Karl Friedrich von Frank

Karl Friedrich von Frank

Karl Friedrich von Frank (* July 28, 1894 in Vienna , † July 18, 1975 in Ferschnitz ; also: Karl Friedrich von Frank zu Döfering ) was an Austrian private scholar in the fields of history , genealogy and heraldry and landowner.

origin

Karl Friedrich von Frank was born on July 28, 1894 in Vienna- Landstrasse (3rd district) as the son of Carl von Frank and Louise Valentin. On his father's side, he is descended from a Freassen family who had lived around the Nonsberg in Trento since the 16th century. With Joannes de Franchis dictus Rizzot, father of Antonius de Franchis, b. 1643, the sure line of succession begins.

With Jakob Frank, silk dyer, son of Adam Frank from Cloz in Trient, and Catharina Angeli, this branch of the family first appeared in Vienna in 1799. Their son Joseph founded his own silk production in Vienna-Gumpendorf (6th district) from the 1830s and was the great-grandfather of Karl Friedrich von Frank.

Frank's mother, Louise Antonia Valentin, came from Haida (Czech Nový Bor ) in Northern Bohemia, where her father, Friedrich "Fritz" Nikolaus Valentin (* July 23, 1832, Frankfurt a. M .; † January 31, 1912, Haida) founded the glass company F. Valentin and Sons. In 1910 he withdrew from the company after 63 years and left the management to his son Karl Valentin and Carl von Frank , the father of Karl Friedrich von Frank.

Shortly before his death, Frank had the coat of arms handed down from his ancestors from a Trento brotherhood book of the 16th century entered into the German herald's roll of arms .

Coat of arms of the von Frank family from Cloz in Trient, South Tyrol. (German coat of arms roll No. 6839/1974)

Life

The von Frank family moved to Haida in northern Bohemia in 1898, where his father Carl joined his father-in-law's business. Karl Friedrich graduated from elementary school in Haida and graduated from high school in Tetschen ad Elbe.

During the First World War Frank served as a first lieutenant in the kk field artillery regiment 6 and was promoted to captain in 1918. At the end of the war he was in training as a field pilot. After the First World War he worked as a bank clerk and on August 14, 1920 married his distant relative Nora Hetzer (* Purkersdorf near Vienna) from a well-known family in the Austrian textile industry in Vienna.

As early as the 1920s, he was also active as a genealogist and heraldist and was able to make an international name for himself as a specialist thanks to his lively contract research. The income from this activity and the payment of his parental inheritance enabled him to purchase Senftenegg Castle in Lower Austria in 1932, which is still owned by the family today and contains the extensive specialist library and its collections.

In his second marriage, Karl Friedrich von Frank married Margarethe Maria Vojta on September 26, 1938. The children Uta, Karl and Luise came from this marriage.

At the beginning of the Second World War, Karl Friedrich von Frank, when he was over 40, was called up again for military service as a major in the reserve in the German Air Force, where he was deployed in the administration.

After the Second World War he devoted himself exclusively to genealogy and heraldry, the many inquiries and his publications as well as his property. On July 18, 1975, he died ten days before his 81st birthday at Senftenegg Castle near Ferschnitz in Lower Austria, where he was also buried in the chapel.

Services

For decades Frank was a member of numerous historical, especially genealogical and heraldic professional associations in Europe and the USA.

He gained early fame as a historian at the age of 34 with the publication of the “Old Austrian Adelslexikon 1825–1918” in 1928, which received excellent reviews in general. It contains in regesta form the nobility files of the Austrian Empire from 1825 and was understood as a continuation of the well-known two-volume nobility lexicon by Johann Georg Megerle von Mühlfeld from the years 1822 to 1824, which, however, was neither complete nor error-free. In contrast to Megerle's, Frank's work shows a much higher level of information despite its concise form. As a source he used only the nobility files that were or are available in the aristocratic archives of the Austrian State Archives. In regesta form, he summarized the most important dates of the ennoblement - degree of nobility, occupation of the ennobled person, the medal awards immediately preceding the ennoblement and the date of the award or the highest resolution. The date on which the diploma was issued is rarely found in the nobility files, but, if available, was included by Frank in the regesta. In this way he recorded a total of 10,745 ennoblings from the time of the Austrian Empire for the non-Hungarian half of the empire. As the motivation for this work, Frank states in the foreword that under the impression of the Vienna Palace of Justice fire in 1927 , which damaged and destroyed many files, he wanted to protect the information contained in the nobility files, at least in this shortened form, from a similar fate. A new edition, supplemented with articles on nobility law and heraldry, saw the long out of print Old Austrian Adelslexikon under the same title in 1989 by Frank's grandson, Peter Frank zu Döfering, b. Except.

