ARCHIVE: Unique original and scarce material.
An Anne Frank Archive:
unique original and scarce material
An archive including remarkable survivals dating to the original publication of both Het Achterhuis/Diary of a Young Girl (1947 Dutch, 1952 English) and Weet Je Nog? / Tales from the House Behind (1949 Dutch, 1960 English).
Het Achterhuis
• unrecorded promotional broadside announcing publication, inscribed by Otto Frank.
• first edition (1947), with its dust-jacket and wrap around band; in near fine condition; signed by 19 Dutch students in “Klasse 1B.”
• second edition (1947), published within a matter of months of the first, with its dust-jacket printing new text on the flaps, and its wrap around band; in near fine condition.
Diary of a Young Girl
• first American edition, with Eleanor Roosevelt’s introduction (1952).
• the first Modern Library edition, with Eleanor Roosevelt’s introduction (1952).
• the first British edition, with Storm Jameson’s introduction (1952).
Weet Je Nog?
• Otto Frank’s typescript, emended and undated, of Weet Je Nog?, with short biography of Anne, to our knowledge, unpublished.
• first edition (1949), including 8 of the 12 pieces from Frank’s typescript.
Tales from the House Behind
• first English translation (1960), including 21 pieces—11 of the 12 in the typescript and additional material.
• Expanded edition (1983), with some new translations, including 30 pieces—all of the typescript’s 12 and additional material.
***
Anne Frank began her diary, which spans the two years she spent cloistered in hidden quarters in Amsterdam with her German-Jewish family and a handful of Jewish friends, on June 12, 1942, just after her thirteenth birthday. Isolated physically by Hitler’s oppression and emotionally by a hypercritical mother, nosey co-habitants, and a favored older sister, she felt in desperate need of a friend. She wrote in her second week:
It’s an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I—nor for that matter anyone else—will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. …I don’t want to set down a series of bald facts in a diary as most people do, but I want this diary itself to be my friend, and I shall call my friend Kitty.
L. De Jong wrote in A Tribute to Anne Frank that “[s]he described life in the ‘Annex’ with all its inevitable tensions and quarrels, …But she created first and foremost a wonderfully delicate record of adolescence, sketching with complete honesty a young girl’s feelings, her longings and loneliness.” One historian notes that the diary “traces her development from an outgoing, popular child to an introspective, idealistic young woman” (Contemporary Authors Online) and another notes that “in her last entry, Anne analyzes herself and her situation and shows that she has grown tremendously during her two years in hiding, from a spoiled, immature girl to a thoughtful, introspective young woman” (Literature and Its Times…, Moss and Wilson, eds., 1997). In addition, Frank “immediately recounts her own history, telling how her family left Germany when she was three because of Hitler’s rise to power and his persecution of the Jews there.” She “describes the German invasion and occupation of Holland, and outlines the new restrictions on Jews” (ibid.).
When a Dutch radio broadcast “voic[ed] the hope that after the war people of the land would make public accounts of their suffering under German Occupation,” Frank resolved to ready for publication the private thoughts she originally intended for an intimate companion. On August 4, 1944, three days after Frank’s final journal entry, the Annex was raided. Anne’s mother died at Auschwitz in early 1945; Anne and her sister Margot died of typhoid fever at Bergen-Belsen, where survivors later recalled Anne’s leadership and strength of spirit. Otto Frank, also interred at Auschwitz, returned to Amsterdam after the camp was liberated by Russian troops in 1945, and was met by friends who had discovered Anne’s writings. He undertook the publication of a version he edited together from the early diary kept in 1942 and ’43 as well as revisions made in 1944. (Material of an especially derogatory or sexual nature which he excised was included in an unabridged edition after his death in 1980.)
Het Achterhuis—Diary of a Young Girl, translated literally as The House Behind—met with instant acclaim upon its publication in Dutch in 1947. One historian attributes this, at least in part, to “the absence of any direct account of the horrors and loneliness that were the lot of most of the Jews who went into hiding” (Ezrahi, p. 201). Meyer Levin described its power in the New York Times Book Review: “Because the diary was not written in retrospect, it contains the trembling life of every moment—Anne Frank’s voice becomes the voice of six million vanished Jewish souls.” She was a representative voice, but was not the only one on record: a Dutch reporter noted in 1946 that “the Government Institute for War Documentation is in possession of about two hundred similar diaries, but it would amaze me if there was one among them as pure, as intelligent, as yet as human as [Anne’s]” (Contemporary Authors).
This archive of remarkable survivals documents the birth of Anne Frank’s legacy.
Het Achterhuis/ The Diary of a Young Girl
1]
unrecorded promotional broadside
inscribed by Otto Frank
Printed broadside inscribed by Otto Frank. Amsterdam: Contact, 1945.
5.5 x 8.75 inches; printed on recto only; creased once horizontally; evenly browned.
