Bruno Frank

Born June 13, 1887, in Stuttgart; died June 20, 1945, in Beverly Hills, Calif. German writer.

Frank studied law and philosophy at the universities of Strasbourg and Heidelberg. He emigrated in 1933 and lived in Austria, Great Britain, and the USA. Beginning his career as a lyric poet with the collection The Winepress (1920), Frank later wrote prose and plays of sociopolitical content, for example, the short-story collection The Days of the King (1924), the play Twelve Thousand (1927), and the novel Trenck: The Love Story of a Favorite (1926), all of which re-create colorful scenes of 18th-century Germany and Austria. Frank’s Political Novella (1928) presaged the danger of fascism. In his novel A Man Called Cervantes (1934), Frank portrayed the tragedy of a great humanist living under a bloodthirsty absolutist regime. He also wrote the antifascist novels Lost Heritage (1937) and One Fair Daughter (1943).