Anne Frank's Family

by Mirjam Pressler

  But Alice didn’t care what her family said. She felt flattered by the interest that Michael showed in her and found every possible way to meet him, usually with the help of her girlfriends. Michael was suddenly invited into a home where he had never been invited before, or he was brought along somewhere by Alice’s friends’ helpful brothers. Even in a relatively rigid society, like Jewish Frankfurt at the time, couples in love always found ways to see each other, secretly exchange a few words, look each other in the eye. It is not entirely clear why Cornelia Stern was against Michael Frank as a son-in-law at first, but her resistance must not have been all that heavy, since when Alice presented her mother with the fait accompli and said that she had firmly decided to marry Michael and no one else, Cornelia gave way.

  The planned betrothal led to a busy correspondence between members of the two families. So, for instance, Léon Frank, Michael’s brother, two years younger than Michael, felt compelled to write a long letter to his brother from Paris, on October 17, 1885, in which he first congratulated his older brother but also offered to come to Frankfurt in case Michael felt the need to discuss his plans further with someone in the family. Even though this was not the best moment to leave Paris, with the stock markets as they were, still he would gladly come to Frankfurt for a few days, perhaps also to discreetly inquire into the circumstances of Michael’s intended. The letterhead said, “Frank, Wolfsohn & Co./DÉPÊCHES/Wolfsohn-Bourse-Paris. 21, Rue Saint-Marc.”

  Michael Frank, circa 1880 (photo credit 3.1)

  The letter from Alfred Stern, the professor in Bern, to his cousin Alice was very different:

  Dear Alice! When I came home just now, Dora [his young daughter] yelled out while I was still in the hall: “Alice is engaged!” It was clear that this must be happy news, since she yelled it in a bright loud voice despite a bad cold and runny nose. Indeed it was. May all the good and beautiful things I wish for you come true, many times over.

  Give your bridegroom my heartiest greetings, even though I haven’t yet met him. [ …] I am deeply glad for your happiness.

  Yours,

  Alfred Stern

  Alfred’s father, professor emeritus by then and living with Alfred, congratulated Alice and Michael and signed the letter too: “Your Uncle Stern.”

  Klärchen added something as well: “I can’t believe I’m not there with you, to share in all your celebrations! But when it’s time for the wedding!! I hope I’m invited?? I’ll come and give you both a great big hug. Your Klärchen.”

  Rebekka Loewi, Michael’s oldest sister, who at thirty-four was already a grandmother, wrote from Paris on October 26, 1885:

  My dear Alice! For a long time now it would have been right for me to introduce myself to you as your sister, I hope dear Michel has already done so, I have not been well or else I would have sent you my congradulatory wishes already. You probably have not missed them, the first days there are so many demands on you that I feel sorry for every new bride and groom. But now, my d. Alice, even if they’re late I hope you accept my deepest congradulations and believe me you are a lucky child to be able to make my d. brother Michel your husband and lifelong companion. It’s not because I have any sisterly illusions about my brother that I say Michel is the best and most agreeable man with the finest character and more able than anyone to make a wife happy. I dont want to say too much, it looks so strange to praise your own brother, but I will say this, since Im firmly convinced that a happy, beautiful future awaits you. [ …] For many years we made a happy, comfortable home and have been joined to each other with family ties that few other brothers and sisters can have taken so much pleasure in. Each of us lives for the other & I hope to God that it will stay the same in future too, because my d. Rosa1 tells me that you dear Alice are a good creature too who will have no problem joining us in our family.

  Especially moving is the letter that Babette Frank née Hammelfett sent on October 22, 1885, addressed to her future daughter-in-law Alice while including a congratulatory note to her son Michael.

  Most dearly beloved daughter!

