Bruno Frank

Bruno Frank (Stuttgart, 1887 – Beverly Hills, 1945) was a German novelist, playwright and poet who wrote in German and later worked in English-speaking film. He belongs to the German exile literature, the body of anti-Nazi writers who continued producing work abroad after 1933.

Frank studied law and philosophy in Munich, where he worked as a dramatist and novelist until the Reichstag fire of 1933. Fearing persecution because of his Jewish background and his property, he left Germany with his wife Liesl, daughter of the famous operetta singer Fritzi Massary. After four years in Austria and England, he settled in the United States in 1937, where he was reunited with his friends Heinrich and Thomas Mann. There he wrote two more novels and spent the rest of his life in the film industry, including the screenplay for the 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

His work combines historical fiction with social comedy. His reputation rests mainly on his plays and novels of the 1920s, on his novelised biography of Cervantes, and on the films made from his texts, which reached audiences well beyond German-speaking countries.