like in the memoirs of the greatest writers.” Like the children in Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica, wrote Romein, Anne Frank sees the world and especially herself “with a candid frankness, unjudgemental and down to earth.”
Without knowing that she was weighing in on a soon-to-be controversial question—the issue of whether or not Anne’s diary was, strictly speaking, a Holocaust document—Romein observed, “This diary is also a document about the war, about the persecution of the Jews. The life of those in hiding is beautifully described by this child who had in any case that one essential quality of a great writer: to remain unbiased, to be unable to get used to, and therefore blinded by, the way things are.”
The other thing Romein seems not to have known was how carefully Anne revised her diary, nor does she seem to have taken seriously Anne’s reflection, in the aftermath of the Dutch minister’s radio broadcast, on how interesting it would be if the romance of Het Achterhuis were published.
“The diary is pure conversation with herself. There’s not one disturbing thought about future readers, not one faint echoof…the will to please.”
Favorably reviewed, Anne’s book did moderately, if not extremely, well in the Netherlands. It was reprinted again at the end of the year, twice in 1948, once in 1949, and not again until 1950—after which it went out of print until 1955, when its success in the United States created new demand. However modest, the book’s reception in Holland helped interest editors elsewhere in Europe. The Dutch edition was in its sixth printing when Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank was published in Germany in 1950.
In an attempt to capture Anne’s voice, the German translation made mistakes in tone, and, for fear of alienating its projected audience, omitted references to the anti-German sentiment in the secret annex. The prohibitions against listening to German radio stations and speaking German—a problem for Mrs. Frank and Mrs. Van Pels, who had never become entirely fluent in Dutch—appear nowhere in Das Tagebuch, and a reference to the hatred between Jews and Germans was changed to read “these Germans.”
In an April 1959 interview in Der Spiegel, the original Dutch-into-German translator, Anneliese Schütz, explained. “A book intended after all for sale in Germany cannot abuse the Germans.” This reluctance to offend readers in a country whose leaders had murdered the book’s author was one gauge of the speed at which the diary had already become a commodity that the public might, or might not, choose to buy. Despite the editing changes, the first printing was not a commercial success in Germany.
I N THE United States, Anne Frank’s diary was initially rejected by nearly every major publishing house. “It is an interesting document,” admitted an editor in the American branch of theinternational firm Querido, based in Amsterdam, “but I do not believe there will be enough interest in the subject in this country to make publication over here a profitable business.”
Ernst Kuhn, a friend of Otto’s who worked at the Manufacturers Hanover Bank in New York, took on the challenge of trying to find the diary an American home. Just as in Europe, the book was viewed as being too narrowly focused, too domestic, too Jewish, too boring, and, above all, too likely to remind readers of what they wished to forget. Americans did not want to hear about the war. “Under the present frame of mind of the American public,” an editor at Vanguard wrote Kuhn, “you cannot publish a book with war as a background.”
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. turned down the manuscript on the grounds that it was “very dull,” a “dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when
Without knowing that she was weighing in on a soon-to-be controversial question—the issue of whether or not Anne’s diary was, strictly speaking, a Holocaust document—Romein observed, “This diary is also a document about the war, about the persecution of the Jews. The life of those in hiding is beautifully described by this child who had in any case that one essential quality of a great writer: to remain unbiased, to be unable to get used to, and therefore blinded by, the way things are.”
The other thing Romein seems not to have known was how carefully Anne revised her diary, nor does she seem to have taken seriously Anne’s reflection, in the aftermath of the Dutch minister’s radio broadcast, on how interesting it would be if the romance of Het Achterhuis were published.
“The diary is pure conversation with herself. There’s not one disturbing thought about future readers, not one faint echoof…the will to please.”
Favorably reviewed, Anne’s book did moderately, if not extremely, well in the Netherlands. It was reprinted again at the end of the year, twice in 1948, once in 1949, and not again until 1950—after which it went out of print until 1955, when its success in the United States created new demand. However modest, the book’s reception in Holland helped interest editors elsewhere in Europe. The Dutch edition was in its sixth printing when Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank was published in Germany in 1950.
In an attempt to capture Anne’s voice, the German translation made mistakes in tone, and, for fear of alienating its projected audience, omitted references to the anti-German sentiment in the secret annex. The prohibitions against listening to German radio stations and speaking German—a problem for Mrs. Frank and Mrs. Van Pels, who had never become entirely fluent in Dutch—appear nowhere in Das Tagebuch, and a reference to the hatred between Jews and Germans was changed to read “these Germans.”
In an April 1959 interview in Der Spiegel, the original Dutch-into-German translator, Anneliese Schütz, explained. “A book intended after all for sale in Germany cannot abuse the Germans.” This reluctance to offend readers in a country whose leaders had murdered the book’s author was one gauge of the speed at which the diary had already become a commodity that the public might, or might not, choose to buy. Despite the editing changes, the first printing was not a commercial success in Germany.
I N THE United States, Anne Frank’s diary was initially rejected by nearly every major publishing house. “It is an interesting document,” admitted an editor in the American branch of theinternational firm Querido, based in Amsterdam, “but I do not believe there will be enough interest in the subject in this country to make publication over here a profitable business.”
Ernst Kuhn, a friend of Otto’s who worked at the Manufacturers Hanover Bank in New York, took on the challenge of trying to find the diary an American home. Just as in Europe, the book was viewed as being too narrowly focused, too domestic, too Jewish, too boring, and, above all, too likely to remind readers of what they wished to forget. Americans did not want to hear about the war. “Under the present frame of mind of the American public,” an editor at Vanguard wrote Kuhn, “you cannot publish a book with war as a background.”
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. turned down the manuscript on the grounds that it was “very dull,” a “dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when
Similar Books
