In the prison scene at the beginning of the film, Daniel asked Niemann if he knew Henry Frankenstein. Niemann told him that his brother worked as his assistant and that before he died, passed on Frankenstein's secrets on to him (Niemann). So I'm guessing that the brother that Niemann spoke of was Fritz from the original Frankenstein.
shareI wondered about that, too. I doubt it could be Fritz though, since Fritz was killed soon after the Monster was brought to life. Fritz never had time to take a trip anywhere and pass on any information on to anyone. He was too busy sticking torches in the Monster's face for no apparent reason. Also, Neimann said that his brother "learned" Frankenstein's secrets. Did Fritz really seem clever enough to understand Frankenstein's work? Kind of doubtful. He couldn't even steal a brain without bungling it.
I have two theories about who this mysterious brother may have been.
Theory 1) Dr. Pretorius. True, they had different last names, but that does happen sometimes. Pretorius had a few henchmen working for him when he was helping Doc Frankenstein build a bride. Perhaps he surrepticiously had one of them carry notes about the experiemtns to his brother the evil Brain surgeon.
Theory 2) Somewhere between escaping at the end of "Bride" and his passing years later (mentioned in "Son of...") Doc Frankenstein toyed with his pet theories yet again, and worked with a smarter assistant (He learned from that whole Fritz/brain dropping fiasco) named Neimann.
Anyway, those are my theories.
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I doubt it was Fritz or even the original Frankenstein. Let's not forget, this movie is several generations removed from the first Frankenstein movie. By this point, we've seen his sons (Son of Frankenstein and Ghost of Frankenstein) and his granddaughter (Frankenstein meets The Wolfman).
Each of his sons worked to revive the Monster. It could've been either one of them that Neimann's brother learned from.
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I would say it's more likely that Niemann's brother was Fritz rather than Pretorious. He did mention that his brother passed the info to him before he died... and Fritz DID die. Also, Pretorious could hardly be labeled an assistant.
But I agree that the more likely scenario would be that Frankenstein worked with another assistant in the time following the Bride.
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Of course the real answer is lazy writing and nothing more. No one even considered people would be looking into this ever
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Really, the only two people who could be the "brother" are either Fritz and Dr. Pretorious. And even then, there's a lot of problems.
First off, there's almost no chance it was Fritz because (as someone with common sense would immediately tell) Fritz was bonkers. Maybe not the same way as Dr. Frankenstein, but Fritz was basically a gopher. Not only would he probably not know how to steal Frankenstein's notes and be sneaky about it, he'd probably never think to do it anyway. Hell, he didn't even understand why it'd be a bad idea to put an abnormal brain into a giant monster.
Dr. Pretorious, I just don't see it. First off there's the issue of two last names, unless they were stepbrothers or something. But then again, at no point in the Bride of Frankenstein do we see Pretorious try to steal Frankenstein's notes or have any motivation to.
Bottom line, that whole crap about Boris Karloff's "brother" being Frankenstein's assistant is bogus. The whole reason Frankenstein had an assistant like Fritz in the first place is because 1.) no normal person wouldn't think Frankenstein was crazy and try to stop him and 2.) Fritz wouldn't be smart enough to betray Frankenstein in the first place. Plus if this "brother" had passed on Frankenstein's secrets to Niemann, why in the absolute hell did Niemann have to go all the way to Frankenstein's house (really the ruins of Frankenstein's castle) to get Frankenstein's notes anyway? To me, the whole process of reanimating a dead body sounds really complicated to simply pass on to a second person.
As someone else pointed out, Niemann having a "brother" whom we never see or Frankenstein ever reference just shows a lack of trying. They could've very easily just had it where Niemann heard of Frankenstein's work and tried to go after his notes, but like the gypsy woman and the Dracula story-arc, the "brother" in this film was just useless filler.
Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.
In the time period, halfs and steps were quite common (and the different last name is almost as explicable by a half as by a step); life expectancy wasn't long and death in childbirth was common. Widowers and widows often remarried, thus the steps and halfs.
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