Herbert August Frank

Herbert Frank was the youngest brother of Otto Frank.^[1]

Just llike his brothers Robert and Otto, served in World War I. He was assigned to the 18th Army corps and left Frankfurt early December 1914 for Liège and later served in the 2nd Company, 149th Reinforcement Battalion of the 5th Army Corps at the Western Front. According to Milly Stanfield, his second cousin, he turned out to be unfit for front duty and was given a desk job.^[2]

He married the American Hortense Rah Schott (1899-1982) on 12 April 1922. Hortense was born in Newport, Arkansas, as the daughter of a German businessman who had immigrated to the United States in 1879. Throughout her childhood, she traveled with her father to Europe several times and lived in Aachen at one point.^[3] The marriage between Herbert and Hortense remained childless and was short-lived. She left Herbert in September 1930 and ignored a court order dated 31 March 1931 ordering her to return to the married state, after which the marriage was dissolved on 16 August 1932.^[4] Hortense moved to Zurich and the Frank family never saw her again.^[5]

After the First World War, Hertbert and Otto Herbert Frank had taken took over the management of their father’s bank and since 1923 Herbert had been a fellow partner and director.  In April 1932 Herbert was arrested for a transaction that violated the regulations for trading securities with foreign countries that had been in force since 1931. When he was released on 14 May 1932, he left for Paris. Later that summer, he resigned his position as director of the banking house Michael Frank because of his tarnished reputation.^[6] When the trial against him resumed in October 1932, he did not appear in court, but informed the court through his representative that he had suffered material and mental harm because of how long the case has dragged on. His cousin and co-defendant Arnold Frank was sentenced to a fine.^[7] 

During the war, Herbert ended up in the internment camp for Jewish and non-Jewish stateless refugees near the village of Gurs, at the foot of the Pyrenees,^[8] but apparently he was not imprisoned there for long, because Anne writes in her diary that he turned up at the Elias family in Switzerland as early as October 1942.^[1]

After the war he returned to Paris, to finally join his family again in Switzerland in 1955.^[9]

Source personal data.^[10]