Klaus Mann, the eldest son of Thomas Mann, was among the first emigrants to leave Germany after the Nazi takeover in 1933. From the vantage point of his early exile in Amsterdam, he looked back disapprovingly at German artists and intellectuals who appeared to thrive under Hitler's regime. Especially galling to him was the success of actor/director Gustaf Gründgens (1899–1963), his former brother-in-law:
I visualize my ex-brother-in-law as the traitor par excellence, the macabre embodiment of corruption and cynicism. So intense was the facination of his shameful glory that I decided to portray Mephisto-Gründgens in a satirical novel. I thought it pertinent, indeed, necessary to expose and analyse the abject type of the treacherous intellectual who prostitutes his talent for the sake of some tawdry fame and transitory wealth.