Julius Frank

Repressed and forgotten - the story of the Atelier Frank is part of the fate of Jewish photographers who had to leave Germany after the National Socialists seized power and built a new existence in exile. From 1872, over three generations, the Frank family ran a photography business in Lilienthal with temporary branches in nearby Worpswede and Bremen. Henry Frank (1879 - 1931) was a nationally known, award-winning professional photographer. He successfully marketed his artistic landscape and portrait photographs with motifs from the Teufelsmoor, which had become popular through the artists' colony in Worpswede. His son Julius Frank (1907 - 1959) continued his success until circumstances in National Socialist Germany forced him to sell the photography business in 1936. The family's difficult journey before going into American exile is reconstructed in the book in a touching way, made possible by the estate that reached the Focke Museum in a large box sent from the USA. Julius Frank managed to gain a foothold in Detroit and later in Los Angeles. He won several prizes for his recordings. Until his early death in 1959, he was for a long time the closest employee of Julius Shulman, one of the most important American architectural photographers of post-war modernism.