Max Levi was one of ten children of the married couple Meier and Fanny Levi, née Wolf. He was born on August 1, 1882 in Berkach in Thuringia. The ancestors of the Levi family had lived in Berkach since the 17th century as so-called "Schutzjuden" (Protected Jews) of the Würzburg prince-bishops. Max's great-grandfather Joseph Chaim Levi (1773 - 1886) was a teacher and shochet in the Jewish community. In the 19th century, Jewish residents made up over 40% of the village population.

Max initially attended the Jewish village school before his parents sent him to the Kissingen „Realschule" (secondary school) in September 1894, where he was accepted into the 2nd grade. He attended the school until he completed the 5th grade in July 1897 with good results. It is not clear from the school records why he left the school and where he moved to. During this time, he lived with the merchant Abraham Salzer in Weidgasse. Max Levi presumably went to Frankfurt immediately after leaving school to train in the leather goods trade.

After his training, the young man moved to Paris, having become engaged to Olga Fay, the daughter of a Fürth hop merchant, before his departure. The two had probably met in Frankfurt, where Olga had grown up with relatives and received a secondary school education. She spoke fluent English and French. After the outbreak of the First World War, Max Levi was able to leave Paris on the last train to Germany. He married his fiancée in 1916. They lived in Berlin and their daughter Herta Klara was born the following year and their son Franz Ferdinand in 1920. The family initially lived in Berlin-Mitte, in Köpenicker Straße. There they also experienced the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 in the immediate neighbourhood. The Levi family was also in danger during the shootings, so they hid their newborn son Franz Ferdinand in the toilet. The family later moved to Ritterstraße, also in Berlin-Mitte. Max Levi was a successful leather goods manufacturer and trader and Max's wife Olga also worked in the business, so the family lived in affluent circumstances. However, this left little time for the children. In his 1996 interview with the Shoa Foundation, her son Franz Ferdinand says that his parents left the upbringing entirely to the nannies and complains of a lack of affection and physical closeness to his parents, attributing this to the "puritanical zeitgeist" and not to a lack of love from his parents (see USC Shoa Foundation interview with Franz Ferdinand Levi, November 1996 - the following insights and information about the family's life are largely based on this interview).

According to his son, Max Levi was very well-read and also had an extensive home library. Although he was certainly brought up very orthodox and traditional in his childhood at the Jewish school in Berkach, he later developed into an agnostic who was antireligious in principle. During his stay in Paris, he developed into a Marxist who was convinced of socialist ideas, which is astonishing given the family's middle-class financial circumstances (cf. ibid.).

When Max Levi received financial compensation for his lost possessions in France, the Levi family was able to purchase a former weekend house in Frohnau, Am Rosenanger 21, in 1931, which was to become their permanent home in the 1930s. There was a workshop in the basement of the house where Max was able to continue his business.

Franz Levi recalls that his parents hardly took part in the social life of the town, they had no friends and rarely received visitors at home, in fact only from the distantly related Michelsohn family, who owned a factory in Chemnitz and Haddonfield in England and emigrated to England in 1934. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that the social climate in this suburb of Berlin was already strongly influenced by the National Socialists at the beginning of the 1930s.

Franz Levi, who had attended the „Gymnasium" in Frohnau since 1931, experienced harassment from his fellow pupils and was repeatedly beaten by his French teacher. He felt unhappy at school, had poor grades even though he was intelligent, and did not study. As early as 1933, Jewish pupils were no longer allowed to attend Frohnau Gymnasium, so Franz left school at the age of 13 and initially wanted to become a market gardener.

At the time, Max Levi believed that once the National Socialists had come to power, they would adapt to the establishment and become more moderate. and then there would be a place for Jews in Germany again - a fatal misjudgement, as it turned out.   His 13-year-old son, on the other hand, realised that he had to leave Germany and joined a Zionist youth movement, the "Werkleute".  Up to this point, Jewish religion and tradition had played no role in his life, but due to the social marginalisation caused by National Socialism, Franz became aware of his Jewish identity and insisted to his parents that he celebrate his barmizvah at the age of 13. His father Max was particularly appalled by this and refused to take part in the celebration in the synagogue.

A slightly older cousin from Offenbach - himself convinced of Zionism - finally managed to persuade Max and Olga to accept that their son should join the Zionist youth organisation. Franz also attended a Jewish evening school from 1934. In 1936, with the support of the "Werkleute", he received a permit to emigrate to Palestine, and Max Levi and his wife finally gave up their resistance to their son's emigration. It was to be a farewell forever.

Franz Ferdinand Levi initially lived in the youth kibbutz Ben Shemen, joined the underground organisation Haganah in 1940 and joined the British army in 1941.  He was deployed in Syria, Palestine, North Africa and Italy and was used for intelligence purposes between 1945 and 1947 and, after the end of the war, primarily to track down war criminals and investigate war crimes in Austria. After his discharge from the British Army, he was secretary to the Carinthian governor. In later years he emigrated to England. He died in Chelsea in 1999. In 1996, he gave an interview to the USC Shoa Foundation, to which we owe important information about his father, but which above all also provides a revealing insight into his unusual life story.

Max's daughter Herta Klara, who initially went to England as an au pair, also emigrated to Palestine in 1938. She married Klaus Adolf Zürndorfer from Stuttgart in 1945 and took the name Hannah Yaron in Israel. She died in 1956 in Kibbutz Hazorea.

Max Levi and his wife, on the other hand, remained in Germany and continued to live in their house in Frohnau under increasingly difficult conditions. They did not want to leave this place, the only thing they had left. As a Jew, Max Levi was conscripted into forced labour during the Second World War and was employed by the Siemens company from 1939. Whenever he had a day off, he had to walk from Siemensstadt to Frohnau, as Jews were not allowed to use public transport. The slave labour ruined his health. He collapsed while working and was admitted to the Jewish hospital, where he died on 20 September 1941. The official cause of death was given as "angina pectoris". He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee. His wife Olga continued to live in their house in Frohnau. A neighbour occasionally brought her some food and received silver cutlery in return.  She also saw Olga Levi being taken away in a lorry in March 1943. As the 67-year-old was no longer able to climb onto the lorry bed under her own power, she was simply thrown onto the lorry bed and deported from Berlin-Moabit to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.