An unrecorded promotional broadside for Het Achterhuis, headlined, “Bij Contact, Amsterdam is verschenen: Het Achterhuis Dagboekbrieven can 12-4-’42 tot 1-8-’44. Door Anne Frank. Inleiding: Dr. A. Romein-Verschoor.” Inscribed in type at the bottom: “Nu eindelijk! Wanneer spreken wij elkaar weer? Vriendelijke groeten. [Finally! When do we see each other again? Greetings.]” And signed by Anne’s father, “Otto Frank.”
2]
scarce first edition in a well-preserved dust-jacket and band
Frank, Anne. Het Achterhuis [The Diary of a Young Girl; lit.: The House Behind]. Dogboekbrieven van 12 Juni 1941-1 Augustus 1944. Met een woord voorag foor Annie Romein-Verschoor. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Contact, (1947).
8vo.; pages browned; white printed paper-covered boards; spine evenly darkened; dust-jacket; delicate edgewear, spine nicked; yellow printed wrap around band.
First edition, with no date printed on the title page, copyright 1947 on the verso. In the rare dust-jacket, with “Anne Frank” printed in yellow on the cover and a yellow wrap around band to match; with Dr. J. Romein’s remarks dated 3 April 1946 and with “gebleven” as the final word on the upper flap; and with “Proloog-reeks” printed on the lower flap.
A remarkable copy, signed on the front free endpaper by 19 Dutch school children, under the heading 14/9/47 Klasse 1B—first grade, section B. In Otto Frank’s typescript version of Anne’s title essay in her Tales, “Weet je nog?,” a letter she wrote with her friend Lies [Hanneli Goslar] to their classmates is addressed to Klasse 1B. In the published version—both in Dutch and in all later English translations—1B was changed to 1 6 II. (In the critical edition of the Diary this becomes 1 L II.) Though these signatures could belong to the members of any first grade, section B class, the coincidence of the “Klasse 1B” in both Otto Frank’s typescript of his daughter’s tales as well as in a first edition of Het Achterhuis signed by 19 Dutch school children demands serious examination.
A bit of background is necessary when considering these signatures. In May 1934 Anne Frank entered the kindergarten of a Montessori school in Amsterdam. In the fall of 1941, by decree, she was compelled “to transfer to a Jewish school, where all the teachers and pupils were Jewish and where they were completely cut off from non-Jewish children of their own age.” The class 1B she and Lies addressed must have been either their Montessori class or their Lyceum class.
In Michel Mok’s translation of Anne’s essay, “Weet Je Nog?,” she writes: “Do you remember? I spend happy hours talking about school, the instructors, our adventures, and—boys. When we still were part of ordinary, everyday life, everything was just marvelous. That one year in the Lyceum was sheer bliss for me; the teachers, all that they taught me, the jokes, the prestige, the romances, and the adoring boys.” What follows are several reminiscences, each headed, “Do you remember?” The lengthiest recollection is “how Lies and I betrayed the class.” This section includes a letter, reconstructed from memory, that Anne and Lies wrote to their class. In the typescript the letter is addressed to class 1B; in all published versions, to class 16 II. It seems certain that this was her lyceum class: in the English version of her essay, “My First Day at the Lyceum,” she states, “I was told to move to Class 16 II.” Otto Frank did not include the Dutch version of this essay in his typescript, and it does not appear in the critical edition of the Diary on the date of composition—August 11, 1943—so we cannot see how Anne, or her father, named the class in this instance.
Why, in “Weet Je Nog?” was 1B changed to 1 6 II between the typescript and published versions? Was it simply an error on the part of Otto Frank? Or did he attempt to mask the identity of the class? The 19 signators of this volume cannot be Anne’s surviving classmates from the Jewish lyceum—though several of the signatures are a bit unclear, there does not seem to be a single Jewish name among them. What are other possibilities?
• It is possible that the members of a first grade class having no immediate connection to Anne Frank signed a first edition of Het Achterhuis, for any number of reasons; it is possible they prepared it as a gift to Otto Frank, but we cannot be sure if this volume was acquired along with his typescript, or from an entirely different source.
• It is also possible that 1B—in the typescript and in the first edition of Het Acterhuis—was Anne Frank’s Montessori class. Again, we have to ask, Why was “1B” changed to “1 6 II”? Perhaps Anne’s essay “Weet je nog?” contains memories from both schools (Lies was her classmate in both), and for narrative ease only one class was mentioned. Or perhaps Otto Frank wished to pay tribute to Anne’s fellow forgotten Jewish classmates by selecting their class over the Montessori class.
Though the evidence is purely circumstantial, it is strong enough to convince us that the 19
signatures could belong to those non-Jewish Montessori students who survived the war. Of
course, by 1947 they would no longer have been in 1B, but they might have looked back to
the class designation they shared with Anne, as a tribute to her memory.
3]
second edition, in dust-jacket and band
Frank, Anne. Het Achterhuis. (Amsterdam: Contact, 1947).
8vo.; endpapers browned; edges lightly foxed; hand-made contemporary bookmark;
light blue paper-covered boards, stamped in brown; dust-jacket; edgeworn; small chips to spine; small closed tears to joints; blue printed wrap around band.
