In 1872 the family moved to Switzerland, where Frank grew up, one of six children, amid scenery that he praises but which, to judge by the absence of any response to the beauties of nature from most of his work, had little effect upon him. At 19 he began to earn his living, at first as a journalist, at 22 as a press-agent, at 24 as a private secretary, traveling extensively with his employers (notably the painters Rudinoff and Willy Grétor) in France and England. In 1895-96 he was a public reader of Ibsen plays in Switzerland; in ’96-97, political editor of _Simplicissimus_ in Munich; in ’97-98, an actor and producer in a theatrical company which toured North Germany in Ibsen plays and first presented on the stage his _Earth-Spirit_, written in ’93, published in ’95. In ’98-99 he held a similar important post with the resident company of the Schauspielhaus in Munich and wrote his great, though local, comedy _The Marquis of Keith_. Save for a term in prison as a result of the prosecution of the editors of _Simplicissimus_ for lèse-majesté,--a term enriched by the composition of his long story of Utopian education--physical education--for young girls, named _Minne-haha_ (again the influence of America), which to my ears is the most pure and limpid piece of German prose one is ever likely to find,--he continued to reside in Munich, active in this or that playhouse or cabaret, for the rest of his life. He composed many _Brettl-lieder_, rhymes and music, and sang them in Bohemian restaurants. Every June, after Max Reinhardt became a theatrical power in Berlin, he appeared there as an actor in a series of his own plays, hastily prepared but persistently repeated to a slowly growing, grudgingly appreciative public. As an actor he was a paradox: more natural than Naturalistic, but more Expressionistic than expressive. I saw him act several times in his _Franziska_, his new play in 1912-13, and marveled at the almost inarticulate strain, the rigid body, popping eyes, deep-lined and taut-drawn face, that marked him then. Sartorially he was something of a dude: to be correct was a requirement he forced upon his mettlesome temperament. His inheritance, derived from a mixture of middle-aged, scientific, abstract-minded, cold North German and young, sensuous, emotional, artistic Austrian, resulted in a conflict that could be seen by anyone: he possessed thesis and antithesis but never synthesis. His face expressed by turns his fluctuant, opposing sides, Jesuit and ironic actor, tragedy and vice, now gray, sharp-eyed, superior,--suddenly warm and deep. He was no artist on the boards--too stiff, too choked with his own earnestness, too genuinely intense,--but he was vastly interesting as a man, a sufferer, a moralist and preacher inured to being scoffed at and returning the too normal world hot scorn for scorn.