Joseph Freiherr von Franckenstein

Joseph Maria Casimir Konrad Michael Benedictus Maurus Placidus Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein (* 30 September 1910 at Traunegg castle (Thalheim bei Wels); † 7 October 1963 in San Francisco) was a German-Austrian philologist, dissident and resistance fighter against the Nazi Regime.

Josef von Franckenstein as OSS Member

Life

Franckenstein was the grandson of the landowner and Lord of Traunegg Heinrich Maria Friedrich Karl Freiherr von und zu Frankenstein and Helene Countess of Arco-Zinneberg [1].

After studying classical philology and completing his doctorate, he worked as an occasional journalist and mountaineer in Austria during difficult economic times and political turmoil following the First World War. Shortly after the "Anschluss" in 1938, he began to openly oppose the regime as a resolute Nazi adversary. This earned him internment in KZ Mauthausen, from which he was able to flee in 1939. His older brother Heinrich, who had already left Germany in 1934 and had emigrated to Turkey, as well as his cousin Georg von und zu Franckenstein supported him.

In autumn 1940 he met the American writer Kay Boyle in the French Megève, whose children from his first marriage he taught as a tutor. After the divorce from her second husband, Franckenstein married Kay Boyle in 1943 and now worked as an American citizen in the US State Department as an officer in the intelligence service. Heavily supported by his wife, he was finally appointed to the OSS in 1944 and was now able to actively fight as an espionage agent in France [2] in support of the Resistance against the Nazis at his own request. After being arrested by the Waffen-SS and sentenced to death, he was able to flee again and make his way back to England.

He returned to Germany in 1946 as a press officer [3] of the military government, while Kay Boyle had the task of writing stories from Germany as a foreign correspondent for The New Yorker. However, she initially refused to live in Germany and went with the family first to Paris, from where she went on research trips to Germany. It was not until May 1948 that she moved with her three youngest children to her husband in Marburg, Hesse. At the end of 1948 another move followed, this time to Frankfurt am Main, where Franckenstein published Die Neue Zeitung, a German-language newspaper as an American-controlled media outlet.

In 1953, in the middle of the Cold War, the communist hunt of US Senator Joseph McCarthy did not stop even in front of highly decorated war heroes, and Franckenstein was interrogated by a committee of inquiry on questions of loyalty and security. The charges remained vague, but Kay Boyle's human rights activities and writing may have contributed to his summons. He was acquitted on all charges, but was released shortly thereafter and Kay Boyle's accreditation was revoked by the New Yorker.

After her return to the US, the family settled in Connecticut and Franckenstein taught at a girls university. Like many unpopular American intellectuals of the time - including Nazi opponents and exiles such as Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein, but also Americans such as the actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson - they were suspected, monitored and boycotted of un-American activities in the 1950s, which left a particularly deep financial and personal mark on Franckenstein. In 1960 Joseph von Franckenstein became Cultural attaché in Tehran, but had to return to the US in 1963 due to his severely deteriorating health. He died on 7 October in San Francisco.

Estate
  • Kay Boyle and Joseph Franckenstein correspondence, 1940-1963ID: 1/1/MSS 184Repository: Manuscripts

Newspaper article

Literature
  • Georg Albert von und zu Franckenstein: Between Vienna and London. Memories of an Austrian diplomat. Leopold Stocker Publishers, Graz 2005, ISBN 3-7020-1092-0.
  • Lives Out of Letters: Essays on American Literary Biography and Documentation in Honor of Robert N. Hudspeth, by Robert D. Habich and Robert N. Hudspeth (2004), ISBN 9780838640050
  • The Two Worlds of William March, by Roy S. Simmonds (2011), ISBN 9780817356873
  • A Twentieth-Century Life in Letters (English Edition) by Kay Boyle and Sandra Spanier (2015), ISBN 9780252097362
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References
  1. Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels Volume 27; Freiherrliche Häuser A IV, CA Starke Verlag.
  2. Code name Brooklyn: Jewish agents in enemy territory. Operation Greenup by Peter Pirker, (2019) Verlagsanstalt Tyrolia, ISBN 3702237577.
  3. Post-war Germany as reflected in American novels of the occupation period by Martin Meyer, Verlag: Tübingen. Fool, (1994), ISBN 9783823346548
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