Frank also became known through the line of ancestors he created Adolf Hitler . As early as 1932 he published a short list in the monthly newspaper of the Heraldic-Genealogical Society "Adler" . On behalf of Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann , he worked meticulously on this table, which was finally published in 1933 in the series “Ahnentafeln famous German” under the title “The Ahnentafel des Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler”. The background to the commissioning were probably rumors about alleged Jewish ancestors of Hitler, which were supposed to be dispelled by this widespread work.

With a few minor additions, this work was published again in the same series in 1937 as "Ahnentafel des Führers Adolf Hitler" by Hofrat Rudolf Koppensteiner, obviously with the intention of placing his relationship with Hitler in the foreground. To this day, historians and journalists like to revert to Frank's work or the new edition from 1937; however, the original author is usually not mentioned.

In the 1930s, the extensive chronicle of the Kress von Kressenstein family was created , the publication of which was supported by the American businessman and art patron Samuel H. Kress and which appeared in both English (1930) and German (1936).

Frank's best-known work is the five-volume work published from 1967 on “Status surveys and acts of grace for the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Austrian Hereditary Lands”. Its structure follows the old Austrian nobility lexicon, but now also evaluates the imperial nobility files, coats of arms and sal books, etc. located in the Austrian State Archives. The work is so well-known because it not only covers the areas of the Austrian hereditary lands, but also all countries belonging to the German Empire, such as B. Bohemia and Moravia, Burgundy, Alsace, parts of today's Italy, but also Switzerland.

With his "Senftenegger monthly sheets", which he wanted to continue shortly before his death, he delivered a late work on genealogy, which was recognized even by Frank's critics because of its multifaceted and very detailed contributions. Particularly noteworthy are, for example, the continuations to the publication of the Haanschen Regesten, a transcript of wills of the Lower Austrian nobility that was published in regesta form, in the monthly journal of the Heraldic Society “Adler” in Vienna. The “Senftenegger monthly sheets” were published by Karl Friedrich von Frank, but he also managed to win some other well-known genealogists and historians as authors and editors.

Publications

Independent works

• Old Austrian Adels-Lexikon, Volume I 1825-1918 (no longer published), self-published by the author, Vienna VIII., Piaristengasse 26, Vienna, 1928.
• Kress Family History (with the collaboration of Georg Kress v. Kressenstein and Charles Rhoads Roberts), self-published by Schloss Senftenegg, 1930.
• The Kressen: a family story (with the collaboration of Georg Kress v. Kressenstein), self-published by Schloss Senftenegg, 1936.
• Pyhrafeld - A study of the local history , ed. vdd Municipality of Pyhrafeld, undated (approx. 1950).
• Senftenegger monthly sheet for genealogy and heraldry, 6 volumes (I. - VI.) U. Register tape, self-published by Schloss Senftenegg, A-3325, Austria.
  • Volume I, 12 issues, March 1951-May 1953.
  • Volume II, 12 issues, July 1953-March 1955.
  • III. Vol., 12 in 7 issues, May 1955-May / June 1956.
  • IV. Vol., 12 in 10 issues, November 1956-May / June 1959.
  • V. vol., 12 in 6 issues, January 1960-July / August / September 1965.
  • VI. Vol. May / June, 6 in 3 issues, May / June 1966-May / June 1969.
  • Register of place and person names in volumes I.-V., May 1968 (only published by A-Grumm.)
• Status surveys and acts of grace for the German Empire and the Austrian hereditary lands up to 1806 as well as imperial Austrian ones up to 1823 with some additions to the “Old Austrian Adels Lexicon” 1823-1918 , 5 vols., 1967–1974; Self-published by Schloss Senftenegg, A-3325, Austria.

