Otto Frank
Otto Heinrich Frank was a German businessman, and the father of Anne Frank. He edited and published the first edition of her diary in 1947 and advised on its later theatrical and cinematic adaptations. In the 1950s and the 1960s, he established European charities in his daughter's name and founded the trust which preserved his family's wartime hiding place, the Anne Frank House, in Amsterdam.
Early life
Otto Heinrich Frank was born into a German Jewish family. He was the second of four children born to Alice Betty and Michael Frank. His elder brother was Robert Frank, and younger siblings were Herbert Frank and Helene Frank. Otto was a cousin of the furniture designer Jean-Michel Frank and a grandson of Zacharias Frank. His father originally came from Landau, and moved to Frankfurt in 1879, marrying Alice Stern in 1886. Alice and Michael Frank placed value on a middle-class education. Otto had music lessons, learned to ride a horse and visited the theater and opera regularly. The Frank family enjoyed a large circle of friends, and kept a welcoming home. Otto studied economics in Heidelberg from 1908 to 1909 and had a work experience placement at Macy's Department Store in New York City thanks to a college friend his age, Nathan Straus Jr. However, after leaving for New York, he had to return home briefly because of his father's death in September 1909, before once again leaving for the United States. He returned to Germany two years later in 1911.Military service
Frank served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He and his two brothers were drafted for military service in August 1915 and after training at a depot in Mainz, he served in an artillery unit on the Western Front in which most soldiers were mathematicians and surveyors. In 1916, he was attached to the infantry as a range-finder at the Battle of the Somme. In 1917, he was promoted in the field to lieutenant and served at the Battle of Cambrai, where two of his French cousins, Oscar and Georges, were killed in action. According to other sources, Frank was late returning home because he was ordered to confiscate two horses from a farmer and returned them to the farmer when the war ended in defeat. He was awarded the Iron Cross for his military service.Marriage and children
Frank worked in the bank that his father initially ran, which subsequently he and his brothers inherited until its collapse in the early 1930s. He married Edith Holländer – an heiress to a scrap-metal and industrial-supply business – on his 36th birthday, 12 May 1925, at the synagogue in Aachen, Edith's hometown. Edith was 25 when they married. Their elder daughter, Margot Frank, was born 16 February 1926, followed by their younger daughter, Anne, on 12 June 1929. Edith died of starvation and disease in Auschwitz on 6 January 1945. In late October 1944, Margot and Anne were transferred from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where they died of typhus.In 1953, Frank married Elfriede Markovits, a Holocaust survivor, who assisted him with the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, which he launched a decade later. Markovits's daughter, Eva Schloss, was a Holocaust survivor, peace activist and international speaker.
World War II
As the tide of Nazism rose in Germany and anti-Jewish decrees encouraged attacks on Jewish individuals and families, Frank decided to evacuate his family. In August 1933, they relocated to Aachen, where his mother-in-law, Rosa Holländer resided, in preparation for a subsequent and final move to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In the same year, Frank's widowed mother, Alice Frank, fled to Switzerland.Frank's brother-in-law Erich Elias worked in Basel for Opekta, a company that sold spices and pectin for use in the manufacture of jam. The company was looking to expand its operations in Europe, and Elias arranged for Frank to work as Opekta's agent in Amsterdam, allowing Frank to have an income to support his family once they had moved there. Frank and his family lived in Merwedeplein in the modern suburb of Amsterdam-Zuid; they came to know many other German emigrant families. In 1938, Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabrück with his family. In 1939, Edith Hollander's mother came to live with the Franks and remained with them until her death in January 1942. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Frank was forced by the Germans to give up his companies. Frank made his businesses look "Aryan" by transferring control to his employees.
In 1938 and 1941, Frank attempted to obtain visas for his family to emigrate to the United States or Cuba. He was granted a single visa for himself to Cuba on 1 December 1941, but it is not known if it ever reached him. Ten days later, when Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States, the visa was canceled. He also attempted to obtain visas for his family to Britain; however, those were never granted.
