Alice Frank-Stern

Alice Stern was grandmother of Anne and Margot.^[1] Otto Frank's maternal family tree dates back to the early sixteenth century. The ancestors on his mother Alice's father's side, the Stern family, as well as those on her mother's side, the Cahn family, originated from Frankfurt am Main. Otto Frank's great-great-grandfathers, Juda Nathan Cahn (1748-1833) and Abraham Süsskind Stern (1764-1838), were merchants and scholars in the Frankfurt ghetto, and his great-grandfather Elkan Juda Cahn, born in 1796, had also spent his childhood in the oppressive environment of the Judengasse, the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt.^[2] But just one generation later, one of their descendants, Moritz Abraham Stern, was appointed the first Jewish professor at a German university.^[3]

Alice was born as the daughter and only child of August Heinrich Stern (1838–1878) and Cornelia Elisabeth Cahn (1840–1922). In her diary, Anne writes that Alice “had very rich and distinguished parents.”^[4] August Heinrich Stern first made his living as a spice merchant and later as a dealer in silverware. His businesses were located on Frankfurt’s Zeil boulevard and Rossmarkt square.^[5] 

After the early death of her father at the age of 39, Alice moved with her mother to live with her grandfather, Elkan Judah Cahn.^[6] As a young woman, Alice fell in love with Michael Frank, a banker born in Landau. Despite some resistance from her family, she became engaged to him, presenting her mother with a fait accompli.^[7] On 3 January 1886, Alice, then aged 20, married Michael Frank, who was fourteen years her senior.^[8] The couple had three sons: Robert, Otto and Herbert; and a daughter, Helene. In 1901, the family moved to a spacious house on Jordanstraße (renamed Mertonstraße in 1917) in Westend, a middle-class neighbourhood in Frankfurt.^[9]

After Michael Frank's sudden death in the autumn of 1909, Alice continued his banking business with the support of his cousin Arnold Frank and the bank's long-standing managing director Felix Uhry. While her sons served in the German army during the First World War, Alice and her daughter Leni volunteered as auxiliary nurses in a Red Cross hospital.^[10]

After the First World War, Otto and Herbert Frank took over the management of their father's bank. However, the bank suffered from the consequences of the First World War and the economic crisis of 1929, which ultimately forced it to close. An appeal by Otto and his mother to their cousin Jean-Michel Frank for financial support was unsuccessful: he refused to invest money in a bank that was irretrievably lost, although in 1932 he did transfer money to Frankfurt to extend the mortgage on the house in Mertonstrasse for another year.^[11]

In September 1933, Alice sold the house in the Westend and followed her daughter Leni to Basel in Switzerland.^[12] She spent her old age there with Leni and her family. Before the start of the Second World War, Alice Frank occasionally received visits from her granddaughters Margot and Anne. They also met in Sils Maria, a popular holiday destination for families in Switzerland. There, Olga Spitzer, a second cousin of Otto Frank on his father's side, had a villa in the mountains, which they used as a holiday home.

Source personal data.^[13] Addresses: Frankfurt am Main: Jordanstrasse (later Mertonstrasse) 4; Basel:.Schweizergasse 50, Herbstgasse 11.^[14]