orig. Benjamin Franklin Wedekind
born July 24, 1864, Hannover, Hanover
died March 9, 1918, Munich, Ger.
German actor and playwright.
He lived in Switzerland (1872–84) and then in Munich, where he worked at various jobs, including journalist and cabaret performer. He wrote plays from 1891, when his tragedy The Awakening of Spring created a scandal with its theme of awakening adolescent sexuality. In his "Lulu" cycle, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the amoral Lulu. His plays used episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature, prefiguring the Theatre of the Absurd and forming a transition from realism to Expressionism.