias of The Great Boredom.
Elly Brand: the young Danish woman with mediumistic powers who takes Krokowski's lectures into occultism in Very Questionable Things.
Holger: the spirit that, at the glass session in Hermine Kleefeld's room, answers in verse, in Very Questionable Things.