Brigitte Frank

Brigitte Frank (born December 29, 1895 in Eitorf an der Sieg as Maria Brigitte Herbst ; † March 9, 1959 in Munich ) was the wife of the National Socialist lawyer and governor-general of Poland , Hans Frank . There she was nicknamed "Queen of Poland". She is the mother of the writer and former Stern editor Niklas Frank , who published several books about his family.

Origin and beginnings

Brigitte Herbst came in 1895 as the daughter of the spinning mill owner Otto Herbst and his wife Martha, nee. Langer, in Eitorf on the victory to the world. Almost two years after her birth, the young family moved to Forst (Lausitz) , as Martha Herbst's family was successful there in the meat and sausage sales. Brigitte Frank had four siblings: Else, Martha, Otto and Heinrich. Her father died by suicide on January 25, 1908 . She was very self-confident and independent and, even as a young girl, strived for a higher standard of living.

After leaving school early, she did an apprenticeship as a typist with a lawyer . During the First World War she moved to Berlin because she hoped for better opportunities there. In Berlin she worked for a lawyer who fired her after discovering that she was illegally storing fur in his office . She almost always traded fur in her life without registering a business . After meeting a widowed lieutenant who was looking for a secretary and a nanny for his children, she became his lover and moved with him to Munich .

Marriage to Hans Frank

In the early 1920s, Brigitte Herbst got a job as a stenographer in the Bavarian state parliament and later as a secretary at Munich University . There she also typed the students' dissertations . In May 1924 she met Hans Frank, who was five years her junior, a nationally-minded, anti-Semitic law student who sympathized with the NSDAP . Brigitte Herbst had often told her friends that she had to be married before her 30th birthday. Hans Frank had just finished his Dr. jur. obtained his doctorate and became Hitler's personal legal advisor within the NSDAP . She herself did not believe in National Socialism or Hitler, whom she made fun of in her family and friends. As a politically uninterested person, it made no difference to her which party her husband was in. She never joined the NSDAP or any other National Socialist organization.

The wedding took place in Munich on April 2, 1925. The couple were very different in character and attitude as well as in age and cultural background. The "cool Prussian" Brigitte Frank, who grew up in simple circumstances and who were foreign to intimacy and sensitivity , faced a young, fun-loving Bavarian from a wealthy family of lawyers who was musically and sentimentally inclined. The marriage was not very cordial, and Frank was unable to assert himself over his dominant wife. There was a lack of money at the beginning of the marriage, but both spouses loved luxury and representation from an early age.

Brigitte Frank, who had neither motherly feelings nor was particularly fond of children, gave birth to five children over the next few years: two daughters and three sons, including Niklas . All five were born in Munich.

Brigitte Frank saw her children as legitimation for her status as the wife of a Reich Minister and as "Queen of Poland". ("Hans, I gave birth to you five children!" Was her preferred argument to get her husband to do something). Long spa stays often followed the births. According to her youngest son Niklas Frank, she is also said to have had several abortions because she feared having conceived the child from one of her lovers, including allegedly the constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt and the governor of the Galicia district , Karl Lasch . The Frank family lived on an old restored farm , the "Schoberhof", in Fischhausen in the Bavarian municipality of Schliersee am Schliersee .

With Frank's rise within the party after the seizure of power and the constant acquisition of new high party offices, a constant increase in status went hand in hand, of which Brigitte Frank was very proud.

"Queen of Poland"

After Hans Frank was appointed governor general for the occupied Polish territories on October 26, 1939 , the Frank family moved to the royal castle of Cracow , the Wawel, on November 9, 1939 . Initially the Royal Palace of Warsaw was intended as the residence and official residence of the Governor General, but then Hitler chose the Wawel as the heart of old Poland. From then on, the Franks in Poland behaved like a ruling couple; Brigitte Frank called herself "Queen of Poland". She drove in an open Mercedes-Benz in the ghetto of Krakow and Warsaw and received his jewelry, furs and other valuables.

Kressendorf Castle outside Kraków (previously owned by the Potocki family ) served the family as a holiday and weekend home. During the war, Brigitte Frank sent bulk groceries to her family in Forst, sometimes with her husband's special train. In Berlin government and party circles, accusations were made that the Generalgouvernement was a haven of corruption and nepotism .

After Hans Frank met his childhood sweetheart Lilly Groh (1898–1977) again in 1942, he intended to leave his wife and marry Groh. Brigitte Frank did not want to forego her status as a “high woman”, wife of a Reich Minister and “first woman” in the General Government and traveled to Berlin to intervene personally with Hitler. When she described her lover to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as a “Jew” in order to get rid of her, the marital relationship was from then on completely broken. From then on, Hans Frank spent little time with his family, as he drove to Lilly Groh in Bavaria as often as possible. Brigitte Frank was only tolerated to a limited extent on the Wawel.

After the war

Brigitte Frank fled with her children from the Generalgouvernement to Neuhaus in Bavaria at the end of 1944. Hans Frank left Krakow on January 17, 1945, was arrested in Bavaria at the beginning of May and brought before the main war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg in November . He was found guilty and executed on October 16, 1946.

In May 1945 liberated Polish forced laborers attacked the Schoberhof at night and had the Frank family stand with their backs to the wall. Brigitte Frank counted on their shooting , but the intruders were from the family after they had found the wine cellar of the Governor General.

The eldest daughter Sigrid Frank married in October 1945 at the age of 18. Brigitte Frank lived on the Schoberhof until she was taken to the Augsburg-Göggingen labor and internment camp by the Americans in May 1947 . Cardinal Faulhaber , who was asked for help, had the family provided with food.

All of the wives of the major war criminals convicted in 1946 (if they were resident in Bavaria) were imprisoned for " risk of escape and blackout ". In the camp, Frank developed a close friendship with Ilse Hess ; Emmy Göring, on the other hand, became an intimate enemy. Frank was released from prison in 1948; the proceedings against them ended mildly, but the property remained confiscated. In 1953 she published the book In the Face of the Gallows. Interpretation of Hitler and his time on the basis of personal experiences and insights that her husband had written during his imprisonment in the Nuremberg judicial prison from 1945 to 1946. Until her death in March 1959, she lived in Munich, ultimately impoverished.

Brigitte Frank's daughter of the same name died as the first of the five children at the age of 46 in 1981. The family officially cited cancer as the cause of death. However, rumors emerged that she had chosen to commit suicide so as not to get older than her father, who was executed at 46. The son Michael Frank died of organ failure at the age of 53. In March 2005, Niklas Frank, who in 1987 had already settled with his father, the "Polenschlächter" with a book, also published an unveiling book about his mother in which he portrayed her as a characterless careerist and a heartless mother. Niklas Frank is the only surviving child of his parents (as of October 2019).

literature

• Niklas Frank: The father - a settlement. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1987.
• Niklas Frank : My German mother. C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2005.
• Norbert Lebert and Stephan Lebert: Because you have my name. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2000.