Joyce Penelope - Wilhelmina Frankenberg Current Name

Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg was born on a damp November morning in 1915, in the Berlin suburb of Wilmersdorf. Her father, Dr. Elias Frankenberg, was a respected Jewish ophthalmologist; her mother, Helene (née von Voss), was a Lutheran aristocrat who had converted to Judaism out of love — a decision that would later be scrutinized by the Nuremberg Laws as “racial defilement.”

She sat on the floor of her tiny bedsit in Pimlico and wept for three hours. Then she walked to Somerset House and requested a deed poll form. She could not resurrect her father. But she could decide, for the first time, what her name meant. joyce penelope wilhelmina frankenberg current name

Joyce’s triple middle name was a testament to Helene’s romanticism: Penelope for fidelity, Wilhelmina to honor the old Kaiser’s Germany (a futile gesture of patriotism), and Frankenberg itself — a name meaning “mountain of the Franks,” suggesting ancient lineage. But in 1933, when Hitler came to power, “Frankenberg” ceased to be poetic. It became a target. Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg was born on a