Frank Wedekind (born July 24, 1864, Hannover, Hanover [Germany]—died March 9, 1918, Munich) was a German actor and dramatist who became an intense personal force in the German artistic world on the eve of World War I. A direct forebear of the modern Theatre of the Absurd, Wedekind employed episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature in his dramas, which formed the transition from the realism of his age to the Expressionism of the following generation.