  We investigate a Bose-Einstein condensate with additional long-range dipolar
interaction in a cylindrically symmetric trap within a variational framework.
Compared to the ground state of this system, little attention has as yet been
payed to its unstable excited states. For thermal excitations, however, the
latter is of great interest, because it forms the "activated complex" that
mediates the collapse of the condensate. For a certain value of the s-wave
scatting length our investigations reveal a bifurcation in the transition
state, leading to the emergence of two additional and symmetry-breaking excited
states. Because these are of lower energy than their symmetric counterpart, we
predict the occurrence of a symmetry-breaking thermally induced collapse of
dipolar condensates. We show that its occurrence crucially depends on the trap
geometry and calculate the thermal decay rates of the system within leading
order transition state theory with the help of a uniform rate formula near the
rank-2 saddle which allows to smoothly pass the bifurcation.
