It was discovered on 27 October 1903, by astronomers Max Wolf and Paul Götz at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory in southwest Germany.
In December 2013, a rotational lightcurve of Franziska was obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Frederick Pilcher at the Organ Mesa Observatory (G50) in New Mexico.
[13] The result supersedes Richard Binzel's previously obtained lightcurve from May 1985, which gave a period of 14.0 hours and an amplitude of 0.53 magnitude (U=2).
[6][7][8][9] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.1143 and a diameter of 28.61 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.69.
All of these low-numbered asteroids have numbers between 164 Eva and 1514 Ricouxa and were discovered between 1876 and the 1930s, predominantly by astronomers Auguste Charlois, Johann Palisa, Max Wolf and Karl Reinmuth.