  Thank you, oh thank you, for your so darling letter, I truly cant wait for when I can press you to my heart, dearest daughter, not only because you have made my good Michael so happy, you have made me just as happy since his hapiness is my hapiness it was always my deepest wish to see him with a wife like he deserves and with Gods help he has found one in you, my dear Karolina cannot write enough about you, my dear child, and so I am already eqsited from this joy. I cant expres my feelings very well I am so beside myself that my saintly dear father did not live to see this day please ecxuse me for my short note and I cant wait to see you and congradulat your dear mama in person may dear God give her the gradest joy and you to my dearest children—Michael will always striive to be a good well-behaved son just like you a good daughter and please say hello to your dear relattives for me and give my congratulazons [ …] Goodbye and hugs & kisses from the bottom of my heart from your happy and always loving mother. Babette Frank

  Letter from Babette Frank to Alice about her engagement, October 22, 1885 (photo credit 3.2)

  Alice would have read this letter with mixed feelings. The childish style and many mistakes would probably have embarrassed her, coming as she did from a family that put so much value on education. At the same time, she must have been deeply moved by this woman’s straightforward affection and goodwill.

  She would definitely have discussed this letter with her mother, Cornelia, and Cornelia would have told her that the simpler sorts of Jews used to speak Yiddish, or Jewish-German, a language that was like German but substituting many Hebrew words and, most important, written in the Hebrew alphabet. That was probably the language that Babette Frank knew as a child, and where would she have learned German spelling? Besides, the education of girls was not seen as very important. It was expected of boys that they would study the Torah and the Talmud their whole lives (which is why a synagogue is also called a shul), but for girls it was usually enough to teach them the alphabet. They had to be able to read the prayers; it wasn’t important that they understand them.

  Cornelia would have advised her daughter not to take Babette Frank’s mistakes too seriously. Her son Michael, after all, was not uneducated; he was an intelligent businessman who would offer his future wife a comfortable, carefree life.

  In any case, Alice no longer had much time for reflection. The betrothal took place on October 21, 1885, and the wedding was planned for January 3, 1886. The trousseau had to be finished by then, and there were all sorts of other preparations to take care of.

  As was common at the time among well-to-do families, it was a large wedding with numerous guests—relatives, friends, and acquaintances, both Michael’s male friends and the bride’s girlfriends.

  The menu for the reception has not been preserved, unfortunately. There might have been pâté as an appetizer, then soup, then trout au bleu, roast veal, coleslaw, sauerkraut, maybe even wild boar with mountain cranberries to emphasize how far removed they were from the Jewish dietary laws? And would dessert have been chocolate mousse or orange parfait?

  Alice and Michael Frank shortly after their wedding (photo credit 3.3)

  What has been preserved are the songs and poems written for the young couple, and the friends’ comments ribbing Michael about his bachelor days and how he liked to enjoy a good glass of wine and other pleasures:

  In Landau-in-der-Pfalz

  Was born our noble Frank:

  Wherever lots of wine and malts

  Were found, there lived our man.

  He liked his wine and beer

  And liked his beer steins roomy—

  He knows them well from all the years

  He stared down into them, never gloomy.

  Down goes

  His nose

  Into the glass;

  A barfly’s life

  Free of wife

  Is how it was.

  Further on in the song came hints that Michael had been in
love once or twice before, but these were only “false alarms” that “he always knew weren’t true.” His true love was clearly Alice, and everyone there had nothing but good wishes for the young couple.

  It would have been after the banquet, over wine, that the friends performed their poems and told their stories and anecdotes, and there would definitely have been a lot of laughter and chatter in the hall, remarks flying here and there, innuendos that the bridegroom might not have been unreservedly happy to hear in the presence of his bride and their families. But goodwill and good cheer prevailed.

  A flyer that his friends made up is also amusing:

  Let it be known to all that the heretofore single Alice Stern, hereby granted right of domicile, has left her parental residence under conditions which seem to imply that she does not intend to return thereto for extended periods of time.

  She has been seen in the company of the so-called “stockbroker” Michael Frank (with whom she appears to have certain intimate relations) and furthermore bedecked in a white dress among other similar veils, garlands, &c.

  The aforementioned Stern has the legal authority to have meanwhile exchanged this outfit for one more comfortable on long journeys.

  One presumes that the many times aforementioned Stern and her accomplice Frank have made off via railroad toward Bavaria or Austria.

