600 Reviews between Sieben Legenden and Flaubert's Legende de Saint Julien VHospitalier, or Die Poggenpuhls and Der Marquis von Keith, is perhaps greater than von Matt suggests. Aust also engages with Fontanel criticism of the implausibility inmoti vation inKellers work and goes on to show Fontane doing similar things?though to different effect?in Effi Briest. He sees Fontanel criticism of Keller more as a consequence of Fontanel realism than as a falling-short ofmodernism. Section 2 groups together three thematically linked articles on the subject of secularization. Amrein considers images of death inKeller, with well-chosen illus trations, showing the effectofKellers atheist turnunder the influence of Feuerbach. The rejection of transcendence as a source ofmeaning provokes the simultaneous shift from romanticism to realism and painting towriting. Complementing von Matt, Amrein sees Sieben Legenden as a further example of the shiftof emphasis to the here from the hereafter, confirming both the substance of Fontanel criticism and his failure to grasp Kellers modernist tendency. The contributions of Zuber biihler and Walter-Schneider also complement each other in their treatment of Der Stechlin, thework most frequently cited as evidence ofmodernism in Fontane. Walter-Schneider's discussion of temporal rather than spatial contingency' neatly complements that of Andermatt. Building on an idea of Peter Utz (see 'Robert Walsers Jakob von Gunten: Eine "NuH"-Stelle der deutschen Literatur', DVjs, 74 (2000), 488-512), she also directs the debate forward, showing in Fontane's novel a certain affinity with Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten. As the only contributor to consider the political insight of the two writers as a sign of theirmodernity, Zuberbuhler introduces a slightlydissenting note. In a comparison ofDer Stechlin with Martin Salander, he focuses on the theme of the decline of idealism in an upwardly mobile society.Unlike Walter-Schneider, he recognizes in Stine &defence of timeless humanity rather than radical relativism. Standing slightly aside from the central theme, and standing out also for its scholarly elegance, is Karl Pestalozzi's paper on Der Stechlin. Taking a two-line quotation, hitherto overlooked by interpreters and misunderstood by editors, he patiently traces itsorigins and shows its function as a guide to the understanding of the novel?an object lesson in the reading of Fontane's 'Finessen', towhich one can only pay the ultimate compliment ofwishing one had been present to hear it delivered. University ofWarwick John Osborne Niedergangsdiagnostik: ZurFunktion vonKrankheitsmotiven in 'Buddenbrooks. By Katrin Max. (Thomas-Mann-Studien, 40) Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. 2008. 412 pp. 69. ISBN 978-3-465-03557-2. In a letter of 1902 Thomas Mann described Hanno Buddenbrook as the last member of a 'sozial, okonomisch und physiologisch in Verfall geratene Familie> (Grofie kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe, xxi, 199; the emphasis isMann's). Over theyears, scholarly interpretations of thework have certainly done justice to its social realism and its symbolic and mythical dimensions, but when considering MLR, 105.2, 2010 601 the implications of 'Verfall' they have focused primarily on its associations with 'decadence' as a literary trend and with such elements of late nineteenth-century intellectual culture as Nietzsche's reflections on 'decadence' and Max Nordau's book Entartung. Katrin Max's study?originally a dissertation presented at the University of Leipzig?takes Mann's emphasis on the physiological seriously, and systematically examines the significance of nineteenth-century medical theories of degeneracy for the composition ofBuddenbrooks. Max is able to demonstrate a high degree of correlation between Mann's char acterization of the successive generations of Buddenbrooks and the progressive advance of degeneracy as conceived by Benedict Augustin Morel in his Traite des degenerescences physiques, morales et intellectuelles de Vespece humaine (1857). Morel's thinking had been transmitted and popularized in the German-speaking world by Paul Julius Mobius (Die Nervositat, 1882), aswell as byNordau's Entartung (1892-93) and the equally well-known Vuomo delinquente of Cesare Lombroso (published inGerman translation in 1890), and also by various entries in Meyers Konversationslexikon, the encyclopedia on which Thomas Mann isknown to have drawn for his description of typhoid fever towards the end of the novel. Even if Mann's letters and notebooks do not identify specific sources for his allusions to degeneracy theory, the indicative evidence that...