DIARY OF A CON MAN
by Aleth may 5, 2018 revised expanded edition
The so-called diary of anne frank is for the most part, a forgery by persons other than anne : her father otto and several collaborators of his, in primis anneliese schütz , ab cauvern, kurt baschwitz. It consists of 3 basic elements :
1. plagiarism of der trotzkopf ;
2. plagiarism of jakob von gunten : ein tagebuch ;
3. misrepresented real events, mixed with fabricated events, from the franks´ family life 1942 - 1944.
We are looking at patchwork here. Collage . Many other tesserae of the fraudulent mosaic were filched from : 3 e.t.a.hoffmann early-XIX-century tales ; cissy van marxveldt ´s 1919-1925 joop ter heul ; h.g.well´s 1894 short story Through a window ; cornell woolrich´s 1942 short story It had to be murder; maria montessori ´s pedagogical concepts and books ; assorted other classic mostly german- and english-language writers and philosophers.
And while several similar literary genres come into play here - epistolary novel, bildungsroman, backfischroman, tagebuchroman - the real genre the so-called diary of anne frank belongs to is a classical late-latin one called cento in latin and english - collage in its modern reincarnation.
Which is in its essence, a form of plagiarism - not in latin literary history, where the cento was an openly declared and acknowledged technique ; but in the diary, where it is concealed by means of subtle variations on given themes and phrasings which I termed varied plagiarism - a very professional forgery technique absolutely not creditable to a 13- to 15-year-old human being.
If you want to have commercial success, you´d better try and be " all things to all men "...
As my reference editions, I shall use for the diary, DIE TAGEBÜCHER DER ANNE FRANK, aus dem niederländischen von mirjam pressler, rijksinstitut voor oorlogsdocumentatie, s. fischer verlag 1988, 2. auflage, printed in germany 1993. Hereafter, F.
The first edition of the diary of anne frank came out in holland in june 1947:
http://affordance.typepad.com//files/anne-frank.txt
Hereafter, HA ( = Het Achterhuis, the annex, original title of the first dutch edition )
For der trotzkopf, der trotzkopf: eine pensionsgeschichte für erwachsene mädchen, by emmy von rhoden, 39. auflage, stuttgart, verlag von gustav weise. The year is not available, anyway this is a reprint of the original edition that came out in 1885. I shall reference the online text here :
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31309/31309-h/31309-h.html
Hereafter, T.
For gunten : jakob von gunten: ein tagebuch by robert walser, bruno cassirer berlin
1909, online here :
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24176/24176-h/24176-h.htm Hereafter, G
CHAPTER I : CRAZY IDEA
Now picture yourself hiding from the nazis who are out to get you and send you to auschwitz, slave work et similia : would you write a diary, featuring all of the real names of your jewish friends, christian helpers, plus your antinazi and pro-allies stance ? Would you really do that, in view of the real possibility you might get discovered and arrested ? Would you not only risk aggravating your own position in nazi eyes, but also jeopardizing the security of dozens of your friends and helpers ? Maybe you would do that, as a 13-year-old girl, not so smart and all alone but - would 5 adults all around you, hiding with you, aware you are keeping a diary as the diary itself explicitly states, allow you to keep it ?
That would be criminal, irresponsible and suicidal ! No, I guess you really wouldn´t do that would you ? So why do you blindly believe that anne frank actually did do that crazy thing ?
Would you have written the following passages, giving away illegal organizations and single people, knowing your diary might just fall into nazi hands any time in case you were discovered and arrested ? : F 541 f., jan. 28, 1944, a+b :
a :
Thousands upon thousands of IDs and food ration cards are provided, sometimes for free and sometimes for money. How many fake IDs are out there ! Acquaintances are walking around with normal christian names [...] Bep´s boyfriend, who should actually be in berlin, daily meets companions and they often know of one another who´s hiding where . Three sons of our milkman´s are in the countryside etc. etc. >>>
b : >>
F 325, oct.10, 1942, a :
>>
F 332, oct. 16, 1942, a :
>>
F 351, nov.13, 1942, a :
>> :
if this passage had been true, and anne had been discovered and arrested that very day, and the diary had been read by the nazis, it would have led to the immediate arrest of :
1. pfeffer ; 2. van der hoeden ; 3. miep ; 4. jan ; 5. kleiman !!!
Could anyone , even at age 13, be so terminally stupid as to confide such dead giveaways to her diary ? Could any adult around her have allowed her to keep a diary in a real hiding situation, even not knowing its contents precisely, since the diary itself attests to their perfect awareness of the potential danger that anne´s diary represented for them all ? F 677, april 11, 1944, a :
[the police are at the revolving bookcase after a burglary, the annex jews are panicking and expecting the cops to discover them any moment now ] >> :
the 5 diary passages quoted above alone, are more than enough to discredit the authenticity of the so-called diary of anne frank.
They were written after liberation, to kiss dutch ass , by former nazi collaborator and war profiteer otto frank and his gang of thugs who were trying to pass themselves off as victims .
And if very few heroes have had the courage and the intelligence to express such doubts about the diary so far, it is simply because, unfortunately, most people are brainwashed and do not question myths - and when they do, they refrain from going public , lest they be deprived of their positions or physically attacked by the zionazi terrorists who rule the media world.
