Chapter 1

In the opening chapter of Death in Venice, von Aschenbach, physically and emotionally exhausted by his work, takes a walk by a cemetery on the outskirts of Munich and sees a redhaired stranger with a rucksack. The man wears a straw hat and has the "appearance of a foreigner, of a traveler from afar." Seeing the man awakens wanderlust in von Aschenbach, and he determines to leave Munich for a vacation. Von Aschenbach had previously shunned travel, doing so only for his health and not for any passion or desire to visit exotic places. This desire was different, however, representing an urge to get away from his work, the very thing that has consumed him his entire life.

The date of the story is unspecified, but the narrator writes that the opening scene takes place, "On a spring afternoon in 19—, a year that for months glowered...