Biography
Franz K. Ferenz was an Austrian-born art dealer and film exhibitor active in Los Angeles. His Plaza Art Center commissioned David Alfaro Siqueiros’s América Tropical mural in 1932. Ferenz later exhibited Nazi propaganda films and participated in the Friends of Progress. A San Quentin photograph records his admission on October 28, 1942 following a separate California subversive-organization registration prosecution. He was named in the January 3, 1944 Washington indictment alleging conspiracy to undermine military loyalty under the Smith Act. The mass trial ended in a mistrial on December 7, 1944. The indictment was dismissed in December 1946; no conviction resulted in this case.