CHAPTER 2 : A MISSING PHOTOGRAPH
Now F begins on p.214, with a full-page photo of anne frank. Where does this pic come from ? In the allegedly original manuscript diary, this pic is missing, as F informs us on page 797, editors´ note 1. Again if there is no photo at all in the manuscript, why was this photo printed here at the start of the diary´s alleged text, as if it were part thereof, when in fact it s not ? And again : what is the source of this photo ? How did it survive the war, the alleged arrest and house-search, the alleged pulsing of the annex, and the holocaust ? How can a scientific edition, as F purports to be, start a text with a photo of unknown, undeclared provenance, that is not part of the manuscript ? The popular edition of the diary of anne frank does not feature this picture, nor the manuscript´s comment to it that opens the diary´s verbal text in F : . Thus the scientific edition dupes the reader into believing the actual manuscript featured that photo - which it doesn´t. Therefore anne may have been commenting on a totally different photo for ought we know. But it gets worse.
We must now introduce a 4th important book here : ANNE FRANK HAUS, EIN MUSEUM MIT EINER GESCHICHTE, anne frank stichting, amsterdam 1999, deutsch s.fischer verlag, translated into german by waltraud hüsmert, henceforth AFH.
On its front cover, and again on page 218, this book features the very same photo as F - only this time, to our utter astonishment, included in the manuscript - this first of a series of diary manuscripts being a photo album. Now why does F tell us in 1986 (first edition of the original dutch edition) that this photo is missing, whereas AFH shows us in 1999 that the photo is right there in its place ? AFH says nothing either about the photo´s provenance - only that it belongs to either the anne frank stichting, amsterdam, or to one allard bovenberg, amsterdam - unclear to which one, the way the photo sourcing is written on page 264 of AFH. Thus we are again left in the dark as to where this photo comes from and how it survived ww2. And we are left wondering whether or not it actually belonged to the manuscript, since F and AFH contradict each other.
We also notice from this photographic reproduction of the diary´s alleged manuscript´s first 2 pages, AFH 218, that this looks like an album - a photo album, not a proper diary at all.
Look at the photo: it is a reproduction of AFH 218, itself a photographic repro of the first page of the first alleged diary of anne frank, the one that was allegedly presented to her for her 13th birthday on june 12, 1942. This object again, does not look like a proper diary at all. It is a photo album, with the left page featuring photo corners , into which the pic is inserted, and a blank right page for writing captions to the photos on the left. And, indeed, we do have anne´s original caption on the right side : it is written in what appears to be a red pencil, and it reads : : the photo has clearly been taken at school, in the classroom, at her desk, during the schoolyear 1941/42, when she was attending the jüdisches lyzeum in amsterdam, and the systematic deportation of local jews had not begun yet.
CHAPTER 3 : 4-HANDED MONSTER
Now what strikes us as very odd here on this reproduction above is, that there clearly appear to be 4 different hands at work : 1. the hand that wrote the caption in red, plausibly anne frank´s own hand, a childish, feminine handwriting one would expect of a 13-year-old ;
2. the hand that wrote the last line on the right-hand page, similar to but not quite identical with the red hand, female but somewhat more mature and organized and regular, using a different ink, brown in color, from a pen not a pencil : it could be anne, or it could be someone imitating anne´s red hand ;
3. a totally different adult cursive hand for most of the text, using a similar but not identical ink, thicker than that of the last line; this is an entirely different person, cannot possibly be anne ;
4. the hand that wrote the line numbers on the right margin of the right page, apparently using a black pencil.
It is implausible, improbable in the extreme that hands 1 - 4 be the same hand - a 13-year-old girl´s hand. And, it is illogical and implausible that anne frank herself would use 4 such different handwritings on the same page, in the space of a few weeks or months or even on the same day !!!
Actually, it is possible that there be a 5th hand at work on these 2 pages to boot : the hand that wrote the sept. 28, 1942 entry looks, at closer inspection, remarkably different than the hand that wrote the june 12, 1942 entry. The inks too differ in the 2 entries, the later one´s being less thick.
Let me be clear : look at the photo above : this is supposed to be the original diary that was presented to anne frank on june 12, 1942, for her 13th birthday. Now : does the cursive hand look to you, like it could be from a 13-year-old girl ? And even if it were, how come it is so radically different than the handwriting for the caption, in red ? Or than the one for the last line on the right-hand-side page ? Doesn´t the cursive hand look way more like that of an adult, of a much older person, of a boring accountant or something ? Why would anne frank, had she really written those 2 entries herself, want to sign them with her name ? Twice, after each short entry ? This is supposed to be her own private diary, why sign each entry at all ? It sounds artificial - an excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta of sorts...Something like : Hey, you guys don´t buy the authenticity of this ? Well then, here´s a double signature, what more do you want ?... How could anne frank possibly have gone, on the same day, june 12, 1942, from the childish print hand of the caption, to the adult cursive of the 1st main entry ? Why would she want to add the line numbering ? Clearly here, hands other than anne´s have tampered with her photo album, adding diary entries she never wrote.
And signing each of them like an accountant would sign a check, to make believe that this was really anne frank´s writing. Maybe, the diary´s interpolators used a real photo album that had belonged to anne frank, and inserted into it those 2 entries in the cursive adult hand we see in the picture above. Someone else added the line numbering too later still, for editorial purposes of sorts. Probably the original draft of this partial forgery that is the so-called diary of anne frank wasn´t even written by hand, but by typewriter instead, and then added by hand to the diary much later, in the late 50ies/early 60ies, when judges ordered anne´s father otto to come up with the manuscript in order to ascertain authenticity, which had been challenged by some , prompting otto frank to start a legal challenge in court.
