Een ruimte voor de ziel : opkomst en ondergang van Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941)

Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) was an influential French interior decorator and furniture designer who dedicated himself to furnishing the homes of the elite. Frank was born in Paris in 1895 into a wealthy German banking family. He studied Law for a brief period but following the deaths of his two brothers in the First World War, and later losing his father and mother, Frank left school and traveled extensively, before launching a career in interior design. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Frank, both gay and Jewish, fled Paris and sought refuge in Argentina where he continued to work for the rich and famous. In 1941 he traveled to New York (where he had decorated remotely Nelson Rockefeller's 5th Avenue apartment in 1937-38). Suffering from depression and from the knowledge of his extended family's oppression under the Nazi regime (he was a cousin of diarist Anne Frank), Frank committed suicide in 1941.