Bruno Frank

However, when it became evident that Hitler was going to invade and take over Austria, Frank and his family left Europe entirely in 1937--Hitler swallowed up Austria the very next year--this time for the US, where he had been offered a position by a Hollywood studio.

Frank had been alarmed by the growing power of the Nazi movement led by Adolf Hitler, and after the notorious Reichstag fire of 1933--in which Nazis burned down the German parliament building and blamed it on "Communists and Jews"--Frank, who was Jewish, saw the writing on the wall and he and his family left Germany. They lived in Switzerland and France for a while, then moved to Austria.

German novelist and playwright Bruno Frank was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1887, to a family with a long line of physicians and bankers (his father and grandfather were both bankers). He attended a preparatory school in Stuttgart, then transferred to a college in Thuringia. He received a Doctors degree in philosophy and literature from the University of Tubingen. He published his first book, a collection of poems, at age 18. He soon moved to Munich--at the time considered the most cosmopolitan city in Germany--and got involved in the literary scene there. He became acquainted with such authors as Frank Wedekind, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wilhelm Speyer and Lion Feuchtwanger. and struck up what became a lifelong friendship with Thomas Mann. When World War I broke out Frank enlisted in the German army and saw action on the Russian front. He was severely wounded there, was sent back to Germany and spent several years recuperating at his home in Bavaria. After his recovery he embarked on a very successful career as a novelist and playwright, and also adapted and translated plays for the German stage by such foreign authors as Marcel Pagnol, Noël Coward and Sacha Guitry.