Historical Appendix - The Barman of the Ritz

12. Frank Meier was arrested by police in the eighteenth arrondissement in late August 1944 and questioned by the committee of the Épuration légale. He was charged, together with his son Jean-Jacques and his niece Pauline Neumayer, of profiting from the German Occupation. All three apparently owe their release to a payment made by Frank Meier to the French Forces of the Interior of three hundred thousand francs.

The end of Frank Meier’s life is something of a mystery. It seems possible that he was dismissed from the Ritz for fraudulent activities after the war. The circumstances of his death in 1947 are unclear. Perhaps he was ill. For a long time, his final resting place was not known. We now know that Frank Meier is buried in Pantin cemetery, northeast of Paris, next to his ex-wife, Maria Hutting, and their only son, Jean-Jacques Meier, who died in 1979.

May Frank Meier, our most illustrious bartender, rest in peace.