Mein Sohn, sey mit Lust bey den Geschäften am Tage, aber mache nur solche, daß wir bey Nacht ruhig schlafen können. My son, take pleasure in business by day, but make only such deals that let us sleep peacefully at night. In Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901), the family gives Thomas Buddenbrook a large memorial tablet with this motto in Gothic letters. The occasion is the firm’s hundredth anniversary on 7 July 1868. Thomas has just bought the entire grain harvest of the estate Pöppenrade while it is still standing in the field. He paid half price to an owner who badly needed money. When he first thought about the deal, he described it in his own words: Unreinliche Manipulation … Im Trüben fischen … Brutale Ausbeutung … Einen Wehrlosen übers Ohr hauen … Wucherprofit. Unclean manipulation, fishing in muddy water, brutal exploitation, cheating a defenseless man, a usurer’s profit. During the anniversary celebration, a telegram arrives. Hail has destroyed the Pöppenrade harvest.
The motto is said to come from the author’s own family firm. The sources disagree on which Johann Siegmund Mann wrote it.