Medievalist architectural historian and Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, scholar; important Kunstwissenschaft Gothic theorist. Frankl's family stemmed from a line of Jewish scholars. His father a Prague businessman, was Carl Frankl and his mother Amalia von Wiener (Frankl). He attended to German Staats-Obergymnasium in Prague, graduating in 1896. Following a year's service in the Austrian military at a Lieutenant's rank in 1897, he entered the Technische Hochschule in Munich and then Berlin, graduating with a degree in (practicing) architecture in 1904.