How it all began...
Heinrich ('Heinz') Fraenkel was my granddad and is the (absent) star of the show! A journalist and writer who led a very eventful life... His extensive writing shows a keen eye for the absurd - he makes a likeable, if occasionally hapless, protagonist.
I don't think I have heard a story like this before: a Jewish escapee from Nazi Germany who begrudged his exile in the UK? Who was determined to go back home, and fought for a Germany he could return to? This is the opposite of what we're usually told about refugees - and how 'grateful' they are expected to be.
But of course, refugees are people, and people are complicated, opinionated, and don't always make the decisions you'd expect...
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I have always felt his fascinating life story deserves a wider audience, which has led to the creation of this piece.
Clare Fraenkel, London 2022
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Born in Lissa (now Leszno) in 1897, Heinz moved to Berlin as a child.
A random stroke of fortune shielded him from the horrors of the 'Great War': as a teenager on holiday in the UK in 1914, he was interned as an 'enemy alien' by the British. He spent the entirety of WW1 in a camp on the Isle of Man, finishing his school exams and playing chess.
Heinz then went back to Berlin for university; then on to Hollywood, as a screenwriter in its 'Golden Age', enjoying life in California and up-and-coming Las Vegas.
In 1931 he returned home as Variety magazine's correspondent in Berlin, and noted that his hometown had already changed a lot with the rise of Nazism. Yet he enjoyed his time back home, relishing the nightlife and writing "pot-boilers" (his own words).
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A near miss with the Gestapo, and Heinz had a lucky escape from Nazi Germany in 1933, heading first to Paris, then settling as a refugee in London.
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The Fascist takeover of his homeland changed him: he became part of the 'Free German Movement', and travelled to fight in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. However in spite of his best efforts, and their desperate need for recruits, the International Brigade sent him back, on the grounds that he was extremely short-sighted, and also had no experience using machine guns (what with the whole WW1 internment thing).
As a German exile, he was (again) interned by the British as an 'enemy alien' in 1940. Whilst he was in Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, he wrote the book "Help Us Germans to Beat the Nazis!" and organised a team of people to help him smuggle the transcript out- concealing pages in vases that were sent out as presents. This was all unnecessary, it turned out: the British were happy for him to publish it.
Heinz had his German citizenship taken by the Nazis in 1941. They removed citizenship from all Jews. This left him stateless, without a passport or country.
He returned to Germany after the War, as a War Correspondent ("Warco"), then caused a minor international incident by getting arrested in Soviet Berlin, along with his editor: the New Statesman's Kingsley Martin.
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He attended the Nuremburg Trials as a reporter, and dedicated much of his career after the War to investigating the rise of Nazism and the people who were involved: both those who promoted it, and those who resisted.
Heinz eventually settled in the UK, publishing his memoir "Farewell to Germany" in 1959, about his long slow journey to becoming a British citizen. He went on to be the New Statesman's chess columnist "Assiac", and published numerous biographies and historical books about the Nazis, co-authored with Bafta-founder Roger Manvell.
He married Gretel Levy-Ries, a professional contemporary dancer, who was also a German Jewish exile, and they had two sons. He died in London in 1986.