The German dramatist, cosmopolite, and libertarian Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was a foe of middle-class hypocrisy and a moralist eager to reform the world through sexual emancipation.

Frank Wedekind was born Benjamin Franklin Wedekind on July 24, 1864, in Hanover, Germany. He was the son of a German who had emigrated to America, practiced medicine in San Francisco, then returned to his home in Germany. Dissatisfied with Otto von Bismarck's Prussian policy, the elder Wedekind left again and settled in Switzerland, where his son grew up. After working as a freelance journalist, an advertising copywriter, and a secretary for a circus, and spending long sojourns as a painter in England and France, young Wedekind moved to Munich, joining the staff of the satirical magazine Simplizissimus, in which his first political poems appeared. He remained in Munich until his death, occasionally making guest appearances in his own plays, giving public readings, and...