  The authorities have been notified thereof, and are hereby instructed to keep the couple under close surveillance and, should any embarrassing circumstances arise, to smoothly and unobtrusively facilitate their journey.

  Signed:

  For the Examining Magistrate:

  Dr. A. Mox

  Alice had in fact exchanged her wedding dress for a more comfortable traveling outfit, but her honeymoon brought her not to Bavaria or Austria but to Paris. The young couple had originally planned to continue their trip to London, but the weather made them change their plans.

  Cornelia wrote a letter to the two of them:

  Dear Children, At last I have received the letter I long hoped for, confirming my suspicion that you had changed your travel destination and remained in Paris due to inclement weather. I am certain you will enjoy it there as well, dear Liza, I am only afraid that your expectations are too high. I know my little social butterfly too well [ …] in any case, I hope very much to hear from you how you are enjoying married life. Is it better to be a Mrs. or a Miss?

  The answer to her mother’s question must have come very easily to Alice: of course it was better to be a Mrs., a wife, the spouse of a successful husband who earned enough money as a businessman to give her and the children she would no doubt be having soon a comfortable life. He had become self-employed and offered his services as a broker. He invested any profits in other lines of business, so, for example, he owned a food-processing plant in Bockenheim and was a partner in the Sodener mineral tablets company. He bought a cigarette store, Engelhardt & Co., and was involved in the travel agency in the Hotel Frankfurter Hof. In 1896–97, he sold all his property except for his share of Sodener Tablets and founded the Michael Frank Bank as a publicly traded company specializing in securities exchange and foreign currencies. The Franks were not among the truly rich, but they were certainly well-off.

  Alice enjoyed the new freedoms that marriage offered her. Michael had to work hard, true, but her life had its share of pleasures. They attended concerts, the theater, and the opera. They gave dinner parties and were invited to others’. They led the life of people possessing full civil rights. There was nothing to remind them of their parents’ and grandparents’ time: they had broken free from the ghetto, and the degrading limitations of the Stättigkeit had been overcome.

  Of course, as Jews, even prosperous Jews, they did not belong to high society—only noblemen, patricians, and high officers and civil servants under Kaiser Wilhelm truly belonged in those circles. Even Professor Moritz Stern, Alfred’s father, had no access there because he had not been a member of one of the dueling societies as a student and thus could not count on the support of former fraternity brothers. Anyone without the intricately interwoven strings of ancestry and connections to pull had no way to enter the true upper class, and an invisible sign seemed to hang above the stairs leading upward: “No Jews Allowed.” Even the old, established business families were not seen as truly belonging, as possessing truly equal rights—the age of the guilds was still too recent, even if they no longer expressed their scorn and contempt as openly as before because in this period of rapid expansion in Germany, people wanted to do business. In socioeconomic terms, Michael and Alice Frank fell somewhere between the upper class and the rising tide of factory workers, small farmers, and craftsmen, not solidly in either camp.

  But even if you don’t quite belong, you can lead a comfortable life if you have enough money. And in the end, they were not alone—they had far-flung families, relatives who had married into other families, friends, business colleagues, and fellow bankers with unsatisfactory family backgrounds just like them.

  Twenty-five years of married life were granted to Alice and Michael Frank—twenty-three years in which the world changed forever. Municipal electricity came to Gutleutstrasse in early 1895. There were still mostly horses and carriages on the streets, but the horse-drawn streetcars established in 1872 went electric in 1899, and there were more and more automobiles. Candles, kerosene lanterns, and gas lamps were replaced by electric lights; soon the first vacuum cleaners appeared, and the better sorts of people managed to get telephones put in. The Franks were among the first in Frankfurt to get a telephone: their phone number was apparently 82. Even more important for economic and social life was the construction of the railway network: more and more cities in Europe could now be reached by rail. There was first class, second class, and third class, of course, but if you had enough money, your journey was entirely comfortable, in luxurious dining cars and well-appointed sleepers.