There is another oddity here worth noticing : on these first 2 pages of this alleged diary, the 2 main entries are dated and signed like they were a financial transaction or something ; the other 3 separate lines ( the words on the left page, the photo caption, the last line ) are undated and unsigned. The second dated and signed entry bears the date sept. 28, 1942 - one would assume, anne returned to this page 3 and a half months after receiving the diary. This entry is written around the red caption, therefore the undated red caption was written before sept. 28, 1942. Or anyway before the entry that dodges it. The last line says - one would assume, she´s happy she took the diary to her hiding place when she moved to prinsengracht 263 from where she had been living ( merwedeplein 37/II ), when she went into hiding with her family on july 6, 1942. Therefore that last line cannot have been written before july 6, 1942. In summation, anne frank is supposed to have written into these 2 first pages of her alleged diary on at least 3 separate days and using from a minimum of 3 different handwritings (childish print, adult cursive, line numbering hand) to a maximum of 5 ! There is only one plausible conclusion to be drawn from all this : none at all of the writings on the first 2 pages of anne frank´s alleged diary is authentic, except for the photo caption in red ink : this was again, a photo album and not a diary. The rest was interpolated at some later stage by forgers pretending to be anne frank. The dates and the signatures are false too.
Do not be fooled by the conclusions in F, by one engineer hardy - what does an engineer know about graphology ? - featured in this zionazi-friendly publication, and meant to prove that these radically different handwritings are all from anne frank at the same time. This engineer/graphologist only states that most of the writing in the alleged manuscripts of anne frank´s alleged diary is from her : that is to say, no absolute certainty here that those manuscript writings are by anne frank´s hand . And he does admit to the presence, albeit marginal in his view, of other hands in the manuscripts, notably for the line numbering and other details.
CHAPTER 4 : ALTERATIONS IN PROGRESS
If we know turn for a moment to the popular edition of anne frank´s diary, the current version that everyone reads today, we may notice that manuscript words are changed into something entirely different : take for instance the current standard german translation, ANNE FRANK TAGEBUCH, edited by otto h. frank and mirjam pressler, translated by mirjam pressler, fischer taschenbuch, 19th print, january 2013 ( first edition 2001 ) ( henceforth POP ), page 11 : the sept. 28, 1942 entry on the photo above, reads in POP:
.
Wheras the alleged manuscript entry on the photo above reads :
.
Thus you can see how the so-called diary of anne frank is really a work-in-progress, in which several persons other than anne have felt free over the decades to change whatever they pleased.
CHAPTER 5 : LITERARY PLAGIARISM
As I said in the introduction above, the alleged diary is a collage of 3 elements basically, the first 2 having to do with literary plagiarism from T and G. It is a very subtle sort of plagiarism, very professional , absolutely not creditable to an average 13-year-old such as anne frank. T is a novel about a 15-year-old girl, ilse, a contrarian and wild child, just like anne. The first leit-motif in T is the strong rapport ilse has with her father, as opposed to the hostility she harbors for her stepmother. Just like anne in the diary, who relates mostly positively to her dad otto, and negatively to her mother. On page 11 of T, we are on the second day of the novel, a june 12 : , says ilse´s father. And the diary of anne frank starts on a june 12. Just before that, ilse´s father has announced to his wife his decision to send ilse to a boarding school - she is to leave on july 1, and she will get to the school on july 2. Now, in the diary, the frank family moves to the hiding place on a july 6. And the hiding place will soon become a boarding school of sorts for anne, her sister margot and their teenage co-hider peter van pels.
F 215 : the second diary manuscript entry dates from sept. 28, 1942
T 250 : a letter to ilse informs her of an event from sept. 28 .
I am not suggesting that anne frank wasn´t born on a june 12, or that the franks didn´t move on a july 6. I am saying that whoever partially rewrote and partially forged the diary of anne frank, was well aware of the coincidences with T, and imitated the plot and the spirit and the ideology and many details of T throughout the rewrite/forgery that is the diary of anne frank.
We shall soon factor in dozens more striking similarities, but for now let us sum up the ones we have encountered so far :
T VERSUS DIARY:
about a rebellious teenage girl and her education ; about a rebellious teen and her education
ilse is a contrarian, temperamental ; anne is a contrarian, temperamental
ilse has a strong rapport with her father ; anne has a strong rapport with her father
ilse is hostile to her stepmother ; anne is hostile to her mother
the second day in the plot is a june 12 ; the first day is a june 12
ilse moves to a boarding school on a july 1, getting there on july 2 ; anne moves to her hiding place, which will become her own boarding school, on a july 6
a letter to ilse informs her of an event from sept. 28 ; the second diary manuscript entry dates from sept. 28.
It does look as if T, a very popular book in germany and beyond since 1885, was subtly plundered by the diary´s forgers in order to generate subliminal referents in the public´s minds to something they knew and liked. An undeclared sampling technique of sorts. Or using the bass line from a popular song to build another song on it.
Before we carry on with our synoptic reading of T versus F, let me just say that, since the first edition of the diary in 1947, for 71 long years ( as of this writing, march 29, 2018 ), the owners of these alleged manuscripts ( a whole series of bound notebooks and albums, plus a great number of loose sheets ) have refused to publish them in their entirety - thus nobody, except for what the anne frank fonds in basel , the anne frank stichting and the niod institute in amsterdam call legitimate researchers ( = prozionazi true believers in the authenticity) can verify whether or not these alleged manuscripts really feature all the materials published over the decades as the diary of anne frank ; and nobody can analyze the writings and all other details such as pics etc.
The diary appears, on a first level of approach, to have been carefully planned out on the literary pattern of T, which belongs to a genre in XVIII- to XIX-century french and german literature called erziehungsroman, educational novel, or backfischroman, young-girls´ novel, or bildungsroman, educational novel : a genre especially targeting a readership of teenage girls, which became immensely popular and still is in those countries. The teenage rebel in such novels goes from wild child to polite and refined young lady. So does ilse, so does anne.
