Born Nov. 18, 1940
Koslin, Pomerania
Died Jan. 17, 2025
West Glover, Vermont
Details of services
A Celebration of Life will be held at a time to be determined in the coming summer, and his ashes will be interred in the Andersonville Cemetery in Glover.
Bertold (Bert) Francke MD, 84, passed away at his home in West Glover on January 17, 2025, following a period of declining health.
He was born November 18th, 1940, in Koslin, Pomerania (Poland), and was raised in Bonn, Germany. As a four-year-old, he witnessed the bombing of Dresden.
Francke wrote his first string quartet at age 13 for the family quartet — his father on cello, his brother on 2nd violin, his mother on viola, and he, himself, on 1st violin.
He graduated from the Ernst-Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Bonn, where he was tutored in composition by his music teacher, and completed his second string quartet.
From childhood on, wherever he was living, Francke always played quartets, usually first violin. He wrote a third quartette in Munich, Germany, where he attended University and, after moving to the United States in 1969 to do biomedical research at UCLA Medical School, wrote a fourth in Los Angeles, and from there to San Diego to do research at the Salk Institute. After eight years in California, he relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, where, for three years, he had a lab at Yale.
At nearly forty, Francke switched careers, studied psychiatry, completed a psychiatric residency at Saint Vincent’s hospital in NYC, became a psychoanalyst, and relocated to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where he joined the Bread and Puppet Theater, and met his late partner, Don Sunseri.
Continuing to play and compose string quartets, Francke eventually became medical director and chief psychiatrist at the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, and for thirty years directed an octet — a string quartet and four singers — that performed Haydn’s Seven Last Words during Easter week all over the state of Vermont.
After retiring from the state hospital, Francke practiced psychiatry at his home in Glover, Vermont until 2021.
He is survived by his partner, Bob Hunt of West Glover, four siblings Renate Gier, Dr. Albrecht Francke, Dr. Ulrike Madd and Cornelia Francke of Germany, former wife Dr. Uta Francke of Palo Alto, CA and his stepson Dakota Sunseri, daughter-in-law Lisanne Sartor and two grandsons Anthony and August Sunseri of Los Angeles, California as well as nieces, nephews, special friend, Clare Dolan of Glover, and many friends and associates, and puppeteers.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Dr. Bertold Francke.