  The Franks traveled often, not only for business or on vacation but also to visit friends and family. Old relationships were fostered and new ones formed. No wonder that Alice, the “social butterfly,” as her mother had called her, lived it up and sought out all sorts of enjoyable new experiences. There were lots of parties, even within the tight social constraints of the time—receptions, tea parties, dinners, soirees—there were billiard games, and the children learned riding and tennis. Their letters tell of excursions into nature together, so-called country parties. Social life blossomed—it was really very impressive. The homes were correspondingly well furnished, with heavy furniture, heavy curtains, and even heavier carpets. Gradually, the somewhat gloomy luxury

  of the late nineteenth century gave way to Art Nouveau and, later still, to the functionality and clear, clean lines of the Bauhaus. Alice never quite accepted this new style, though, and surrounded herself until her death with dark, somber furniture, ornate and elaborate, that was closer to Biedermeier than to Bauhaus.

  Alice’s life was good, especially when the children arrived.

  On October 7, 1886, precisely nine months after the wedding, Robert was born. He was artistically gifted and many of his letters are adorned with drawings, sometimes very beautiful drawings. He was the one who later opened an art gallery in London and rediscovered the painter John Martin (1789–1854). He found two of Martin’s large canvases by chance in an attic, The Plains of Heaven and The Last Judgment, and bought them; in 1974, long after Robert’s death, his widow Lotti gave both paintings to the Tate Britain (formerly the Tate Gallery of British Art). The paintings are still shown there today, and labeled “Bequeathed by Mrs. Robert Frank.”

  Robert Frank, around ten years old (photo credit 3.4)

  Three years later, on May 12, 1889, their second son, Otto, was born. Otto Frank was to be Anne Frank’s father—Anne who was born, like her ancestors, in Frankfurt am Main but who fled the Nazis with her parents, to the Netherlands. When the Nazis occupied the Netherlands and she and her family had to go into hiding, in a secret annex above and behind Otto’s
office, she would keep a diary for two years that would make the Frank family world famous.

  After another two years, on October 13, 1891, Herbert was born, who would be Alice’s “problem child” when he grew up. She worried about him her whole life, and when she felt close to dying, she gave her daughter, Leni, the responsibility for continuing to take care of him.

  Alice and Michael longed for a daughter, but the three sons came first; finally, on September 8, 1893, their wish was fulfilled, and Helene was born. Alice, herself so powerfully shaped by her mother-daughter relationship with Cornelia, must have been ecstatic. And Helene—whom everyone affectionately nicknamed, whether Leni, Lener, Lunni, or Lunner—was a strikingly pretty child. Alice was so proud of her that she later had her portrait painted. Helene was around five years old at the time, maybe as old as eight, and magnificently decked out for the occasion. Alice loved Leni, and Leni loved Alice; their relationship was presumably as warm and close from the beginning as the relationship Leni’s son Buddy Elias would later see for himself.

  Otto Frank, around ten years old (photo credit 3.5)

  Helene was not given a middle name, but the sons were. Noticeably, none of the names was biblical, or traditionally Jewish. Michael’s grandfather, who had moved from Fürth to Niederhochstadt, was called Hersch Frenkel until 1810, when he started to call himself Abraham Frank. Well into the nineteenth century, when the Jews were forced to take on one of a set list of family names, they were traditionally named X, son (or daughter) of Y, although occasionally there would be names indicating family or origin, for example, Stern (from the Stern family) or Frenkel (from the Franks, the inhabitants of Franconia) or Cohn (the descendants of the cohanim). Many Jewish family names were taken directly from the family’s birthplace: Bamberger, Frankfurter, Wormser, Holländer. And there were also simple translations of Hebrew names, for example, Wolfsohn from Ben Se’ew (son of a wolf) or Hirsch (deer) from Zwi. When people turned to German names, they often tried to keep the same initial as their Jewish name, for instance changing Moshe to Moritz or Zwi to Zacharias. Still, when they gave their children middle names, it was customary to choose biblical ones. But even this suggestion of religiosity had vanished in the Frank family: the boys were named Robert Hermann, Otto Heinrich, and Herbert August. They were German, they considered themselves German, and they no longer had much of anything to do with their ancestors’ history.