Therefore, even though T is not a diary, still it is the story of the initiation of a backfisch into womanhood.
Both the manuscripts as printed in F, and T, begin with a lively exclamation by ilse () and anne (), punctuated by exclamation marks. There follows in T a short brushstroke about ilse´s physique : : just like anne frank. And the third and fourth dated entries in anne´s diary are about her physical features .
I am trying to point out that random coincidences in the lives of anne and ilse were carefully exploited by the diary´s rewriters/forgers in order to literarize the diary by molding it on T´s famous pattern.
Next up in T, ilse enthuses over her dog diana and her puppies - this is matched in anne´s diary by her frequent references to her cat moortje, which she has to leave behind at merwedeplein, and she will often sorely miss in the hiding place ( see for instance F 267, july 12, 1942, a ). Ilse too shall have to bid a a sad goodbye to her dog upon entering the boarding school.
There follows in T a description of 2 leit-motive common again to both books : first, how ilse is the apple of her father´s eye, just like anne is to otto ; second, how ilse´s clothing is stained and torn - anne will often describe the inadequacy of her clothes and shoes during the war.
The next scene in T features ilse´s stepmother scolding the kid over her unseemly behavior and shabby clothing in the presence of guests. And thereby, the leit-motif of ilse´s stubbornness and rebellious, hostile attitude unto her stepmother comes to the fore. In the diary too, as usual, one of the most frequent leitmotive is anne´s bitter hostility unto her mother.
Ilse despises, initially, the friend pair´s son, but will end up falling in love with him. Anne initially has a low opinion of peter van pels, but will end up falling in love.
Ilse expresses regret at his father´s choice to take another woman after his first wife´s, ilse´s mother´s, death ; anne will hint in the diary at his father´s unrequited love for another woman before marrying anne´s mother. When I say " anne " I thereby mean the diary´s rewriters/forgers - in primis, her father otto heinrich frank.
After being scolded by her stepmother over her poor dressing style and lack of manners, ilse says to herself she will never be a lady - and so does anne often in the diary.
As you see, virtually all, each and every single one of the leitmotifs around which T revolves, are picked up anew in the diary, and adapted to anne´s real-life persona. We shall encounter and list many more of these coincidences below. But it is not just about themes. It is about extraordinarily similar or near-identical details in the 3 erziehungsromane as well.
CHAPTER 6 : PLAGIARISM DOWN TO THE SMALL DETAILS
F 215, sept.28, 1942, a : anne lists female beauty marks that she either possesses or doesn´t : among the former, cheek and chin dimples : on page 26 of T, ilse´s room mate at the boarding
school ,nellie, gets >>. On F 644, march 24, 1944, a, peter asks anne to laugh because she then gets dimples in her cheeks !!!
F 692, april 16, 1944, a : anne writes about her first kiss from peter the day before, and underscores that she finished writing shortly before 11 a.m.
T 250 f. : nellie gets her first kiss from doktor althoff at 11 a.m.
T 26 : Once at the boarding school , ilse sees that . Once at the hiding place, anne will see through the windows, an imposing chestnut tree.
Once more : this is not to say that anne frank did not have dimples in her cheeks or that the chestnut tree in her garden is fiction . What I am trying to make clear is, that whoever cooked up the diary of anne frank, knew T perfectly well, and used it as a blueprint for his choice of materials - leitmotifs and details - to employ in the diary, whether or not such materials coincided with real-life events and details and attitudes of anne ´s. The inventio, the subject matter from the older novel seems to flow directly into the second, mutatis mutandis.
The dispositio too, the order in which narrative materials appear in the 2 novels, sometimes coincides : for instance, after ilse´s arrival at the boarding school, her first assignment is to arrange her stuff . Anne´s first assignment after arrival at the hiding place, is to arrange her family´s stuff . Both girls have a helper in this task : for ilse, her roommate nellie, for anne her father otto.
T , pages 86f., tells how ilse has made such progress at school, that an essay she has written is rated best, so she is praised by her teacher who reads ilse´s essay aloud to the whole class, a special honouring . In the diary, anne is assigned an essay as punishment for her chatting during class, she writes it in poetic form, and her teacher likes it so much that he reads and comments it aloud to the whole class and to his other classes.
Ilse´s teacher interrupts his reading with laughter, and ilse and her classmates laugh along. Anne´s teacher causes Anne´s class to laugh loudly, alongside anne, through the funny title of anne´s third punishment-essay extra assignment .
This amiable humor is employed by ilse´s teacher as a pedagogical means of correcting mistakes, more effective than angry words. Anne´s teacher too, changes tack and instead of assigning more extra work to anne when she chats, cracks little jokes.
The plagiarism here is subtle in that T´s words are not copied wholesale - which would have been a dead giveaway given T´s enormous popularity in germany and beyond. What does get plagiarized here is the point-for-point narrative material, but light variations are introduced which serve the purpose of concealing the source. Read the relevant passages from the 2 books synoptically now with me :
T pages 86f. : .
F, 239, june 21, 1942, b :
T 87 : .
F 239, ibidem : .
Let us call this modus operandi, varied plagiarism, shall we ?
Again : in this context, it is irrelevant to me whether or not this episode of the extra work for chatting in class really happened in anne´s life - T´s narrative material is matched point-for-point in the diary, so much so that, even if the thing with the extra work really happened to anne, its literarization in the diary is entirely derived from the T blueprint.
And crediting a 13-year-old with such professional literary skills is to be ruled out with the proverbial ...
