Niklas Frank

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Niklas Frank (born March 9, 1939 in Munich ) is a German journalist and book author .

Life

Origin and career

Niklas Frank was born the son of the National Socialist politician Hans Frank (1900–1946) and his wife Brigitte (born Herbst, 1895–1959). He had four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, who have since died. His father, who between 1939 and 1945 as governor general in from Germany occupied Poland in numerous war crimes was involved, became known as the "Butcher of Poland," his mother as "Queen of Poland". After the end of the Second World War , his father was indicted in the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals, sentenced to death in 1946 and hanged.

Niklas Frank attended the Carl Hunnius boarding school in Wyk auf Föhr from the age of twelve until he graduated from high school . His classmates included the two sons of the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , who was also hanged in Nuremberg . His mother died in 1959, shortly after his twentieth birthday. After his mother died, Frank studied German, sociology and history. He became a journalist and from 1973 worked for the German edition of Playboy magazine ; In 1979 he switched to the weekly magazine Stern as a reporter .

Contributions to coming to terms with the past using the example of one's own family

1987 Niklas Frank took care of the book Der Vater. A statement for a stir. Frank reconstructed the life of his father based on years of research, in the course of which he had to realize the immense extent of his crimes. The book was initially published as a series with the title Mein Vater, der Nazimicide in Stern and sparked heated controversy, among other things because he claimed in it that as a teenager he had masturbated out of hatred of his father to see his father being hanged .

It is an extraordinary document of relentless openness by a son to the person and the crimes of his father. Niklas Frank writes:

“There are fathers who create you anew every day. Just like mine I fought with him for a lifetime. Only internally. Then I exhibited, wrote a wild text, unfiltered by bourgeois taste, just as disgusting as German and Austrian citizens pursued their crimes during the 'Third Reich' or protected, supported, adored, loved Hitler and his criminals - and the great times have not forgotten until today. (...) When you follow your father, as I do when you crawl into your brain, as I do when you study your cowardice, and find them again, as I do when you do your research and see what Gierzapfen my mother was How she saw the General Government of Poland as a supermarket, in which she, as 'Ms. General Governor', could set the prices herself if, like me, you drove through the ghettos and loaded furs from the Jewish shops, whose owners mistakenly believed through Brigitte Frank to be able to save her life, then only one thing can emerge from all the suffering and hatred between the mountains of corpses: the grotesque. "

As part of his coming to terms with the past, Frank had Carl Schmitt's coffin, which was already in the cemetery chapel, opened shortly before his burial, as he suspected Schmitt to be his biological father and wanted to confirm this suspicion through personal opinion.

In 1995 Der Vater was released as a multimedia theater project with the subtitle A bloody comedy at the Wiener Festwochen , based on the scenario written by Frank together with the Israeli author Joshua Sobol , and directed by Paulus Manker . Original sound and film recordings by Hans Frank as well as private photos were used.

In 2005 and 2013, in the books My German Mother and Brother Norman , relentless arguments with my own mother and older brother followed.

In 2015 Niklas Frank was next to Horst von Wächter, the son of Otto von Wächter , SS group leader and governor of Krakow, protagonist in the documentary What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy . For the film, the two former childhood friends traveled together to Poland and the Ukraine, where Frank tried to convince von Wächter to admit his father's guilt.

In 2016 his book Dunkle Seele - feiges Maul was published , in which Frank uses denazification files from various state archives to take another look at the guilt of the Germans and how they dealt with it after the end of the Second World War. In it, Frank advocates the thesis "that a direct path leads from the unsuccessful denazification to the heavily right-wing behavior of the silent majority of Germans today".

In the novel Born by Robert Schindel , Niklas Frank is portrayed as Konrad Sachs. Frank is also a protagonist in the documentary My Family, the Nazis and Me by Israeli director Chanoch Ze'evi about the descendants of Nazi perpetrators.

Fonts

  • The father. A settlement . C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1987; New edition 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-046307-5 .
  • Robber barons. Ambushed wealth. The terrifying and secret life of the hedge riders and highwaymen . C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-570-02157-2 ; Marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 978-3-86539-034-9 .
  • My German mother. C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2005; New edition 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-045080-8 .
  • Brother norman! "My father was a Nazi criminal, but I love him" . JHW Dietz , Bonn 2013, ISBN 978-3-8012-0438-9 .
  • Dark soul, cowardly mouth. How absurd, funny and scandalous the Germans wash themselves off when denazifying. JHW Dietz, Bonn 2016, ISBN 978-3-8012-0405-1 .
  • Off to the dictatorship! The resurrection of my Nazi father in German politics. A tantrum. JHW Dietz, Bonn 2020, ISBN 978-3-8012-0566-9 .

Awards

  • Radio play of the month September 2014 for With me, my father always hung on the gallows on time , directed by Christine Nagel (NDR)

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Interview: Niklas Frank . Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, March 14, 2014, p. 50 ff.
  2. ^ Reinhard Mehring : Carl Schmitt. Rise and fall. A biography. CH Beck , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59224-9 , p. 578.
  3. ^ Review of What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy , epdfilm.de , accessed on March 3, 2018
  4. ↑ BuchMarkt Verlag K. Werner GmbH: Niklas Frank: “We Germans are a hilarious people!” In: www.buchmarkt.de. Retrieved January 12, 2017 .
  5. ↑ My family, the Nazis and I ( Memento from June 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (see website Das Erste from June 13, 2012)
personal data
SURNAME Frank, Niklas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and author
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich