Joseph Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein

Joseph Maria Casimir Konrad Michael Benedictus Maurus Placidus Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein (* 30 September 1910 at Traunegg castle (Thalheim bei Wels); † 7 October 1963 in San Francisco) was Austro-German philologist, dissident and later US Army Lieutenant attached to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and to the Austrian 'O5' resistance movement against the Nazi Regime. Life Franckenstein was the grandson of the landowner and Lord of Traunegg Heinrich Maria Friedrich Karl Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein and Helene Countess of Arco-Zinneberg. His parents were Konrad von und zu Franckenstein (1875-1938), a descendant of the Habsburgs, and Anna Maria Countess of Esterhazy-Galantha (1886-1968). He attended St. Andrews' University in Scotland in 1933-1934, earning an M.A., and was Master of Language at Eton in 1935. After studying classical philology and completing his doctorate at the University of Innsbruck, he worked as an occasional journalist and mountaineer in Austria during difficult economic times and political turmoil in the 1930s. He campaigned throughout the Tyrol region against the Nazis' growing influence in the years leading up to the "Anschluss" in 1938, shortly before which he fled the country. His elder brother Heinrich, who had already left Germany in 1934 and had emigrated to Turkey, as well as his cousin Georg von Franckenstein advised him not to return. Franckenstein settled in Megève, France, in the Alps, where he taught at the College Florimontane until 1941. In autumn 1940 he had met and fallen in love with the American writer Kay Boyle, also living in Megève, whose children he taught as a tutor. She helped Franckenstein escape from France in the summer of 1941. After the divorce from her second husband, Franckenstein married Kay Boyle in 1943. They had two children: Faith Carson Franckenstein Gude (1942- ) and Ian Savin Franckenstein (1943- ).