Kurt Mann was born in Bad Kissingen on August 26, 1903 as the youngest son of the butcher Lazarus Mann and his wife Cilly, née Löwenberger. He had five siblings. The family lived in Weingasse where his father ran a butchery.

Since April 1925, Kurt attended Kissingen Realschule, the predecessor of contemporary Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium, and left the school after class 4 in the school year of 1929/30.

In March 1931, Kurt Mann moved to Geisa in the Thuringian Rhön. When the situation in Germany became more and more unbearable, he emigrated to the United States. From Hamburg, his last place of residence in Germany, he went on board the ship “Lafayette” in Le Havre together with his sister Irene in September 1936 and emigrated to New York. In 1940, he lived with his mother and his brothers Teddy (Theobald) and Justin in a shared apartment in Manhattan. His brother Max and his sister Luzie, however, became victims of the Shoa.

Kurt Mann died on December 10, 2000 in San Diego/ California at the age of 85.