“When, in 1931, Thomas Mann received a newspaper questionnaire asking about his “first love,” he replied, in essence, “Read Tonio Kröger.”” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker, Jan 24 2022)
Tonio Kröger is a novella written in 1901 and published in 1903, shortly after the publication of Buddenbrooks which made Thomas Mann famous at the age of 25 and won him the Nobel Prize in 1929.
His diaries, published in the 1980s and 1990s, show the omnipresence of his homosexual desires, particularly towards several young men who crossed his path.
David Luke, in the introduction to his excellent translation of Tonio Kröger and several other short stories published under the title Death in Venice and Other Stories (Bantam Dell, 1988):
The fact that in later life Mann so often declared Tonio Kröger to be his favorite among his works and even (which is not quite the same thing) his best work is partly to be explained by the story’s close association with these youthful loves.
Gabriel François