Another chapter in the history of Falkland estate ended this month with the death, at the age of 95, of former forester Karl Franz.

Karl was born in 1927 in a small German hamlet called Altranft where his father was the station master. A nearby estate was owned by a high-ranking Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop, Karl, aged 12, was asked to hold Ribbentrop’s horse, but refused allegedly due to no tip being offered.

Trained as a tool maker with the railways, shortly before his 17th birthday in 1944 he was conscripted into the German army and ended up on the Eastern Front. In May 1945 Karl was captured by the Allies and became a prisoner of war. He was first taken to Belgium, then Southampton and, finally, Fife, where he was based in Auchtermuchty and Ladybank helping locally with the harvest. In 1948 Karl and his friend Fritz (a submariner) moved to Falkland Estate to work as foresters.  They lived in basic and chilly conditions in the Stables’ Tack room. Karl did not take up the offer of repatriation to Germany and was to stay at number 4 the Stables for the next 25 years as an Estate Forester, marrying a girl from Strathmiglo and having two sons, Kevin and Eric.  In 1959 he became a naturalized British subject.

Karl first worked for head forester John Scott, his colleagues were David and Alec Dryburgh and Jim Bruce. The post war tree planting was in three stages, 1948, 1951 and 1952, with a tree nursery at the Pillars. Karl remembered the unveiling of the new plaque on the monument and how tough it was to plant on the Stoney Faults below.

He later recalled the village and estate being separate, but with no animosity, Falklanders would walk on the estate, but mainly on Sunday in their “Sunday best”

A keen gardener all his life, Karl also worked in the Kilgour House gardens for the Lairds’ mother, Mrs Ramsay, taking over when Bob Suttie went to hospital for a varicose vein operation. If it was wet, he was asked to do other tasks including plucking woodcock.

Karl never entirely left Falkland, this summer he was part of a very happy family celebration at the wedding of his grandson at the Stables. He returned a few weeks before his death, visiting old haunts and still with a keen interest in the woodlands – the felling and planting. 

Throughout his life Karl was independent, as his son Kevin wrote “although increasingly frail, he lived independently until the last few days, mentally alert and psychologically strong until the end. Having lived through such trauma and violence as a boy and young man, he had no fear of death and, at the age of 95, he had no regrets”.

 

Karl Franz, 1927-2022, a much-loved family man and a part of the story of Falkland Estate.

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