Second edition, so stated on the title page and on its verso, on which the publishers note the publication of the first edition in June, and this second edition, in December. In the dust-jacket with the words “Anne Frank” printed in blue and with the rare wrap around band, in blue to match. The text on the upper dust-jacket flap, uncredited, is dated 8 September 1947, and ends with the word “vernichten.” The lower flap prints “Enige Persbeoordelingen.”
With a contemporary newspaper review of the book in Dutch, clipped from Elseviers Weekblad, January 24, 1948, bearing a photograph of Frank along with the text.
4] Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Translated from the Dutch by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday. With an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. NY: Doubleday, 1952.
8vo.; photographically illustrated endpapers; black cloth, spine stamped in silver; photographically illustrated dust-jacket; lightly rubbed; some wear to lower joint.
First American edition, with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt in which she declares this “a remarkable book, written by a young girl,” and notes that “the young are not afraid of telling the truth. It is one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read.”
5] Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Translated from the Dutch by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday. With an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. NY: The Modern Library, 1952.
8vo.; bookplate on front pastedown; light turquoise cloth, stamped in black and gilt; black topstain; white printed dust-jacket printing Modern Library lists on the interior; price-clipped; very lightly rubbed, with a touch of shelf wear to the head of the spine.
First Modern Library edition.
6] Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Translated from the Dutch by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday. With a foreword by Storm Jameson. London: Constellation Books, (1952).
8vo.; two black and white photographs; light offsetting to endpapers; green cloth, stamped in gilt; negligible wear to extremities; pictorial dust-jacket; extremities chipped; closed tears on upper panel and lower joint; spine and lower panel darkened.
First British edition; prints two black and white photographs of the concealed entrance to the annex.
Weet Je Nog?/ Tales from the House Behind
7]
otto frank’s emended typescript
containing unpublished material;
with a first edition
Frank, Anne. Weet je nog? [Tales from the House Behind; lit: Do You Still Remember?]. [Amsterdam en Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Contact, 1949.]
8vo.; 31 typescript leaves, lightly emended; marbled paper-covered boards, blue cloth spine; publisher’s printed mailing label addressed to Otto Frank loosely inserted.
Together with:
Frank, Anne. Weet je nog? [Tales from the House Behind; lit: Do You Still Remember?]. Amsterdam en Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Contact, 1949.
8vo.; illustrated; discreet bookseller’s label on front pastedown; illustrated paper-covered boards; spine lightly darkened; lower panel slightly soiled.
Otto Frank’s original typescript, with autograph emendations—either in the hand of Frank himself or that of a proof reader—on 21 pages, with a first edition, illustrated by Kees Kelfkens. Loosely inserted into the typescript is a printed mailing label from Uitgeverij Contact addressed, in type, to “Aan den Heer O. Frank/ Hunzestraat 120 hs/ Amsterdam.” A black and white photographic postcard of Anne accompanies the first edition.
Frank’s typescript includes a brief biography of Anne, taking only 11 lines; this biography was not included in any edition of the Diary we consulted and is, to our knowledge, unpublished. Frank divided his daughter’s twelve stories, essays, and reminiscences into three sections: Herinneringen [Memories] (3), Verhaaltjes [Stories] (5), and Sprookjes [Fairy Tales] (4). Of these, only eight were published in the first Dutch edition (which also included an afterword by Annie Winkler-Vonk). The three memoirs—“Do You Remember?” “A Lecture in Biology,” and A Geometry Lesson—were omitted, along with the story, “The Porter’s Family.”
8] Frank, Anne. Tales from the House Behind. Fables, Personal Reminiscences and Short Stories. (Drawings by Peter Spier.) Kingswood…: The World’s Work (1913) Ltd., (1960).
8vo.; illustrated; blue cloth, stamped in white; photographically illustrated dust-jacket; one small tape repair.
First English-language edition of Weet Je Nog?. Introduced by G.B. Stern, this edition is divided into Fables; Personal Reminiscences and Short Stories; Essays; and Unfinished Novel. It includes 21 pieces, all but one translated by Michel Mok; though it added Anne’s three memoirs (augmenting and adding “Do You Remember?”) as well as material not included in Otto Frank’s typescript, it omitted, again, “The Porter’s Family.”
9] (Frank, Anne). Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex. With translations by Ralph Manheim and Michel Mok. NY; Doubleday, (1983).
8vo.; red paper-covered boards, brightly stamped in gilt; dust-jacket; near fine, with two creases to spine.
New edition, with new translations of previously collected stories as well as translations of previously uncollected tales. Published after Otto Frank’s death, this edition includes 30 pieces, divided simply into Fables and Short Stories; and Personal Reminiscences and Essays. Appearing for the first time in hardcover are “Paula’s Plane Trip,” “Jackie,” “The Flea,” “The Battle of the Potatoes,” “Villains!,” “Sunday,” and “Who Is Interesting?,” all translated by Ralph Manheim. Manheim also retranslated Mok’s versions of “Cady’s Life,” “Paying Guests” (now “Roomers or Subtenants”), and Dreams of Film Stardom (now Dreams of Movie Stardom). Also included are Manheim’s translations of The Sink of Iniquity, and, at last, The Porter’s Family. The balance of the pieces remain in Mok’s translations.
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