Władysław Moes

Władysław Gerard Jan Nepomuk Marya Moes (17 November 1900 – 17 December 1986) was a Polish landowner who has been claimed as the inspiration for the character Tadzio in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice.

In May 1911, on the advice of doctors, he spent a spring holiday with his family at the Lido in Venice, staying at the Grand Hotel des Bains. There, he allegedly attracted the attention of the German writer Thomas Mann, who used him as the inspiration for Tadzio – a character of his novella Death in Venice, published in 1912.

Katia Mann recalled that her husband's idea for the story came during a holiday at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in 1911:

Moes was taught by private tutors and later studied at Saint Stanislaus Kostka's Gymnasium in Warsaw. In 1920, Moes was a volunteer uhlan in the Polish-Soviet War. Later, he ran a landed estate and a horse farm in Udórz that he inherited from his father, who died in 1928.

Marriage and later life In 1935, he married a noblewoman, Anna Belina-Brzozowska (1911–1978), whose family used the Belina coat of arms. They had two children, Aleksander (1936–1955) and Maria (born 1946). He was also the uncle of the Polish film and television actor Jerzy Moes.

However, serious doubts about this identification were raised in an article in Der Spiegel in 2002, mainly because of the significant differences in age and physical appearance between the Tadzio figure of the novella and Moes.

During the last years of his life, Moes often stayed with his daughter Maria in France. He died in Warsaw and was buried in the Moes family plot in the graveyard on the hill of St Peter in Pilica, southern Poland.