| Born: | 08-03-1883 |
| Faculty: | Law School |
| Category: | Deprivation of academic degree |
Hermann (until 1912: Abraham Hersch) FRENKEL (born on August 3rd, 1883 in Galicia/Austria-Hungary [Busk|Буськ/Ukraine]), had graduated at the Law School at the University of Vienna on July 22nd, 1910 with the academic degree "Dr. iur.".
As a Jew, he was persecuted under National Socialism and had to close his law office at Neutorgasse 12 in Vienna's 1st district. His license to practice law was revoked on racist grounds. He had been married since 1914 to Klara Eva Winkler (1892-?) and they had two sons, Friedrich Eugen Frenkel (Frederick Franklyn, 1915-?) and Ernst Jakob Frenkel (Ernest Jacob Franklyn, 1917–2006). At the time of the Anschluss, their son Friedrich Eugen was in his second year of law school and was expelled from the University of Vienna for racist reasons.
The family had to flee Vienna and managed to leave the country in time, although it is unclear where they went (they were deregistered in Vienna on September 28th, 1938, with "address unknown"). In a request for support from his son Friedrich dated November 1st, 1938, to the emigration department of the welfare center of the Jewish Community of Vienna, he states that his parents were living in Klaipeda, Lithuania, at that time, his brother Ernst in Lucerne/Switzerland, and that he himself was attempting to emigrate to China via Oslo/Norway, which failed at short notice, and then tried to get to Brussels via Belgrade and on to China. Only four months after this application, Klaipeda, where Hermann Frenkel had initially been able to flee, was annexed by the German Reich. His son Friedrich Eugen Frenkel had managed to land in Ashkelon near Tel Aviv in the British Mandate of Palestine [Israel] on April 12th, 1939.
After all family members had successfully evaded the Third Reich, all four were stripped of their German citizenship in July 1941 and their assets were confiscated in favor of the Third Reich (legally effective by announcement in the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger No. 165 of July 18th, 1941).
As a further legal consequence, on May 23rd, 1942, the University of Vienna, acting on behalf of the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin and the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin, decided to revoke Dr. Hermann Frenkel's doctorate, which he had acquired in 1910, on racist grounds, as under National Socialism he was considered "unworthy of an academic degree from a German university because he was Jewish." The decision came into force with its publication in the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger on July 17th, 1942. At that time, the Reich Ministry of the Interior assumed that the family was in China, although it is unclear whether this assumption was correct.
It was not until 13 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism that his doctoral degree was reinstated on May 15, 1955, and the revocation was declared “null and void from the outset.”
While his sons were able to emigrate to the USA and Israel and survive Nazi persecution, nothing is known about the further life of Hermann Frenkel and his wife Klara Eva.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation registry (Promotionsprotokoll") IUR 1908–1911 No.: 1075, Rectorate GZ 118 ex 1941/42, No. 55, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 No. 15; Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, No. 165 of July 18, 1941; Austrian State Archives OeStA/Adr/BMF7FLD 13571; POSCH 2009, 412; SAUER/REITER-ZATLOUKAL 2010, 139 (2nd ed. 2022, 260); www.myheritage.at.
Herbert Posch
