Seasons | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Seasons’ category

Frankfurt & the Franks: Anne, Edith, Margot, Otto

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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Allgäu winter: Fellhorn in the German-Austrian Alps

Above: A group of skiers gather before their run near the Fellhorn summit.

As a product of the Canadian southwest, I’ve maintained a fascination with mountains. I don’t necessarily need to climb the mountains, but I’ve always been curious about the names of mountains, the reasons for their names, and the people who named them. I’m not always going to get answers, but if there’s a lift to take me to a view, I’m always game.

With an easy bus from Oberstdorf in the southwest corner of Germany, I’m headed 10 km south to Faistenoy for the gondola up to the summit of Fellhorn (2038 metres) among the Allgäu Alps. There’s a lot of snow up top with a depth of about 1.5 metres; skiing and snowboarding conditions look good in the Skigebiet Fellhorn-Kanzelwand (Fellhorn-Kanzelwand Ski Area). But what do I know? I don’t ski or snowboard, but the winter-afternoon light is decent on the smooth snowy landscape. I’m drawn to the information displays to learn more about Fellhorn and the mountains I’m seeing in the near 360-degree panorama. In the distance the flat-topped Hoher Ifen mountain looks like a multiple-layer cream-filled cake. I arrive quickly at a couple of conclusions: one, it’s fun to stand on a border between two countries at altitude, even if an international frontier is set somewhat arbitrarily; and two, I promise to return in the summertime to do a loop: return to Fellhorn, hike along the relatively flat ridge-line west, take the Kanzelwandbahn gondola down into Austria’s Kleinwalsertal valley, have a sip and nosh in one of the alpine towns, and return to Germany’s Oberstdorf on a local bus.

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Vienna Steinhof Church: city- & Wagner-landmark

Above/featured: East side of the church, in afternoon light. Photo on 28 May 2023, X70 with wide-field WCL-X70 lens attachment, image corrected for geometric distortion.

Building: Steinhof church, also St. Leopold Church, 1907 // Kirche am Steinhof, Kirche zum heiligen Leopold.
Address: Baumgartner Höhe 1, in Penzing, the city’s 14th district.

Up on the city’s Baumgartner Heights is an example of Europe’s first modernist church at Steinhof. Dedicated to St. Leopold, the structure is one of the city’s finest examples of turn-of-the-century architecture, and one of the world’s most important churches in the Jugendstil or Art Nouveau architectural style. The church was designed and built by architect Otto Wagner, inaugurated in 1907 for patients and staff within the surrounding hospital complex the Lower Austria state, sanatorium, and nursing home for the mentally ill (Niederösterreichische Landes-, Heil-, und Pflegeanstalt für Geistes- und Nervenkranke) which included over 30 buildings and room for over 2000 beds. The bright, airy, and spacious modern design was met at that time with skepticism and criticism by local church officials. Of utmost importance on Wagner’s mind were the hospital patients: his church design was about gentle solitude, not fire and damnation.

The church was a collaborative effort with other Viennese artists, including mosaics and stained glass by Koloman Moser, angel sculptures by Othmar Schimkowitz, and exterior tower sculptures by Richard Luksch. The church roof is topped with a dome covered in gold-plated copper plates, whose bright yellow appearance in daylight merits the nickname “Limoniberg” (lemon hill) that’s visible in different parts of the city. The Steinhof church is an example of a “Gesamtkunstwerk“, where every detail and fixture contributed to a “total and functional work of art”; an architectural masterpiece of the period; and one of Otto Wagner’s most important creations.

I included this building as part of my description of Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy in Vienna and of the recent centenary celebration in Vienna of the city’s 19th- to 20th-century architectural transition from historicism to modernism.

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25 for 25: fotoeins fotos in 2025

Above/featured: “Göttin” (goddess), by AlfAlfA, also known as Nicolás Sánchez, for One Wall 2017. Photo, 17 Jun 2025 (P15).

In continuation of high spirits and enthusiastic support of leading choices, I’m very grateful to significant time spent:

in the Bay Area, to visit mum’s family in Sacramento and long-time friends in the South Bay;
in Vienna for the 4th consecutive summer; and
in Berlin for the 1st time in 4 years, as set up for a repeat in the new year.

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My Berlin: Wrapped Reichstag after 30 years

Above: “Wrapped Reichstag 1995–2025” light show.

In 1995, the artist duo Christo & Jeanne-Claude carried out a bold but contentious project by covering Berlin’s landmark Reichstag parliament building. Plans for the project had taken over 20 years, even though the artwork had always meant to be temporary and all expenses had been covered without corporate sponsors. Over 5 million visited in a period of 12 days in the summer of 1995 to look at the undulating “silver dream” in the German capital city. The timing was ideal. After reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, the new home of the federal parliament would be Berlin’s Reichstag. Renovations to the building began in the autumn of 1995 with the federal parliament opening in the spring of 1999.

From 9 to 22 June 2025, the Reichstag building was illuminated nightly with a light show in a 30-year anniversary tribute to the famous 1995 artwork. In a 20- to 30-minute cycle, the light-show appeared to first envelop the building in silver fabric. The fabric cover flapped in artificial breeze, before the cover lost its shape and fell onto the ground at the base of the building. The free-of-charge light show began shortly after sunset at about 930pm and continued until 1am. Whatever Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose to cover and transform, their art works posed questions of perception, origins, shape, functionality, and permanence.

• DW: Germany Arts
• Visit Berlin

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