Thomas Mann, 1912. Gustav von Aschenbach's last cholera-ridden weeks in Venice.
Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig) is a novella by German author Thomas Mann, drawing in part on his own experience in Venice during the 1911 cholera epidemic. It was published in a limited edition by Hyperion-Verlag in 1912, serialised from October to November the same year in Die neue Rundschau, and issued in a trade edition by Fischer in 1913. It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice, finding the experience liberating and uplifting, then increasingly becomes obsessed by the sight of a boy in a family of Polish tourists—Tadzio, a nickname for Tadeusz. Tadzio was likely based on a boy named Władzio whom Mann had observed during his 1911 visit to the city.