Leonhard Frank (4 September 1882 in
Würzburg – 18 August 1961 in
Munich) was a
German expressionist writer. He studied
painting and
graphic art in
Munich, and gained acclaim with his first novel
The Robber Band (1914, tr. 1928). When a Berlin journalist celebrated in a famous café about news of the loss of the ship
RMS Lusitania, torpedoed by a German submarine, Frank was upset – and slapped the man in his face. That is why he went into exile in
Switzerland (1915–18), where he wrote a series of pacifist short-stories published under the title
Man is Good. He returned to Germany, but after the Nazis gained power in 1933 Frank had to emigrate a second time. He lived in Switzerland again, moved to London, then Paris and finally fled under adventurous conditions to the
United States in 1940, returning to Munich in 1950. His best-known novels were
In the Last Coach (1925, tr. 1935) and
Carl and Anna, which he dramatized in 1929. In 1947 MGM made a movie titled
Desire Me out of this story.