Franz Koenigs, born into a wealthy German family, married Anna von Kalckreuth in 1914 and had five children. He moved to the Netherlands in 1922 to bypass trade restrictions imposed on Germany after WWI. In 1920, he co-founded N.V. Rhodius Koenigs Handelmaatschappij in Amsterdam to facilitate trade. In Haarlem, he amassed a significant art collection, the Koenigs-collection, exhibited at Museum Boijmans. Financial struggles during the Great Depression led him to borrow money using his collection as collateral. In 1939, he became a Dutch citizen. Post-invasion, he was detained briefly and pressured to resign from his company. Despite opposing Nazism, he maintained business ties in Germany. Koenigs died in 1941 under mysterious circumstances at a Cologne train station.
