FRANK, BRUNO

FRANK, BRUNO (1887–1945), German novelist and playwright. Born in Stuttgart, Frank studied philosophy and law at several German universities and then became a free-lance writer in Munich. After living for several years in Switzerland, he immigrated to the United States when the Nazis came to power. Frank began by writing lyric poetry, but his first published success was the novel Die Fuerstin (1915), a faithful portrait of contemporary society. He was at his best in recreating real or historical figures, as in Tage des Koenigs (1925), Trenck (1926), and Politische Novelle (1928), and in the plays Die Schwestern und der Fremde (1918) and Zwoelftausend (1927). In his last novel, Die Tochter (1943), one of the leading characters was a thinly veiled portrait of his mother-in-law, Fritzi Massary, the light-opera soubrette. It was in his novels rather than his plays that Frank's artistry and vivid imagination showed to their best advantage, but between the two world wars he was one of the most successful German dramatists. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Lennartz, Deutsche Dichter und Schriftsteller unserer Zeit (19598), 208–10. (Rudolf Kayser)