CHAPTER 7 : JUGGLING 3 ORANGES
We shall now have to add G to our discussion. And start juggling the 3 oranges , T, F and G, at once, to fully grasp the collage work that is the diary of anne frank.
T: ilse macket is a 15-year-old backfisch, a contrarian, from a well-to-do family.
G: jakob von gunten is a young contrarian from a well-to-do family.
F: anne frank from start to end of her diary, is a 13- to 15-year-old backfisch and contrarian,
from a well-to-do family.
T: ilse loves her softie dad, who has spoiled her rotten, but misbehaves with her (step)mother.
G: jakob has a contradictory, tormented, love-hate relationship with his family
F: anne loves her softie dad otto heinrich frank, who has spoiled her rotten, but cannot stand her
mother, edith-holländer frank.
T: 2 dates stand out in the beginning : a june 12 and a july 1.
F : 2 dates stand out in the beginning : a june 12 and a july 6.
T: on a june 12, ilse´s father, richard macket, decides that enough is enough and ilse is to move to a boarding school on july 1, where she is to be disciplined and properly educated and brought up.
G: jakob registers as a pupil with a boarding school, the institut benjamenta.
F: on june 12, 1942, anne receives from her dad as a 13th-birthday present, a diary into which she starts writing right away. On the subsequent july 6, 1942, anne moves out of her amsterdam home at merwedeplein 37/II and into the at prinsengracht 263, which will soon become a boarding school of sorts for her.
F 215 : the second diary manuscript entry bears the date sept. 28, 1942
T 250 : a letter to ilse informs her of an event from sept. 28 .
F : anne arrives at her own " boarding house of sorts " on a july 6
T : ilse arrives at her boarding school on a july 2
T 33 : when ilse arrives at the school on july 2, her roommate nellie helps her unpack her chest and finds a brand new diary in it, a surprise present from ilse´s mother.
G: the whole novel is in diaristic form.
F: upon unwrapping her birthday presents on june 12, anne receives her brand new diary, a present from her father.
F 351, dec. 5, 1942, a : anne receives, among other hanukkah/saint nicholas presents, a lock for her diary.
T 33 : when ilse sees her brand new diary, a present from her stepmother, it is locked, and she has to turn the little key in the lock to open it.
T: nellie, upon seeing ilse´s diary, exclaims : .
F: anne´s comment on her new diary : ( june 14 entry ).
T: another schoolgirl, flora hopfstange, keeps a diary and also writes novels, poetry, plays.
F: anne writes her diary ; tales ; fairy tales ; plans a novel about the annex ; includes other people´s poetry in her diary.
T 34 : in a note accompanying ilse´s diary, her mother has written :
F 221, 20.6.1942 entry,b : .
T 243 :
F 215, june 12, 1942, a :
T 40 : flora hopfstange is wary of intruders peeking at her solitary writing.
F : so is anne, several times.
As you can plainly see, the very diary motif, the very idea for this rewrite/forgery in diary form that is the diary of anne frank, is filched from T and G. The very way in which anne relates to her diary as it were the she-friend she lacks. The kinds of things anne writes about. The ruse of the diary as a present.
Again : one need no literary models to make believe that a teenage girl wrote a diary - but the narrative elaboration of the diary motif in F is entirely patterned around the blueprint of T and G.
Even the lie that anne frank used for her diary manuscripts in part bound books and in part loose sheets, is stolen from T : on page 107, flora the writer and diary-keeper pulls out from her pocket !!
CHAPTER 8 : ON HANDBAG MIRRORS
F 220, 20.6.1942 , b entry : >>.
This too has illustrious literary precedents in the history of german literature : the first that comes to mind is e.t.a. hoffmann, der sandmann, insel verlag 1986, page 42 :
>>.
Even more precisely, the diary´s forgers filched the handbag mirror as such, from hoffmann as well : in his tale Das öde haus, The abandoned house, published in 1817, hoffmann describes how theodor buys a handbag mirror from a huckster, so as to be able to peep at a lady in the house, while sitting unseen by her, his back to the house, on a street bench.
Another hoffmann tale coming into play here as a literary model, is Des vetters Eckfenster, The cousin´s corner window, from 1822 : a sick, home-confined writer spends his time watching the crowds in the square below from his window. We may notice in passing, that hoffmann in his own turn here, had overtly taken his cue from karl friedrich kretschmann´s 1799 tale Scarron am fenster. In hoffmann, the sick man passes his cousin his spyglass so the latter may catch the details...
The handbag-mirror motif above in the diary is also traceable , as usual, to our 2 main models
here :
T, 141 : .
G, 23 : .
From those 2, otto & his gang of forgers filched the idea of adapting hoffmann´s handbag mirror detail to school pupils.
Again you can plainly see here what I mean by varied plagiarism and cento or collage forging technique : the handbag-mirror thing is a famous detail in german literature ; the using of it to catch glimpses of girls is from hoffmann ; the putting of it in the hands of school pupils is from both T and G. The spyglass is likewise from hoffmann. What the forgers are doing here is, variation on a theme by way of cento, or collage . The 3 sources are reshuffled and combined into one narrative cell , so as to cover the traces of the subtle literary theft and artifice here.
There are two unwitting hints in the diary at otto´s working method in forging it : F 671, april 6, 1944, a : >>...
And : a collection of favorite quotes from the books she read is also attributed to anne frank :
https://www.fischerverlage.de/site/anne_frank/home
This collection is likely what the diary is referring to as well at one point : otto and his team of forgers worked around collections of quotes they had made, such as the one attributed to anne on F 697, april 18, 1944, a : >>.
