Heinrich Fraenkel
Heinrich Fraenkel (born September 28, 1897 in Lissa ; † May 25, 1986 in London ) was a British writer and chess composer of German origin. He appeared in his chess activity under the pseudonym Assiac , the ananym of the name of the fictional chess goddess Caissa .
Fraenkel gained particular fame in his later years through his biographies of leading National Socialists .
Life
Fraenkel was born to Jewish parents. When the First World War broke out in 1914, he happened to be in Great Britain, which is why he was arrested and imprisoned during the war in an internment camp on the Isle of Man . After returning to Germany, he studied at several universities before finally working as a film correspondent and screenwriter in Berlin in the 1920s and then in Hollywood for two years .
After his return to Berlin, Fraenkel began to be interested in politics. Following a warning from a friend, Fraenkel left Berlin on the night of the Reichstag fire from February 27 to 28, 1933 to avoid an imminent arrest by the National Socialists. After Fraenkel settled in London, he wrote his first series of books about Germany there, culminating in the autobiography Lebewohl, Deutschland , written after the end of World War II .
In 1943 Fraenkel was one of the founding members of the Free German Movement (FDB) in Great Britain, but resigned in 1944 because of the attitude of the USSR and KPD on the German question.
In a 25-year collaboration with Roger Manvell , Fraenkel wrote a series of biographical studies of leading personalities of the Third Reich and the resistance against National Socialism . For this work he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, First Class, in 1967.
Fraenkel died in the London borough of Ealing .
chess
Fraenkel played a lot of chess on the Isle of Man during the First World War. Fraenkel led as "Assiac" from 1949 a column in the New Statesman , which mainly dealt with studies . After the death of editor-in-chief Kingsley Martin , relations between Fraenkel and the New Statesman deteriorated, until 1976 the column was handed over by the editorial staff to Tony Miles without warning .
Works
- Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film . (2 volumes) Kindler, Munich 1956/1957
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death . 1960
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader . Simon and Schuster 1962
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: The July Plot (original English title) / The Men Who Tried to Kill Hitler (original American title). German edition: July 20th. Berlin 1964
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career . Putnam 1965
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: The men who tried to kill Hitler , Poed Books, London 1966, DNB 366591207 .
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: Hess: A Biography . MacGibbon and Kee, London 1971
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: The German Cinema . London 1971
- Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel: The Hundred Days to Hitler . St. Martin's Press, New York 1974
Fraenkel wrote the foreword to Sex and Society in Nazi Germany and originally edited it under the title Das clean Reich (Scherz Verlag, Bern and Munich 1972) in German by Hans Peter Bleuel in the English translation by John Maxwell Brownjohn. (J. P. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1973)
His chess books The pleasures of chess (1952) and The delights of chess (1960) were translated into German and were published under the titles Lustügliches Schachbuch (1953) and Noch ein geschnügliches Schachbuch (1974). He also wrote the book Opening preparation (1982) with Kevin O'Connell . Fraenkel wrote the biographical part for Herbert Heinicke's Art of Position Play (1981).
Web links
- Literature by and about Heinrich Fraenkel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Some compositions by Heinrich Fraenkel on the PDB server
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fraenkel, Heinrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Assiac |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British writer and chess composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 28, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lissa |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 25, 1986 |
| Place of death | London |