Early Life in Germany & Europe
He was born Felix Paul Greve in Radomno, West Prussia, but was brought up in Hamburg where he graduated with the "Abitur" from the famous Gymnasium Johanneum in 1898. After studying Classical Languages & Archaeology in Bonn, he became a prolific translator of World Literature and a minor literary figure in Stefan George's group, the George-Kreis, around 1900. During his year in Munich, he courted Karl Wolfskehl, and briefly shared an address with Thomas Mann at the Pension Gisels in Aug./Sept. 1902.
In early 1903, he "eloped" with Else Endell, wife of his friend August Endell, the well-known Jugendstil architect, to Palermo. He was imprisoned in Bonn in 1903-04 for having defrauded another friend, Herman Kilian, whose Anglo-German ancestry he would later appropriate for himself in his Canadian autobiographies.
From 1904 to early 1906, when he returned to Berlin, he lived with Else in voluntary exile, first in Wollerau, Switzerland, then in Paris-Plage, France, from where paid H. G. Wells a few visits in his Sandhurst villa just across the Channel.
Read more about this topic: Frederick Philip Grove
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