Otto frank did know his german classics, and insisted with his daughters that they read them too, as the diary attests to. In the 30ies, otto had paid anneliese schütz, a jewish-german journalist and teacher, to privately tutor his daughters in the german classics.
Still, passages such as the handbag mirror in the diary, displaying professional plagiarism-dissimulated--by-way-of-collage skills, may absolutely not be credited to a 13-year-old : such passages, like the rest of the diary´s first draft, are by otto frank and anneliese schütz. Again : likely anne had indeed read hoffman or T as a child, or otto had read them to her - but the way the voyeur diary passages are written up, the subtle literary plagiarism by way of collage - no 13-year-old would ever have been able to pull THAT off.
The hoffmann ideas and passages above are plagiarized again elsewhere in the diary :
saturday nov.28, 1942 entry, (b), F 372 :
lady. >>>.
The hoffmann archetypes were popularized by hitchcock´s 1954 rear window, in turn based on cornell woolrich´s 1942 short story It had to be murder. Which in its turn, had been based on h.g.well´s 1894 short story Through a window. And whoever concocted this diary passage with peeping anne , whether otto himself ( an avid reader of german as well as english classics) or anneliese schütz or both together, knew and used both well´s and woolrich´s short stories. The passage above was indeed present in the 1947 first dutch ed, if this is it :
http://affordance.typepad.com//files/anne-frank.txt
But it wasn´t written by anne, who was hardly proficient in english, in 1942 or rewritten by her in 1944, that´s for sure . Compare for proof the following :
diary : >>
wells : >>
diary : >>
wells : >> .
Even more startling is the plagiarism from woolrich´s short story, because cornell woolrich's story "It had to be murder" first appeared in Dime detective magazine in february 1942 and then, as a book, in the 1944 collection After-dinner story, in new york : it is improbable/implausible that by nov. 28, 1942 , or even by may-july 1944 when she allegedly wrote version b, anne frank would have found it, translated or not, in amsterdam...:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CORNELL-WOOLRICH-AFTER-DINNER-STORY-by-WILLIAM-IRISH-2nd-Printing-in-Jacket/382129683079?hash=item58f8b43a87:g:TNQAAOSw-89ZQugK
diary : >>
woolrich : >>
diary : >>
woolrich : >>
diary : >>
woolrich : >>
diary : >>
woolrich : >>.
See what I mean by varied plagiarism ? Variations on a theme...And collage : reshuffling this bit from hoffmann, that from wells, this from woolrich, etc...
Another extraordinary instance of plagiarism-by-collage not only of basic narrative ideas, but also of single details and phraseology, on the part of the otto/schütz/etc. forgers´ team, occurs with the dec.12, 1942 diary entry ( F 380f. ) (b) : it is obviously again, as above, the b version, a literarized remake/expansion entirely the forgers´work, not featuring a single word by anne frank:
eckfenster : >>
F 381 : >>
eckfenster : >>
F 380 : >>
eck : >>
F 380 : >>
woolrich : >>
F 380 : >>
wells : >>
F381 : >>
woolrich : >>
F 380 : >>
I just hope I can rest my case here : none of this ever happened to real-life anne frank. It is nothing but literary artifice and collagewise plagiarism or cento or patchwork. Professionally sewn together by forger pros - not the stuff of a 13-year-old .
The die-hard-fan´s, justificationist approach would indignantly object here that it´s not poor anne frank´s fault if she lived along a canal where houseboats were moored - this was amsterdam after all, what´s so strange about canals and houseboats, one need not h.g.wells to see a houseboat from an a´dam window ! Anyone stuck inside a house for months and years would exercise or get bored or wanna peep from the window !
Really ? Scores and hundreds of parallel passages - all natural-born coincidences ? Endless textual similarities or identities - random ? Callida-iunctura galore, such as books+boredom+window, or
hurry+fall, or exercise+night+window, or ship+amusement+window+houseboat-right-opposite :
all random coincidence, or reads reminiscence at best ? mm...be my guest, blind believer...
Most likely, the diary scenes featuring anne being peeped at through mirrors or prying into neighbors´ homes with a spyglass, never happened at all - thay were meant to enhance the diary´s literary, entertainment and commercial appeal : hoffmann sells, so let´s hoffmannize !
But even in the unlikely case that said factoids did happen to anne for real, their literarization in the diary is entirely molded after hoffman, G, T, woolrich and wells.
Recommended reads :
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/71574%7C0/The-Big-Idea.html
http://www.miettecast.com/woolrich.pdf
https://americanliterature.com/author/hg-wells/short-story/through-a-window
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/25/business/final-twist-in-rear-window-case.html
The 1942 woolrich story It had to be murder, retitled Rear window for the 1944 book edition, is a real terminus post quem for the composition of the so-called diary of anne frank, or at least for the passages above that plagiarize woolrich : such passages at least, if not the whole diary, cannot have been written before liberation. They most likely date from 1945-1947.
And it doesn´t end here...the hoffmannian anne-looks-out-the-window scene pattern reoccurs again in the june 13, 1944 entry (a), F 767 - only this time, the sauce is à la jean paul for a change.
Johann paul friedrich richter (aka jean paul) (1763-1825) was a german writer. His novel Hesperus oder 45 hundposttage came out in 1795. Here is how the otto/schütz & co. forgers´ team plunders , as usual per varied plagiarism, one of its passages :
F 767, june 13, 1944, a : >>
Hesp : >>
Each and every literary element in the diary´s entry is filched from jean paul and reshuffled with variations intended to conceal the source...I´ll show you how to play the game one last time : from now on, practice on your own ok ? :
Hesp : Orion...lonely
F : I went all alone
Hesp : a dark rotunda
F : the dark evening
Hesp : the thunderstorms of life
F : the storm
Hesp : the light of the moon, moonlight
F : the moon
Hesp : its drifting clouds
F : the drifting clouds
Hesp : the strings calmed down his craving
F : contemplating...makes me calm
Hesp : the longing spirit
F : my longing
Hesp : the starry sky
F : the sky...and the stars
Hesp : an enormous fear
F : greater than my fear
Reshuffle is the name of the game - a con game called the diary of anne frank.
