Niklas Frank (born 9 March 1939) is a German author and journalist best known for an intimate and strongly accusatory book about his father, Hans Frank, a lawyer who became Governor-General of the General Government in German-occupied Poland during World War II.
Niklas Frank | |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 March 1939 Munich, Bavaria, Germany |
| Occupation | Author and journalist |
| Notable works | Hitler's Children In the Shadow of the Reich |
| Relatives | Hans Frank (father) |
Background
editFrank was born in Munich on 9 March 1939 to Hans Frank and Brigitte Herbst[1] as the youngest of five children. His brothers and sisters were Sigrid (1927–d. in South Africa), Norman (1928–2010), Brigitte (1935–1981), and Michael (1937–1990).[1] When Niklas was about eight months old, his father was appointed Hitler's Governor-General of the General Government in German occupied Poland. In this position, Hans Frank became responsible for the Nazi policy of enslaving the Poles and exterminating the Polish Jews. Niklas grew up in Cracow, Poland. He was seven years old when his father was executed in Nuremberg trials (16 October 1946).[2] By then, he had been shunned by his father due to Hans' belief he was instead the son a former family friend, Karl Lasch,[3] and was closer to his nanny Hilde.[4]
Contrary to his father's later stance on the concentration camps and ghettos, his children were not isolated from them, despite them not being a topic their parents discussed directly with them. Niklas was often taken to a concentration camp by Hilde, their nanny. On one occasion, for Niklas and his brother's Norman's enjoyment, the guards made undernourished prisoners sit on a donkey, which would then be made to jump and throw them to the ground. Niklas would also be told that a sad prisoner was a "witch", whom he did not have to worry about, since she would be “dead very soon". At another point, a Polish servant soiled bed sheets with soot, and his mother screamed he would be sent to the camps. Niklas, who had befriended the Pole, heard this and began to cry, which made his mother stop scolding the man and start comforting her son. In the end, she let the matter go, and after the war the surviving Polish man and his wife would credit Niklas with saving their lives.[5]
His mother died in 1959. Niklas studied German literature, sociology, and history, and became a journalist, working for the German edition of Playboy and for the weekly Stern. Over the course of the years, his initial embarrassment about his father developed into a "burning, obsessive hatred" as he uncovered minute details of his father's life during a 40-year search.[6] In the early 1990s, Frank was still working as a journalist,[7] after a career during which he interviewed, among others, the Polish trade-union leader, Lech Wałęsa.[8]
Author
editFrank contributed as a writer to the 1967 film A Degree of Murder and also to the 1973 Tatort television series episode Weißblaue Turnschuhe, but this would not have earned him lasting fame. In 1987, however, he published a book about his father, Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung ("The Father: A Settling of Accounts"), translated into English as In the Shadow of the Reich (1991). This book, serialized in the magazine Stern, caused controversy in Germany because of the unheard-of, savage way in which its author sought to utterly destroy the memory of his father, referring to him as "a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic" and questioning his remorse before his execution.[9][10] Together with Israeli author Joshua Sobol, Frank later wrote the play Der Vater (The Father), commissioned for the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival). It was first performed in 1995 at the Theater an der Wien and directed by Paulus Manker. In it, the son exhumes the putrid corpse of his father Hans and revivifies him to answer for his deeds, while his 'phallic mother' (Brigitte) and Hitler are played by one and the same person.[11] Having thus dealt with his father, Niklas Frank concentrated on his by then deceased mother, the once 'Queen of Poland', in his book My German Mother (2005), which reads in part like a satire of high-ranking Nazi women. He concluded his trilogy with Brother Norman! (2013), reporting the painful discussions with his eldest and favorite brother, who had died three years before, on their diverging views of a youth spent in occupied Poland and on filial love.[12]
Appearances in documentaries
editNiklas Frank appears as himself in the 1993 television documentary Personenbeschreibung and also in the 2012 film, Hitler's Children. He also appeared in a 2015 BBC documentary, which was shown as an episode of Independent Lens, My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did that aired in May 2016.[13] An April 2017 BBC HARDtalk programme was dedicated to him.[14] He was also interviewed in the Hans Frank episode of Hitler's Most Wanted (Series 1, Episode 8, 2019).
References
editCitations
- ^ a b Steiner 1975, p. 405.
- ^ Nagorski 2000.
- ^ Swart, Mia. "'I knew my father would be hanged': Remembering Nuremberg". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 21 October 2024.
- ^ Frank, Niklas; Navazelskis, Ina (6 June 2016). "Oral history interview with Niklas Frank RG-50.030.0880". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 November 2023.
- ^ Frank, Niklas; Navazelskis, Ina (6 June 2016). "Oral history interview with Niklas Frank RG-50.030.0880". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 November 2023.
- ^ Benesch 1991, p. 59.
- ^ Benesch 1991, p. 60.
- ^ Sands 2012.
- ^ Frank 1991.
- ^ Benesch 1991, p. 58.
- ^ Glothlin 2006: 174–198
- ^ Frank, Niklas; Navazelskis, Ina (6 June 2016). "Oral history interview with Niklas Frank RG-50.030.0880". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 November 2023.
- ^ "TV Schedule". WYES.org. 24 January 2013. Archived from the original on 21 August 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
- ^ "Nazi leader's son: 'Don't trust us' Germans". 26 April 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2017..
Sources
- Frank, Niklas (1991). In the Shadow of the Reich. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-58345-7.
- Benesch, Susan (1 November 1991). "In the Shadow of the Reich, by Niklas Frank". The Washington Monthly.
- Nagorski, Andrew (23 January 2000). "There's No End of History". Newsweek. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
- Sands, Philippe (2012). "In the Shadow of the Reich". walesartsreview.org. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
- Steiner, John M. (1975). Power Politics and Social Change in National Socialist Germany (in German). The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton & Co. ISBN 90-279-7651-1.
- McGlothlin, Erin H. (2006). Second-Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration. Rochester, NY: Camden House.