The son of a north German merchant and a "Southern" mother (Consuelo) with artistic talents, Tonio inherited qualities from both sides of his family.

While there, Tonio is mistaken for an escaped criminal, thereby reinforcing his inner suspicion that the artist must be an outsider relative to "respectable" society.

As Erich Heller—who knew Thomas Mann personally—observed, Tonio Kröger's theme is that of the "artist as an exile from reality" (with Goethe's Torquato Tasso [1790] and Grillparzer's Sappho [1818] for company).

[2] Yet it was also Erich Heller who, earlier, in his own youth, had diagnosed the main theme of Tonio Kröger to be the infatuation and entanglements of a passionate heart, destined to give shape to, intellectualize, its feelings in artistic terms.

But, as T. J. Reed has pointed out, Thus the importance of the work lies, chiefly, in its autobiographical character, as well as in its contribution, through the description of an amitié particulière, to the theory of love.