Fotoeins Fotografie

Above: The Frank family in happier times; seen left-to-right are Margot, Otto, Anne, and Edith, respectively. Display at the Frank Family Centre at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, 17 Jun 2023 (X70).

I hadn’t realized how long an impression would last, decades after having read in high-school the diary of a young girl stuck in hiding for years. Much later down the line and standing in front of a house in a quiet neighbourhood in a German city, I could almost hear the laughter of children in the backyard and the gentle rebuke of a mother to one of her daughters, years before one of the girls ever considered writing her thoughts down into a book.

The story of Anne Frank and her family are well known. Her father and businessman Otto Frank moved his family from Frankfurt am Main to Amsterdam in 1934 to escape increasing Nazi discrimination against Jews. Otto survived capture, deportation, and time in the camps; but his wife and two daughters did not. After liberation in 1945, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and wrote letters to relatives in Basel. He learned how the diary written by his daughter Anne had been carefully hidden; reading her daughter’s thoughts would change the remaining course of his life. In the early-1950s, he moved to Basel, Switzerland, to be closer to his sister’s family. He and his extended family spent time and energy for the rest of their lives dedicated to translation efforts and the distribution of Anne’s diary as a document of family memory, world history, and essential education; and to the collection of memories and belongings of lost family members. Otto died in 1980, and is buried in Birsfelden cemetery, just east of Basel proper.

Much of the story has been written about the Frank family’s time in Amsterdam, but I hadn’t been aware of the family roots in Frankfurt am Main, despite my countless times passing through and multiple stays in the city since 2001 when I moved to Heidelberg. I wanted to learn about their time in Frankfurt am Main, before the family left for Aachen and Amsterdam in 1933–1934. What follows below is my examination of some of the places and traces left behind by the Frank family in Frankfurt am Main.

ANNELIES Marie Frank, daughter: b/✵ 12 June 1929, Frankfurt am Main – d/✟ March 1945, Bergen-Belsen.
EDITH Frank (née Holländer), mother: b/✵ 16 January 1900, Aachen – d/✟ 6 January 1945, Auschwitz.
MARGOT Betti Frank, daughter: b/✵ 16 February 1926, Frankfurt am Main – d/✟ March 1945, Bergen-Belsen.
OTTO Heinrich Frank, father: b/✵ 12 May 1889, Frankfurt am Main – d/✟ 19 August 1980, Birsfelden.

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Places & traces

Each numbered item in this list corresponds to the numbered location in the map below.

1. Bildungsstätte Anne Frank
2. Dornbuschpassage: Gedenkwand
3. Familie Frank Zentrum, Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt
4. Ganghoferstraße, 1931–1933
5. Gedenkstätte Neuer Börneplatz
6. Hauptwache
7. Klinik Maingau vom Roten Kreuz
8. Lessing Gymnasium
9. Marbachweg, 1927–1931

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Bildungsstätte Anne Frank

Anne Frank Education Site: Hansaallee 150

Since 1997, the focus of the Bildungsstätte Anne Frank is the education of young people, providing opportunities to engage with the history of National Socialism in Germany and Europe, with the history of human rights worldwide, and with the exchange of ideas and conversation among people with different backgrounds to promote further understanding and tolerance. With Anne Frank’s life and diary as the central theme, the center includes multimedia displays and an interactive exhibition. Additional themes include the history of the Frank family, as well as Jewish life in Frankfurt am Main. The education center also offers short- and long-term projects, seminars, and training courses.

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Dornbuschpassage, Gedenkwand

Dornbusch passage, memorial wall

Inside the Dornbusch underground pedestrian-passage is the Anne-Frank-Gedenkwand (Anne Frank memorial wall), inaugurated 12 June 2009. Dornbusch is the city neighbourhood where the Frank family lived from 1927 to 1933.

