In the summer of 1933 Otto Frank was recorded in the Amsterdam population register as a German citizen. From November 1941, Jews who had fled Germany were declared stateless by the Nazi regime. After returning from Auschwitz, Otto Frank applied for Dutch citizenship.
German or stateless?
On 25 November 1941, Otto Frank became stateless under the terms of the “Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law”. After the Second World War, the allied occupying powers repealed the Nazi citizenship legislation (the so-called “Nuremburg Laws”). This made the legal position of Jews from Germany in the Netherlands unclear: were they German, or stateless? In the summer of 1946 the government took the position that the exiled German Jews were stateless.
After the war the stateless Jews could regain their German nationality. Otto Frank chose not to do so; he wanted to become a Dutch citizen. On 18 February 1948 he made a written declaration that he had not requested, and would not request, the German authorities to restore his German nationality. After going through a lengthy procedure, Otto Frank became a naturalised Dutch citizen on 16 December 1949.
After he moved to Basel in Switzerland in 1952, Otto Frank retained his Dutch nationality. He remained a Dutch citizen until his death, at the age of 91, on 19 August 1980.