annefrankdiary
October 6th 1980 article from Der Spiegel A report by the Federal Criminal Police Office proves that the "Diary of Anne Frank" was subsequently edited. The authenticity of the document was thus further called into question. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/blaue-paste-a-38ec327f-0002-0001-0000-000014317313?context=issue
Translation below.
A report by the Federal Criminal Police Office proves that the "Diary of Anne Frank" was subsequently edited. The authenticity of the document was thus further called into question.
Otto Frank, a Jewish merchant from Frankfurt, fled with his family from the Nazis to Amsterdam in 1933. When the Germans conquered Holland, the emigrants managed to hide. Then, in 1944, Hitler's helpers also transported the Franks to the concentration camp. Only the father survived.
The diary in which daughter Anne traced the years in hiding in the Secret Annex and which was published after the war has been one of the moving personal testimonies of victims of the persecution of the Jews ever since. The »Diary of Anne Frank« became world famous in translations, in the theater and in the film version. On Broadway, the critic of The New Yorker, like millions with him, found himself "torn through a dam of tears."
It is therefore not surprising that Nazi supporters tried to denounce the work. Hamburg pensioner Ernst Römer, 76, was in the darkest of company when he spread the view that the diary was a fake. And like other like-minded people, he ended up in court, reported by Otto Frank.
Römer's first instance was no different than usual from previous cases. The judges had always joined the experts, who confirmed the authenticity of the writings, primarily based on manuscript studies and style comparisons.
Römer's second instance, however, will provide new material for the abusers. In order to secure the date of origin of the Anne Frank work, the Hamburg district court called in the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). Surprising result: Some of the insertions written in the original, which were previously always considered to have the same typeface as the rest of the text, are written with ballpoint paste and thus date from after 1951 -- the year the ballpoint pen was introduced.
Viewed against this result, earlier written reports would even suggest that all the entries were only made after 1950, and that the "diary" as a whole is therefore not authentic. The Hamburg graphologist Minna Becker, for example, stated in 1960 on the occasion of another defamation trial before the »Übecker district court, the unity of the entire legacy: » » The script of the diary entries in the three fixed » » books -- Tgb. I, II and III - including all » » notes and additions on the sticky notes in » » Tgb I as well as the handwriting on the 338 pages of the loose » » tissue paper sheets - LB - including all improvements and additions made on these » » are identical to the » » handwriting of Anne Frank.
But if the handwriting of the original notes were identical to the typeface of the insertions, p.122, an inventor must have been at work -- which, of course, not even Frank's enemies wanted to claim in court and which, in view of the disputed probative value of graphology, is not even now can seriously be asserted.
The thrust of the Nazi propagandists mostly aimed beyond Anne Frank's diary -- at the discrediting of all educational work against the Nazi Reich. The opponents of the diary always claimed to serve the "truth about the persecution of the Jews" or, like a leaflet distributor in the Roman trial, to want to put an end to "the gas chamber fraud."
The English contemporary historian David Irving also described Anne Frank's diary as a "fake" that had been "on record". The idiosyncratic Irving, who once advocated the thesis that Hitler knew nothing about concentration camps, was taken in by a misunderstanding that was widespread on the right.
According to the legend that is often cited, a New York screenwriter was able to prove in court that father Otto Frank wrote quotes from the film in his diary; what was actually proven, however, was that he had transplanted parts of the first screenplay for the Anne Frank film, written by the American plaintiff, into a second script written by other authors. Frank had to pay damages for this, but Irving's publisher had to withdraw the allegation of forgery.
What is certain, however, is that what moved the world did not always come from Anne Frank's hand. When it was published, the diary was altered by numerous manipulations. An original version was never published. Instead, the editors, Otto Frank, who died in the middle of this year, developed an over-commitment that can probably only be explained by the difficult circumstances of the time.
After his return from Auschwitz in 1945, Otto Frank had received his daughter's notes that had been saved by neighbors in Amsterdam -- three volumes of diaries, one volume each with short stories and quotations, and notes on 324 l
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