Leonhard Frank

He studied painting and graphic art in Munich, and gained acclaim with his first novel The Robber Band (1914, tr.

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.

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.

The book tells the story of a group of rebellious young boys who harbour ambitions of dismantling their exploitative society and replacing it with an ideal one.

He published other books during his exile in Switzerland like The Cause of the Crime (1915), a scathing criticism of repressive educational systems, and Man Is Good (1917), a revolutionary denunciation of war.