Josip Frank (16 April 1844 – 17 December 1911) was a Croatian lawyer and politician, a noted representative of the Party of Rights in the Croatian Parliament, and a vocal advocate of Croatian national independence in Austria-Hungary.
Early life
Frank was born into a Croatian-Jewish family, but converted to Catholicism at the age of 18 and attended the gymnasium in Osijek. After having finished his law studies at the Vienna University in 1868, he moved to Zagreb in 1872 and worked as an attorney at law.
Political career
Frank's initial political involvement included a critique of the People's Party (of Josip Juraj Strossmayer), joining the opinion of ban Levin Rauch. When Ivan Mažuranić became Croatian ban in 1873, Frank criticized him because of his relations with the Magyars and the Serbs.
In 1877, he founded the newspapers Agramer Presse and Kroatische Post, which were soon banned by the Austro-Hungarian authorities.
In 1880, Frank published a brochure titled Die Quote Kroatiens, in which he tried to prove that Croatia bore a disproportionately high financial burden since the 1868 Nagodba (Compromise), a legal arrangement that regulated the constitutional position of Croatia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1880, Frank was elected to the Zagreb City council, where he would serve until 1894.
In 1880, the Croatian poet August Šenoa characterised Frank in the following manner: "The infamous Zagreb attorney ... degrades and befouls all that is Croatian, first to the benefit of the Magyars, now of the Austrians ... Frank is a political louse, who served Rauch, then the Swabian Generalkommando ... he offered himself to the Orthodox voter in Pakrac, bragging about ... protecting Serbian interests."
In 1884, Frank was elected as an independent delegate to the Croatian Sabor, representing the Kotar of Popovača. In 1887, he was elected to represent the Kotar of Vojni Križ.
In 1890, supported by Fran Folnegović, he joined Ante Starčević's Croatian Party of Rights, soon advancing to the highest ranks of the party. Frank became instrumental in the writing of the political program of the Party of Rights, published on June 6, 1894. In 1895, after an incident in which students from Zagreb publicly burned the Hungarian flag in front of Emperor Franz Joseph, a rift formed in the party as Folnegović and others condemned that act. Shortly afterward, and shortly before Starčević died, Frank persuaded Starčević to split off his fraction to form the Pure Party of Rights () with its mouthpiece Hrvatsko pravo. By 1897, Frank had become the true leader of the Croatian states' rights movement, advancing to president of the party after Starčević's death. Frank's Party of Rights was opposed to the Party of Rights led by Frano Supilo and other advocates of the policy of a "New Course", of alignment towards Serbs.
Frank maintained an interest in financial matters, which earned him a regular place in the Croatian Parliament's finance committee, and later in the budget committee. He was a member of the board of financial matters of the Kingdom of Croatia between 1898 and 1906. In 1898, he published a treatise called Nuncij where he harshly accused Hungary for a perceived injustice in the financial terms of the settlement between Croatia and Hungary. In 1904 Frank reiterated his demands for a financial independence of Croatia, and in part due to his efforts, in 1906 a new financial agreement between Croatia and Hungary was formed which was considered the most beneficial to the Croatian side.