Mühlenbrink 7, Therese Weichbrodt’s boarding school for girls from prominent families, is where Tony Buddenbrook is placed after her father discovers her secret correspondence with a young student. The school’s strict routine and carefully guarded respectability contrast with the warmth of its shared rooms, where Tony quickly befriends Armgard von Schilling and Gerda Arnoldsen.

Setting and Character

The school occupies a brick-red suburban house surrounded by a neatly tended garden. Its main floor, raised well above the foundation, contains the classroom and dining room; bedrooms fill the second floor and attic. The compact arrangement brings lessons, meals, and communal life into close proximity, while the garden gives the house a composed, respectable exterior.

Therese Weichbrodt, known as Sesame, is its distinctive authority. Hunchbacked and barely taller than a table, she is forty-one but dresses in the manner of an older woman, with grey curls beneath a bonnet and a large brooch bearing a miniature of her mother. Her small stature and movements may seem comic, yet her precise speech and forceful manner command respect. She stresses consonants, exaggerates vowels, shakes her head insistently, and punctuates discipline by rapping the table with her index finger.

Admission and Routine

The school accepts only older girls, offers three years of instruction even to day students, and admits daughters of the very best families. Tony’s arrival is marked not by cold punishment but by a warm welcome: Weichbrodt prepares her celebrated cold red bishop’s punch for dinner. That hospitality takes place within a plainly regulated household, where Sesame presides over meals from two sofa cushions, watches the table closely, and corrects disruptions with sharp calls to her sister and dog.

The school’s authority is also embodied in the way its residents share space. Tony is placed between Armgard, the sturdy daughter of a Mecklenburg country squire, and Gerda Arnoldsen, whose striking appearance and violin playing set her apart. At night the girls are sent to bed at ten and talk quietly while undressing; their room, with its drawn brown blinds, red-shaded lamp, and scent of violets and clean laundry, offers an intimate counterpoint to the discipline of the dining room.

Tony and Her Schoolmates

Tony is sent to Mühlenbrink 7 after her father learns that she has been exchanging notes with a high-school student, hiding them in a hollow in an old tree outside the Burg Gate. The decision to place her under strict supervision turns the school into a response to her emerging independence. Yet the move also gives her a new social world rather than simply isolating her: she, Armgard, and Gerda attend the same classes, share the largest bedroom, and quickly become close friends.

Gerda especially captures Tony’s imagination. Though some of the girls dismiss her violin playing, Tony sees her as elegant, admiring her reddish hair, Parisian ivory toilet set, and manner. The friendship develops in small domestic rituals—late conversations after lights-out and the ordinary closeness of a shared room—rather than in the formal lessons for which the school is known.

Narrative Significance

Mühlenbrink 7 brings together education, family supervision, and social distinction. Its strict admissions and orderly household reflect the importance the Buddenbrooks place on respectable connections, while the girls’ friendship shows how an institution intended to regulate young women can also become a setting for attachment and discovery. Tony’s placement there therefore has two consequences: it curbs the secret correspondence that prompted her removal from home, and it establishes relationships that will remain significant beyond the school’s walls.