Franceska Reiner was the only surviving child of Benedict and Margaret Wittman Reiner of Munich Bavaria.

She attended a Catholic girl's school where she learned terrific needlework in addition to the three Rs. She made all her own clothing.

She met her future husband, Siegfried Thannhauser at the 1909 Automobile Club Ball where she was declared the queen. It was love at first sight for him but neither family approved. Both religion and social class stood in the way.

It was nine years before they married, partly due to his being a doctor at the front in WWI. He wrote her every day. His father had to contrive to run into her on his walks to hear news of his son! He called her the little stick, presumably because her elegantly thin figure was not to his taste.

She was the one who insisted the family leave Germany after Siegfried's dismissal from his University post in 1931 for being jewish. His private practice was still doing fine and he had many foreign patients who came to him in Freiberg and paid in gold. He thought the problems would blow over as in the past, but she got him organized to move. She wanted her three daughters safely out of Germany. She ran gold to Switzerland and convinced him to take an offer at the Tufts Medical School.

My favorite story about her is when asked by the official who would be granting the visa to leave where all the money went, she batted her big blue eyes and said "Och my husbands asks me the same question!" She got the visa.

Fanny was my beloved grandmother and I called her Oma. She taught me how to plant spring bulbs and to love flowers and her garden in Brookline, MA. But most of the time I knew her, she was less active and rested on the daybed in her garden room; she was recovering from heart problems and stroke. These eventually killed her when I was about ten.

Kitty Cooper, June 2013

[her family tree pedigree style is at the top Reiner page]



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