Research into the Anne Frank Manuscripts

Huygens Institute and the Anne Frank House (Amsterdam) are collaborating on the scholarly editing of and new historical research into the manuscripts of Anne Frank. This research focuses on Anne Frank’s development as a writer and on the events that she described.

The best-known example of Anne’s writing is her red-checked diary she got as a gift for her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942. In het Achterhuis she had already written this first diary within half a year and she continued in other cahiers. Two of these have been preserved. In addition, there are more than two hundred sheets of carbonless paper (also known as ‘loose sheets’) on which Anne rewrote her diaries from the spring of 1944 onwards. She hoped to be able to publish this version after the war as a ‘novel of the Achterhuis’. She also wrote short stories and kept a cash book with quotes from the books she read during the hiding period. These texts are also part of the research.

Huygens Institute’s innovative methods and scholarly editing expertise ensure the optimum study of Anne Frank’s manuscripts. The texts will be subjected to an integral review and comparison, including sections that have been crossed out, improvements, stains, etc. In addition to this textual analysis, the researchers will also study the manuscripts’ historical aspects, interconnections and backgrounds.

In late September 2021, the results of the research were published in a digital edition. However, the website www.annefrankmanuscripten.org is not accessible from within the Netherlands, not even via a VPN. A geo-blocking system has been put in place to restrict access from Dutch IP addresses due to copyright regulations, which remain in effect in the Netherlands until 1 January 2037. As a result, the online edition can only be accessed from around sixty countries where copyright no longer applies, for example, Belgium, Germany, and the Dutch Caribbean.