Family Card - Person Sheet
Family Card - Person Sheet
NameDr Fritz FALK
Birth18 May 1873
Death1957, Melbourne
FatherFerdinand FALK (1837-1905)
Spouses
Birth1886
Death7 Sep 1972, New York, NY, USA1066
FatherIsidor CASSIRER (1859-1929)
MotherElse SOMMERGUTH (1857-1891)
Marriage22 Jun 1905110
ChildrenWerner (David) Ferdinand (1906-1991)
 Else (1908-2003)
Notes for Dr Fritz FALK
See also Notes, WD Falk Account.
See: family photos attached for 62 Kurfuerstendamm residence, Berlin

Fritz Falk was a medical practioner in Berlin where he was born. His grandfather who was probably a Jewish businessman, is believed to have come from Dessau, an old German Principality. In this sense he was not a foreign Jew from Poland, but to an extent protected since the little principalities in Germany mostly tolerated a Jewish community. He lived in Berlin at Kantstrasse 124 until 1912 when they moved to Charlottenburg in West Berlin - a very beautiful part of Berlin. [62 Kurfuerstendamm, Berlin - see photograph attached]

In 1914 Fritz was conscripted but because of some supposed heart condition he was asigned to [base] duties as a medical doctor in a small town near Berlin, called Fuerstenwalde. Prior to the war, around 1935 he left Germany at a time that it was possible to take possessions but not money (and hence there are still in the possession of the family some family silver, table linen, crockery, Daumier pictures, etc.). Fritz and Betty Falk, and Else, Odette and Helmuth Schlesinger all went to Vichy France (Nice?) at the fall of France. From there they were smuggled across the border into Switzerland using, in part, US dollars taken to the US by Barbara Falk.1067

After the war they came to Oxford and lived, at first, in the attic of the Crescent School - a school set up by Oxford academics to which Anne, John and later Jim Falk all attended. Betty Falk was School cook. They later moved into a flat. They followed Werner (David) Falk to Melbourne Australia in 1951. There Fritz lived until his death.
Last Modified 11 Jul 2019Created 21 Mar 2024 by Jim Falk