Thomas Mann's early novella Tonio Kröger (1903) ranks amongst his most popular narratives. Written over a period of two years and regarded by the author himself as his “favorite literary child” (“literarisches Lieblingskind”), the text's central theme is the antagonism between life and art, an antagonism that also plays a major role in some of Mann's previous works. This can be seen in the novella Der kleine Herr Friedemann [Little Herr Friedemann, 1897], where a crippled outsider escapes into the realm of art to avoid life. In the novel Buddenbrooks (1901) the renunciation of a bourgeois existence is coupled with life-negating aestheticism and death. Art and life are also diametrically opposed in Mann's novella Tristan, published in the same year as Tonio Kröger. In Tristan Mann makes fun of the artist who, unable to cope...
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Citation: Mundt, Hannelore G.. "Tonio Kröger". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 February 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11468, accessed 31 May 2026.]
