Frank Wedekind (redirected from Franz Wedekind)

Wedekind, Frank 

Born July 24, 1864, in Hanover: died Mar. 9, 1918, in Munich. German writer.

By education Wedekind was a lawyer. In the 1890’s he satirized the German Empire under the reign of William II in verses that he published in Simplicissimus. In his play Spring’s Awakening (1891), the bourgeois figures are grotesques. The influence of F. Nietzsche became apparent in the play The Earth Spirit (1895) and its sequel Pandora’s Box (produced 1901, published 1904), as well as in the novella Mine-Haha (1903) and in the plays Hidalla (1904) and Wetterstein Castle (1910). In his best play, The Marquis of Keith (1901), Wedekind shows the capitalist world as overrun with crime. In the plays Samson (1914) and Heracles (1917) he portrays lonely humanists. In style and in mood Wedekind is a forerunner of expressionism.

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1-9. Munich, 1924.
Prosa. Dramen. Verse. Munich, 1954.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1-8. [St. Petersburg] 1912-19.

REFERENCES

Golicher, A. Zhizn’ sovremennika. Mo scow-Leningrad, 1929.
Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 4. Moscow, 1968. Chapter 35.
Mann, H. “Erinnerungen an F. Wedekind.” In his book Essays, vol. 1. Berlin, 1954.

I. V. VOLEVICH