Herz, Frank L., 1908-2006

Biographical summary written by Dr. Sibylle Quack, New York, 2008

Frank L. Herz (1908-2006) was born in 1908 in Heilbronn, a Swabian town in Germany, where his father was a merchant. Frank Herz grew up in a German-Jewish family. He had one brother, Kurt. His mother, neé Levi, came from the nearby town of Hechingen. She was the sister of Paul Levi, a close friend and lawyer of Rosa Luxemburg. After Luxemburg´s murder in 1919, Paul Levi was head of the German Communist Party until he criticized Lenin in public, and in 1921 was expelled from the party. Levi later became a leading figure of the Social Democrats being a member of the German parliament (the Reichstag). He was also one of the best known political lawyers of the Weimar Republic. Paul Levi died an untimely death in 1930. Frank Herz studied law at the Universities of Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In Berlin, he would meet his famous uncle whom he admired and with whom he shared liberal political ideas. When Paul Levi fell out of a window in 1930, this was a great tragedy for the whole family.

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