Death in Venice - Mann and Death The study of Mann's personal experiences reveals where his attitude towards death comes from. His filthy face is certainly not foreign to him; at an early age, both of his sisters committed suicide. When he was only seventeen, his father died of blood poisoning. The raw material for Death in Venice came from his holidays at the Lido, a beach in Venice. Oddly enough, this trip was made in May 1911, the same month (and perhaps year) that Aschenbach's story begins. In Mann's life, the novel is very emblematic in that much of Aschenbach is autobiographical. Much like Aschenbach, Mann enjoyed status early in life; poor health was a shared complication; and both exercised self-imposed order (Mann also conducted all his literary work at the crack of dawn). The determination to sustain and survive existed in the spirit of both artists. Yet "Death in Venice" is not at all a strictly autobiographical story. However, much of what concerns the artist Aschenbach is part of the artist Mann and can therefore be interpreted as a vague symbol of Mann. Perhaps Aschenbach is an extreme example of the imperfections that Mann battled throughout his life; if this is indeed the case, then Aschenbach is not only a sign of Mann's fragility, but an emblem of the errors that afflict us all..