Anne Frank: Her Family

The Frank's family business included banking, management of the springs at Bad Soden and the manufacture of cough drops. Anne's mother, the former Edith Hollander, was the daughter of a manufacturer. She had married Otto Frank in 1925. Their first daughter, Margot Betti, born in 1926, was followed by Anneliese Marie, called Anne, in 1929. . Otto Frank had earlier toyed with the idea of emigrating, and in 1933 the family fled from Frankfurt to the Netherlands, where Otto Frank continued his career as a businessman. In 1938 Anne Frank's two uncles escaped to the United States. After the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands anti-Jewish decrees followed in rapid succession. Anne's sister received a notice to report to the Nazis. The family went hiding with four other friends in a sealed-off office flat in Amsterdam.
The marriage of Otto Frank and Edith Holländer on May 12, 1925.Edith Holländer was born on January 16, 1900 in the German city of Aachen, just across the border from the Netherlands. Edith's maiden name refers to the Netherlands. Edith's ancestors lived in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 18th century. They emigrated to Germany around 1800. Edith's parents were Abraham Holländer and Rosa Stern. Her two brothers Julius and Walter are six and three when Edith is born, and sister Betti is two years old. Edith remains the youngest child. Edith's father Abraham came from a family of nine children and has a successful trading company. In and around Aachen and its surroundings the name Holländer is a household word when it comes to trade in machines, metal and rags.

Otto Heinrich Frank was born May 12, 1889. Born into a banking family in Frankfurt am Main, Frank served in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front during World War I, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1915.

Margot Betti Frank was born on February 16, 1926 in Frankfurt-am-Main. She was name after her maternal aunt Bettina Hollander. She attended the Ludwig-Richer School in Frankfurt-am-Main until the election of Adolf Hitler on January 30th, 1933 to the postition of Chancellor in Germany. Margot was enrolled in an elementary school on Amsterdam's Jekerstraat, close to their new address in Amsterdam South, and achieved excellent academic results until an anti-Jewish law imposed a year after the 1940 German invasion of The Netherlands demanded her removal to a Jewish lyceum. There she displayed the studiousness and intelligence which had made her noteworthy at her previous schools, and was remembered by former pupils as virtuous, reserved, and deeply religious.