32 Facts About Otto Frank

Otto Heinrich Frank was a German businessman, and the father of Anne Frank.

Otto Frank edited and published the first edition of her diary in 1947 and advised on its later theatrical and cinematic adaptations.

Otto Heinrich Frank was born into a German Jewish family.

Otto Frank was the second of four children born to Alice Betty and Michael Frank.

Alice and Michael Otto Frank placed value on a middle-class education.

Otto Frank had music lessons, learned to ride a horse and visited the theater and opera regularly.

The Otto Frank family enjoyed a large circle of friends, and kept a welcoming home.

Otto Frank 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.

Otto Frank returned to Germany two years later in 1911.

Otto Frank won the Iron Cross for his military service.

Otto Frank worked in the bank that his father initially ran, which subsequently he and his brothers inherited until its collapse in the early 1930s.

In 1953, Otto Frank married Elfriede Markovits, a Holocaust survivor, who assisted him with the Anne Otto Frank Foundation in Basel, which he launched a decade later.

Otto Frank was looking to expand its operations in Europe, and Erich arranged for Otto to work as Opekta's agent in Amsterdam, allowing Otto to have an income to support his family once they had moved there.

In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages.

Otto Frank made his businesses look "Aryan" by transferring control to his employees.

In 1938 and 1941, Otto Frank attempted to obtain visas for his family to emigrate to the United States or Cuba.

Otto Frank was granted a single visa for himself to Cuba on 1 December 1941, but it is not known if it ever reached him.

Otto Frank attempted to obtain visas for his family to Britain he was never granted the visas.

At the age of 53, when the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands started in the summer of 1942, Otto 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 Otto Frank immediately decided to move the family to safety.

Otto Frank 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.

Otto Frank travelled back to the Netherlands over the next six months and searched diligently for his family and friends.

Otto Frank 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.

Otto Frank 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.

Otto Frank is recognized as a co-author of the diary.

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.

Otto Frank died of lung cancer on 19 August 1980 in Birsfelden and his ashes were buried in the town's cemetery, where Elfriede would be buried, in the same tomb, 18 years later.

Otto Frank was survived by his stepdaughter Eva Schloss, his sister Helene Frank and her two children.

Otto 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.

In 1959, Otto Frank "lodged a criminal complaint on the grounds of libel, slander, defamation, maligning the memory of a deceased person and antisemitic utterances" against two members of the right-wing Deutsche Reichspartei, Lothar Stielau and Heinrich Buddeberg, who had dismissed the diary as a work of fiction.

In 1976, Nazi sympathizer Ernst Romer accused Otto Frank of editing and fabricating parts of Anne's diary.

Some page numbers are presumed to have been added by Otto Frank when compiling the diary for publication.