Kurt Martens is mainly known to students of German literature as Thomas Mann's close friend during Mann's early Munich years. Mann's "Tonio Kröger" (1903) is dedicated to Martens in recognition of their friendship, which was encouraged by the circumstance that Martens, like Mann, was a recent arrival in the Bavarian capital and came from a patrician and conservative home. They had met when Mann, a junior editor of the journal Simplicissimus, accepted a story by Martens; the two young authors began to trade manuscripts and opinions. Given a "half-autobiographical" novel to read--it would become Mann's Buddenbrooks (1901)--Martens was filled with admiration, although as an "unverbesserlicher Desillusionist und Skeptiker" (inveterate "disillusionist" and skeptic) he at first kept his enthusiasm to himself: "Es wollte mir so vorkommen, als wäre da etwas geschrieben worden, das höher stand als die ganze erzählende Dichtung dieser Zeit...