At the age of 53, when the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands started in the summer of 1942, Frank took his family into hiding on 6 July 1942 in the upper rear rooms of the Opekta premises on the Prinsengracht, behind a concealing bookcase. The day before, his older daughter, Margot, had received a written summons to report for so-called labour duty in Germany, and Frank immediately decided to move the family to safety. They were joined a week later by Hermann van Pels, who was known as Herman van Daan in Anne's diary, his wife, Auguste van Pels, and their son, Peter van Pels. In November, the group was joined by Fritz Pfeffer, known in Anne's diary as Albert Dussel. Their concealment was aided by Frank's colleagues Johannes Kleiman, whom he had known since 1923, Miep Gies, and her husband Jan Gies; Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl.
The group hid for two years, until their discovery in August 1944. It is not known whether an informant or a chance discovery by authorities ended their period of refuge. The group, along with Kugler and Kleiman, were arrested by SS Officer Karl Silberbauer, whose team was usually tasked with investigating financial crimes and not with searching for hidden Jews. This element, together with the fact that the officers inspected all the crates, bags and jars before they found the revolving bookcase indicates that perhaps they were not aware about the hiders. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were not arrested with the group. Gies managed to excuse herself by saying she knew nothing of those in hiding, and Johannes Kleiman gave Voskuijl his wallet with the request to take it to his friend Derk Kollen who had a pharmacy around the corner on the Leliegracht, a pre-arranged signal to inform Kleiman's family that there was a problem, and she was able to leave the building unhindered because no police officers were guarding the outside at that moment.
After being imprisoned in the Huis van Bewaring on the Weteringschans in Amsterdam, the Jewish prisoners were sent to the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork and finally, in September, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Frank was separated from his wife and daughters. He was sent to the men's barracks and was residing in the sick barracks when the camp was liberated by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945. After the liberation of Auschwitz, Frank wrote to his mother in Switzerland, where she had fled in 1933 when Hitler came to power. He travelled back to the Netherlands over the next six months and searched diligently for his family and friends. By the end of 1945, he realized he was the sole survivor of those who had hidden in the house on the Prinsengracht.
Letter from the Monowai steamship
Post-war life
After Anne Frank's death was confirmed in the summer of 1945, her diary and papers were given to Otto Frank by Miep Gies, who had rescued them from the ransacked hiding place together with Bep Voskuijl. As Gies wrote in her book, Anne Frank Remembered, Frank immediately started to read the papers. Later he began transcribing them for his relatives in Switzerland. He was persuaded that Anne's writing shed light on the experiences of those who suffered persecution under the Nazis and was urged to consider publishing it. He typed out the diary into a single manuscript, editing out sections he thought too personal to his family or too mundane to be of interest to the general reader. The manuscript was read by Dutch historian Jan Romein, who reviewed it on 3 April 1946 for the Het Parool newspaper. This attracted the interest of Amsterdam's Contact Publishing, which accepted it for publication in the summer of 1946. Otto Frank is now recognized as a co-author of the diary, in order to extend the book's copyright to 2050.On 25 June 1947, the first Dutch edition of the diary was issued under the title Het Achterhuis. Its success led to an English translation in 1952, which led to a theatrical dramatisation in 1955 and eventually the film The Diary of Anne Frank, with actor Joseph Schildkraut reprising his role as Otto.
Frank married former Amsterdam neighbor and fellow Auschwitz survivor Elfriede Geiringer in Amsterdam on 10 November 1953, and the couple moved to Basel, Switzerland, where he had family, including relatives' children, with whom he shared his experiences. In 1963, he founded the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, which is devoted to global distribution and use of the Diary of Anne Frank. The non-profit organisation uses the proceeds of the copyrights for charitable purposes, education, and scientific research. In addition the Foundation in Basel supports projects in the field of human rights, racial equality, and promoting social justice.
In response to a demolition order placed on the building in which Frank and his family hid during the war, he and Johannes Kleiman helped establish the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam on 3 May 1957, with the principal aim to save and restore the building so it could be opened to the general public. With the aid of public donations, the building and the adjacent one were purchased by the Amsterdam-based foundation. It opened as a museum on 3 May 1960 and is still in operation.
For the rest of his life, Frank dedicated himself to the publication of the diary and the ideals his daughter had expressed in it. Frank died of lung cancer on 19 August 1980 in Birsfelden and his ashes were buried in the town's cemetery, where Elfriede would also be buried, in the same tomb, 18 years later. He was survived by his stepdaughter Eva Schloss, his sister Helene Frank and her two children.
Frank designated the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel as his sole heir and legal successor, which means that the copyright on all Anne Frank's writings belongs to this organisation.