Contributions (selection)

• Cinderella heraldry. In: monthly newspaper of the kais. Heraldic Society "Adler", born 1913, pp. 224–225.
• Correction [Brenner]. In: Monthly Journal of the Heraldic Society "Adler", year 1927, p. 38.
• About Austrian exiles in Bavaria. In: Monthly Journal of the Heraldic Society "Adler", year 1929, p. 546f.
• Occasional finds; Church records Steinau an der Strasse (Nessen-Nassau). In: Monthly Journal of the Heraldic Society "Adler", year 1930, p. 761.
• Adolf Hitler's pedigree. In: Monthly newspaper of the Heraldisch-Genealogische Gesellschaft "Adler", year 1932, pp. 146–149.
• Pedigree of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. In: Pedigree of famous Germans, Vol. III, Leipzig, 1933, published by the Central Agency for German Personal and Family History eV
• The really last sickingen. In: Familiengeschichtliche Blätter (Ed .: Central Office for German Personal and Family History Leipzig); Born in 1936, p. 380.
• The staff of the embassies at the imperial court in Vienna in the second half of the 18th century. In: The Herold for Gender, Coat of Arms and Seal Studies, New Series of the Herold's quarterly journal (Ed .: Der "Herold" zu Berlin); Born in 1943, p. 185.
• The family book of Viktor von Altenau. In: Adler magazine for genealogy and heraldry; 1949, p. 203.
• [with Kock, Karl]: Altenau again. In: Adler Journal for Genealogy and Heraldry, 1949, p. 248f.
• Are Hofpfalzgrafen Imperial officials? Some remarks on a writing by Heinz Reise. In: Journal for Family History Research and Coat of Arms, Volume 1949–40, p. 211.
• Search corner: Answer to (41) regarding Motzfeld. In: Die Laterne - (monthly) newsletter (for members and friends) of the West German Society for Family Studies e. V., Bonn .; Born in 1954, p. 29.
• Search corner: Answer to (48) regarding Eppich. In: Die Laterne - (monthly) newsletter (for members and friends) of the West German Society for Family Studies e. V., Bonn .; Born in 1954, p. 49.
• Wanted ad for Arnoldt, Winter. In: Palatinate Family and Heraldry (Ed .: Working Group for Palatinate Family and Heraldry eV); Born in 1954, p. 25.
• Supplement to "Clarification on Faber 37 C §1e". In: Südwestdeutsche Blätter für Familien- und Wappenkunde (Ed .: Association for Family and Heraldry in Württemberg and Baden e.V.), born in 1956, p. 47.
• Wanted ad (zu: Glück). In: Hessische Familienkunde (Ed .: Working group of the “Society for Family Studies in Kurhessen and Waldeck”, “Family History Society for Nassau and Frankfurt”, “Association for Family and Heraldry in Fulda”, “Hessian Family History Association Darmstadt”), Jg. 1959, p. 608.
• From three Upper Baden genealogical tables: Nothstein * 1748, Fürderer * around 1670, Stayert * 1759. In: Badische Familienkunde (Ed .: A. Köbele md Committee for Family Research at the Regional Association of Badische Heimat), born in 1967, p. 125.
• Wanted ad: Wolleben, Wollebius: Basel 1646. In: Saarländische Familienkunde, year 1969, p. 156.
• From a Sudeten German diary (Joh. Jos. Seydel 1741-99). In: Sudetendeutsche Familienforschung (Ed .: Sudetendeutsches Genealogisches Archiv), born in 1972, p. 185.

literature

• Announcements of the North Bohemian Association for Local Research and Hiking Care Vol. 36, p. 95. Böhmisch-Leipa, 1912. (to Friedrich Valentin)
• Ranking lists of the imperial and royal armies in 1918. Vienna, 1918; kk court and state printing house.
• Heinz, Hugo: In memoriam: Karl Friedrich von Frank 1894-1975. In: Quarterly journal for heraldry, genealogy and related sciences (publisher Herold zu Berlin), year 1975, p. 16.
• Fellhuber, Karl: Karl Friedrich von Frank † - memories and additions to the 40th anniversary of his death. In: Adler magazine for genealogy and heraldry; Vol. 28, vol. 2015, issue 2/3, p. 129.
• Igallfy-Igaly, Ludwig: Karl Friedrich von Frank †. In: Adler magazine for genealogy and heraldry; 1975, p. 178.
• Igallfy-Igaly, Ludwig: Karl Friedrich von Frank †. In: Genealogy - Organ of the "German Working Group on genealogical Associations", year 1975, p. 714.
• Gerhart Nebinger : Karl Friedrich von Frank †. In: Leaflets of the Bavarian State Association for Family Studies (publisher Bayerischer Landesverein für Familienkunde e.V.), born in 1976, p. 90.
• Planer, Franz: The Yearbook of the Vienna Society , born 1928 a. 1929, Vienna.
• Stephen S. Taylor (Ed.): Who´s Who in Austria 1959/60 , 4th Edition, International Book and Publishing Co., Ltd., 1961.

Web links

Commons : Karl Friedrich von Frank  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Karl Friedrich Frank in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna