Siegfried "Fridolin" Frenzel was born as the son of a bank official and a housewife. He had an older sister (born in 1928) and a younger brother (born in 1940). The family resided in Weimar from 1934 onwards. Frenzel commenced his schooling in 1944, attending business school where he gained popularity for his skill in painting flower bouquets. His experience of the war's end involved working as a farmhand until his dancer friend, Vera Müller from the Theater des Tanzes, brought him back to Weimar towards the end of 1945.
Back in Weimar, he began assisting the painter Eberhard Steneberg, who oversaw costume and stage design. Between 1946 and 1947, Frenzel worked in a stained glass workshop under the tutelage of Alfons Annys, a Belgian glass painter. In 1948, he embarked on studying mural painting at the University of Architecture and Fine Arts in Weimar under the guidance of Hermann Kirchberger. Kirchberger, as the head of the fine arts department, awarded Frenzel a scholarship.
In 1949, alongside his studies, Frenzel took up various part-time occupations, including working as a miner with preliminary accreditation in uranium mining at Wismut AG. At the university, he studied alongside notable figures such as Gerhard Altenbourg, Gerhard Kettner, Ev Grüger, Wolf Heinecke, Werner Stötzer, and Helmut Lander, forming lifelong friendships with them. It was during this period that he also met Sofie Herbig, an illustrator and painter who would later become his wife. She was the daughter of the renowned post-expressionist Otto Herbig, who also taught at the university in Weimar at that time. Through Herbig, Frenzel was introduced to the influences of Expressionism and Bauhaus, which left a significant mark on his early artistic endeavours. His art began to reflect gestural expressionism, capturing dynamic image concepts effectively.
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