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Familie Frank Zentrum (Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt)

Frank Family Center, Jewish Museum Frankfurt

In 2020, the Jewish Museum Frankfurt opened a new addition to their permanent collection. Established as an organized effort in 2012, the Frank Family Center brings together an extensive collection of archive material belonging to the Frank-Elias families. The archive includes photographs, official documents, hand-written letters, art, household items, and furniture; all of the items provide a document and a glimpse of rich family lives, stretching across Europe and particularly in the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Amsterdam, and Basel. The archives have been designed for the public in an open museum setting where a subset of the archive is on permanent display, as well as for academic parties in a research setting.

A more extensive post about my visits to the Frank Family Center is coming soon.

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Ganghoferstrasse 24

Family home, 1931–1933

After a number of years at the Marbachweg address, the Frank family moved north in 1931 to Ganghoferstrasse 24. Under deteriorating financial conditions, the Frank family left the Ganghoferstrasse residence, and returned to Otto’s parents house at Jordanstrasse for a number of months towards the end of 1933. In early-1934, their time in Frankfurt am Main came to a close with the family moving to Aachen and Amsterdam.

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Gedenkstätte Neuer Börneplatz

Neuer Börneplatz memorial site, Shoah Memorial Frankfurt

Located next to the Jewish Museum Frankfurt’s 2nd location at Judengasse, the Neuer Börneplatz memorial site includes the Shoah Memorial Frankfurt, also called the Wall of Names. Surrounding the Old Jewish Cemeter is an outer wall on which almost 12-thousand blocks reside; each block memorializes the name of every Frankfurt Jewish man, woman, and child who died in the Holocaust.

Shoah Memorial Frankfurt entries for:

•   Annelies Marie Frank
•   Edith Frank (née Holländer)
•   Margot Betti Frank

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Hauptwache

Main civic guard (historical)

The Hauptwache is where early in the city’s history the main civic guard was stationed to protect the inner city. This is the general setting in 2025 for the 1933 family portrait seen above in the memorial wall at Dornbuschpassage. With the passage of almost one hundred years since 1933, there’ve been a number of architectural changes to the open public square in the post-war, post-Wirtschaftswunder, and post-millennium periods.

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Klinik Maingau vom Roten Kreuz

Maingau Hospital of the Red Cross

The Maingau Hospital of the Red Cross was once the hospital for the Vaterländische Frauenverein (Patriotic Women’s Association), where Margot Frank was born on 16 February 1926, and her sister Annelies was born on 12 June 1929.

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Lessing Gymnasium

Fürstenbergerstrasse 166, Hansaallee 27

Between the ages of 10 and 19, Otto Frank attended school here from 1899 to 1908. On an additional note of personal and scientific interest, Frankfurt-born Karl Schwarzschild was also a student at this school from about 1884 to 1890; later as astronomer, he became well-known for solving Albert Einstein’s general relativity equations in 1915–1916 (under the assumption of spherical symmetry), subsequently leading to the concept of a “black hole”.

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Marbachweg 307

Family home, 1927–1931

After living in his parents’ house on Jordanstrasse for almost 2 years, Otto Frank moved his wife Edith and 1-year old Margot to a residence on Marbachweg. They lived at this address from 1927 to 1931, which included Anna’s first two years after birth. In 1933, the family moved north to a residence on Ganghoferstrasse.

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Sources

•   Anne Frank Fonds, “Anne Frank: The Collected Works” (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
•   Anne Frank Fonds (Basel): <https://www.annefrank.ch/en> [accessed Jan 2026].
•   Anne Frank Stichting (Amsterdam): <https://www.annefrank.org/en/> [accessed Jan 2026].
•   Frank Family Centre at Jewish Museum Frankfurt: <https://www.juedischesmuseum.de/en/collection/frank-family-center/> [accessed Jan 2026].
•   “Frankfurt am Main, 1933–1945“, Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Stadt Frankfurt am Main: <https://www.frankfurt1933-1945.de/> [accessed Jan 2026].
•   Historical Marker Database: <https://www.hmdb.org/> [accessed Jan 2026].

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I received neither pre-visit support nor post-visit compensation for this post. I made all photos above in 2023 and 2025 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime (X70). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-pa9. Last edit: 26 Jan 2026.