Unless again, you think that a 15-year-old human being is capable of such supersubtle, highly professional burglaries...
Jean paul´s text here :
http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/paul_hesperus02_1795/?hl=Horion&p=94
CHAPTER 9 : CLASSMATES, SELF-ED
In the first part of all 3 books under scrutiny , F, T and G, we encounter a description of single classmates. In F, it occurs in the june 15, 1942 entry : anne´s attitude unto her mates is judgemental and mostly negative. In G, 5 there begins a description of single classmates, with the same judgemental and substantially negative attitude, in the guise of a forced, artificial appreciation. In T, pages 39-41, single boarding school girls are described.
G 83 mentions jakob´s ideals of self-education or upbringing :
The Sept. 28, 1942 ( confusingly featured within the june 19, 1942 ) entry on F 233, a ( page 31 of checkered-diary manuscript ) features a letter from otto to anne of may 11 or 12, 1939 : .
The same concept is repeated in the march 7, 1944 entry (b) , F 593, this time by anne herself directly : .
And again in the july 15, 1944 entry (a), F 781 : .
Anne, that is the forgers, appear to be obsessed with self-ed, so much so as to regale us with a 4th variation on that theme in the STORIES AND EVENTS FROM THE ANNEX, henceforth S, tale "why" : .
Here, both G and F are dependent on a common source : goethe, wilhelm meister´s apprenticeship, 3, again an educational novel just like T and G and F : says wilhelm in a letter to his brother-in-law werner.
We know that otto frank, the real main author of the diary he fraudulently credited to his dead daughter , was truly obsessed with this pedagogy of self-upbringing, because he had sent anne to a montessori school in amsterdam before nazi racial segregation would compel her to transfer to the jewish lyceum. And we know he was an avid reader of classic german literature. So clearly here his starting point was goethe, and the pestalozzi-montessori pedagogical tradition.
Otto writes a letter to anne in which he extols self-ed, because wilhelm meister had written a letter to werner in which he extolled self-ed. The letter might just be authentic : otto´s work, just like the rest of the so-called diary of anne frank.
Diary entries such as july 15, 1944, a, read like a montessorian treaty on self-upbringing. All of the key words/concepts in maria montessori´s pedagogy are repeatedly, obsessively plagiarized here :
self-awareness ; self-consciousness ; self-appraisal ; self-upbringing ; self-therapy ; anne-for-herself;
self-confidence-building. Here is a good introduction to montessori´s lingo and pedagogy :
>>
(Montessori, 1972, p.67-68). >>>
>>
https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-ku-eichstaett/files/37/dissertation_hellwig_verlag.pdf
pp. 68f., 71
Here is again a sample of key montessorian lingo versus the diary´s varied plagiarism of same :
F 781 : Selbsterkenntnis/Selbstgefühl/Selbst-verurteilen/Selbst-erziehen
MM : Selbstdisziplin /Selbsterziehung
F 782 : die Bildung von jemandes charakter liegt in seiner eigenen hand
MM : Selbstbildung/Selbstschöpfung / aus eigener kraft
F782 : Selbst habe ich mich geheilt, durch mir selbst das verkehrte meines tuns vorzuhalten
MM : Selbstbeherrschung / Selbstdisziplin/ Selbsteroberung/ Meister seiner selbst
F 781 : Self-knowledge/Self-perception/Self-judgement/Self-upbringing
MM : Self-discipline /Self-upbringing
F782 : the building of one´s character lies in one´s own hands
MM : Self-building/Self-creation/ by one´s own strength
F 782 : I have healed myself, by accusing myself of what was wrong in my actions
MM : Self-control/Self-discipline/Self-conquest/One´s own master
And though anne frank had indeed attended a montessori school until age 12, to credit her with such a level of theoretical pedagogical achievement and self-introspection, as to give us a lesson on montessorian philosophy at age 15, is being naive to say the least.
Here is a synopsis of F passages against maria montessori´s pedagogical insights :
F 782 :>>
MM : >>
F 784:
little >>>
MM :
fulfilled. >>>
Source for the cited presentation of montessori´s pedagogy for adolescents :
https://www.montessorizentrum-muenster.de/lehre/montessori-p%C3%A4dagogik/sekundarschule/
See for reference :
Maria Montessori, Dall'infanzia all'adolescenza, Milano, Garzanti, 1949 (I edizione originale francese con il titolo De l'enfant à l'adolescent, 1948).
In this case alone the first dutch edition of the diary actually precedes montessori´s book by one year. But then again, maria montessori had by then been repeating her key pedagogical insights for decades ad nauseam. Her book Self-upbringing, for one, dates from the 1910s.
CHAPTER 10 : HOMO SEX
In a famous F 509 entry, jan.6, 1944 (a), anne writes : >>
This is nothing but the transposition in the feminine of a famous scene in G 9-11 :
T has its lesbian moments too, though way softer : on page 201, ilse ; on page 214, as ilse is leaving the school, her mentor miss güssow .
Another G-style bed lie-in in the diary : F 306, sept.27, 1942, a .
CHAPTER 11 : SLAPPING MAMA IN THE FACE
As we saw above, another common thread in all 3 books, T, G and F, is hostility unto one´s mother.
