In her 1974 Unwritten Memories, Mann's wife Katia recalls that the idea for the story came during an actual vacation in Venice at the Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido, which they took in the summer of 1911:
[A]ll the details of the story, beginning with the man at the cemetery, are taken from actual experience [...]. [I]n the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them: the girls were dressed rather stiffly and severely, and the very charming, beautiful boy of about thirteen was wearing a sailor suit with an open collar and very pretty lacings. He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach. He didn't pursue him through all of Venice—that he didn't do—but the boy did fascinate him, and he thought of him often. […] I still remember that my uncle, Privy Counsellor Friedberg, a famous professor of canon law in Leipzig, was outraged: "What a story! And a married man with a family!"
— Katia Mann, Unwritten Memories[8]
The boy who inspired "Tadzio" was Baron Władysław Moes, whose first name was usually shortened as Władzio or just Adzio. This story was uncovered by Andrzej Dołęgowski, Thomas Mann's translator, around 1964, and was published in the German press in 1965.
Moes was born on 17 November 1900 in Wierbka, the second son and fourth child of Baron Aleksander Juliusz Moes. He was aged 10 when he was in Venice, significantly younger than Tadzio in the novella. Baron Moes died on 17 December 1986 in Warsaw and is interred at the graveyard of Pilica, Silesian Voivodeship. He was the subject of the biography The Real Tadzio (Short Books, 2001) by Gilbert Adair.
Ironically, while in the novella Aschenbach is Silesian, it was Moes who was really Silesian.
Another candidate is Adam von Henzel-Dzieduszycki.[9]
