Background
He was born in 1945 as a son of the music teacher, pianist, and organist Alexander Kroll.
He was born in 1945 as a son of the music teacher, pianist, and organist Alexander Kroll.
He began to compose his first piano pieces at the age of eleven and from 1957 to 1959 wrote a Symphony in G minor for full orchestra. He studied in Rochester, New York, and German literature at Yale University, obtaining a doctorate in 1973 on the subject of the German writer Klaus Mann. Since 1969, he has lived in Germany, where he has worked since 1976 on a six-volume biography of Klaus Mann.
In 1988 and 1989 he served as a training representative at the German seminar of the University of Freiburg in Breisgau.
He has also lived and worked occasionally in Brazil.