Thomas Mann's initial inspiration for his novella Death in Venice (1912) came from German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who fell in love with a teenage girl when he was seventy-four years old and vacationing in Marienbad. However Mann's own trip to Venice supplied many of the details for the story. The story concerns Gustav von Aschenbach an accomplished middle-aged writer who has dedicated his life to his art and the pursuit of beauty and his love for Tadzio a fourteen-year-old Polish boy vacationing with his family in Venice.