Otto Franke

Otto Franke (; 27 September 1863 – 5 August 1946) was a German diplomat, sinologist, and historian. He was the preeminent German sinologist of his time,

Although inclined toward an academic career, Franke was unable to pursue it at the time and instead found a job as an interpreter for the German embassy in Beijing, capital of the Qing Empire. He served for 13 years in China from 1888 to 1901 and traveled extensively in the country, as well as in Mongolia (then under Qing rule), Korea, and Japan. He kept diaries in the period which were later published. By 1937, Franke had finished the third volume which covers Chinese history up to the Tang dynasty. Swiss historian Marc Winter compares his end to that of French sinologist Henri Maspero, who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp: "Otto Franke lived to see the end of the war as an old and broken man, unable to finish his Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches [...] his life was ruined like Maspero's, albeit in a less direct and criminal manner."