In the oct. 3, 1942 entry (a) , anne expresses her anger at her mother in the most violent terms:
. G 36 had used the exact same words : .
Do you happen to know any other examples of literary slapping one´s mother in the face ? It is true that " I could really slap someone in the face " is a common expression of anger in german - but please just find me any other instance of this expression applied to one´s own mother in any literature - my point being : the callida iunctura I could slap him/her in the face + one´s own mother as object , is so remarkably original as to constitute plagiarism by F of G ...
And of course, anne´s mother after the umpteenth clash with her daughter described in the same entry, begins to cry a lot - jakob´s mother at G 37, cries after the violent clash with her son that jakob has seen in his dreams.
CHAPTER 12 : ICE DANCING
Yet another blatant instance of plagiarism of G by F, occurs in a diary passage not included in the popular edition that everyone reads: F 334, a, beifügung 93b, to oct. 18, 1942 entry : in a note attached to her diary, anne recounts a sort of reverie of hers about being in switzerland with her cousin bernd, who was an ice dancer :
.
Again, this is nothing but varied plagiarism of G 125, a dream-like, magical scene starring jakob and his teacher :
.
Now again for the umpteenth time : this cousin bernd aka buddy elias who lived in switzerland was a real person, and he really was an accomplished ice dancer. Therefore one might object here, it´s only natural that anne would dream of becoming his partner on the rink - no need to think the scene is filched from G. But : first of all, again, this scene in the diary is not in the main narrative flow - it occurs in a note attached to the diary, as if someone had thought it up extra for insertion in the diary. It´s an afterthought, an addition, it is not in the main body of text. It has completely nothing to do with what precedes or follows it in the main text. And though anne is alleged to have rewritten her diary in view of post-war publishing (version b), this scene with bernd is not to be found in version b. It is a solitary, separate note, a draft of a new scene, that someone slipped in at this point in the diary for possible future use - possibly in a film adaptation. There is nothing spontaneous about it.
Second : even if anne herself had dreamt up such a scene because she had an ice-skating cousin , and had wanted to recount it in her diary, what about the telltale detail of the color blue ? In F, it becomes the color of her partner´s outfit ; in G, it is the color of the sky.
Another common detail is the reaction, of the public in anne´s dream, of jakob in his own :
F 334 : .
G 125 :
My point is, that even supposing for a moment that anne herself had decided to add her dream of ice-dancing with bernd to the diary, the way that the passage is literarized, written up, structured, owes a lot to G. Again as if someone who knew both anne´s life and G well, had noticed the coincidence between the fact that anne had an ice-dancing cousin, and the rink dream in G, and had decided to knock off G but adapting the scene to fit the cousin in. The very framework in which the 2 parallel scenes are encased in both F and G is the same : reverie, dream, magic.
I think that all this will become clearer to you soon: because the diary of anne frank features a second rink scene :
F 597, march 8, 1944 entry (a) :
So again here the color blue, transposed from G´s sky to the sister´s outfit, as above to bernd´s . And again, G´s dreamy framework. In F, anne dreams of kissing and feeling peter´s cheeks. In G, jakob is brought back to school by magic, and his teacher, miss benjamenta, is standing behind him, stroking his cheeks !! And just like anne is put off by the coarseness of peter´s cheeks, similarly jakob feels that miss benjamenta is stroking him not as if to comfort him, but as if to comfort herself. And just like the ice scene in G is followed by dinner, analogously the second ice scene in F is followed by lunch.
F´s forgers used G as their blueprint for rewriting/faking anne´s diary, and adapted G to anne´s life´s real or imagined details, which they knew as intimately, or were easily able to simulate, because the forger-in-chief was anne´s father otto.
T plays a role here as well : on pages 135f., for xmas ilse receives splendid pink fabric that makes nellie exclaim it will become a beautiful dancing costume, and nellie receives the same in pale-blue: again, F´s and G´s ice-dancing scene colors.
Real or simulated details from anne frank´s life were literarized and woven into a coherent narrative by guntenizing and trotzizing them.
Many other diary features and mosaic tesserae were drawn from richardson´s pamela and most of all, van marxveldt´s joop ter heul, but since even mainstream authors couldn´t help but notice them, albeit from a justificationist perspective, I´ll refer you to :
simone schroth
das tagebuch
waxmann verlag 2006
especially chapter 2.3
partially online at :
https://books.google.it/books?id=P1Kp_X7T1L8C&pg=PA3&hl=it&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
I would just like to remark here that the joop ter heul elements in the diary cannot be considered plagiarism, but imitation instead, as joop is the only literary source explicitly cited by the diary´s authors as a model.
CHAPTER 13 : PLAGIARIZING ANCESTORS
Among otto frank´s relatives, there had been a math professor called moritz (moses) stern (1807-1894) [GK 422] [GK=pressler book grüße un küsse an alle, see full ref below]. Now this guy had a penchant for diary writing. GK 59 quotes an excerpt from his diary, to which otto would apply his usual varied plagiarism :
moritz : >>
F 781, july 15,1944,a : >>
F 776, july 6, 1944,a : >>
Otto/anne also copies from moritz phrasings such as " the right way", " to mend one´s ways".
This whole self-upbringing-related idea of duplicating oneself in order to criticize/mend oneself
" objectively " occurs twice in the manuscripts :
F 781, july 15, 1944, a :
stranger. >>>
F 522, jan.12, 1944, a+b : >>
Aside from moritz´s blueprint here, we also may hear an echo of goethe´s doppelgänger, from Dichtung und wahrheit, part 3, book 11 : >>.
