Anne Frank; The Biography

By Melissa Muller

Updated and filled with striking new revelations, the bestselling, “superb” biography that “honors in full a life we thought we knew” (Newsweek)Praised as “remarkable,” “meticulous,” and “long overdue,” Anne Frank: The Biography, originally published in 1998, still stands as the definitive account of the girl who has become “the human face of the Holocaust.” For this nuanced portrait of her famous subject, biographer Melissa Müller drew on exclusive interviews with family and friends as well as on previously unavailable correspondence, even, in the process, discovering five missing diary pages. Full of revelations, Müller’s richly textured narrative returned Anne Frank to history, portraying the flesh-and-blood girl unsentimentalized and so all the more affecting.Now, fifteen years after the book first appeared, much new information has come to light: letters sent by Otto Frank to relatives in America as he sought to emigrate with his family, the identity of other suspects involved in the betrayal of the Franks, and important details about the family’s arrest and subsequent fate. Revised and updated with more than thirty percent new material, this is an indispensable volume for all those who seek a deeper understanding of Anne Frank and the brutal times in which she lived and died.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jun 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780805087314

Melissa Muller

Melissa Muller is an author and journalist living in Munich. Her collaboration with Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Secretary, was translated into more than twenty languages and became an international bestseller. She is also the author of Anne Frank: The Biography.

Reviews for Anne Frank; The Biography

[krosero-766800 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great biography of Anne Frank; its style is simple and selfless, entirely in service of the subject.

I'm a slow reader, but it took me less than two days to finish.

Actually I felt as if I read three books here.

The first of these consists of the years before the Franks went into hiding. Ms. Muller tells us vividly about what was going on in Germany in the eyes of ordinary people like Anne's father, Otto. It is gripping to read about people's decisions in those days to leave or not to leave Germany. Their growing fear is palpable, and if you've only read Anne's diary, it may be especially interesting for you to read about the impact on the Franks of Hitler's occupation of Holland, which took place two years before Anne began her diary.

Then come the years in hiding, which is a very different part of the biography -- the second of three "books" or distinct experiences that I had. The prelude to the hiding consists of a portrait of the "external" world, in which Anne herself appears as an extroverted child, one with a personality more difficult than I had imagined, and one who was not yet aware of the larger history taking place around her; I dare say she can be the least interesting element of the first part of the biography. But once we come to the years in hiding, Anne is forced to become more introspective, and her inner life comes to the fore.

This part of the biography actually becomes something of a meditation on family life and human intimacy. My reading slowed down, but the content was actually more interesting than the large-scale historical portrait. This was really more than I had expected from a biography of one girl -- it turned into a sympathetic account of Anne's whole family and its individual members. The discussion of a formerly unpublished diary entry concerning the Franks' marriage, which delves as well into the issue of censorship, is, I think, the highlight of the book. It is obvious that Ms. Muller is both sympathetic to the protagonists and committed to the truth, which makes the subsequent turn to other well-trod subjects, like Anne's own love life, appear like an anticlimax.

Still, the story does not flag, and we arrive finally at the "third" section of the biography, the account of the betrayal and the concentration camps. To say that this material is gripping is to say nothing. Yet I was newly disturbed by the details here. From a historical point of view, what Ms. Muller has highlighted to great effect is how everything the Nazis did was intended not just to destroy, but also to humiliate. This had already been clear in Ms. Muller's chronicling of the sequence of restrictions placed upon the lives of Dutch Jews, which are rightly described as "malevolent." Here at the close of the book we see it repeatedly, as when Ms. Muller describes the disorientation that Jewish prisoners must have felt upon disembarking from trains at Auschwitz and being greeted with high floodlights and whippings. This is large-scale history from the personal vantage point, as with any biography -- but it enhances the history around it. Often what the Nazis did, because it is analyzed in an attempt to understand how it came about and how it functioned, is remembered in the abstract, so that, for instance, the restrictions on Dutch Jews can seem merely like the necessary steps to genocide rather than the malevolent expressions of hatred that they also were.

In the end the biography, though impossible to put down, becomes hard to read. The one negative thing I can say about the last part of the book is that it is so horrifying, it overwhelms a reader's reception of the gifts in the earlier sections; those have to be taken in again under a second reading.

[linda.marsheells · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Most of have read about Anne Frank, or at least heard of this young girl. Bright , vivacious , and insightful Anne, along with her mother and sister, is murdered by the cruel Nazi regime of WW2. THIS particular book by Marcia Muller is most likely the most informative and well-researched bio of the the girl that was, and the young woman she was becoming.

[robinrowlesauthor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very readable.. compulsively so.. Here is a personal tragedy;
A well-written account, with a strong narrative and a seamless meshing of biographical and historical detail.

[melydia_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Well, I tried. I read the first hundred pages and was bored to tears. Every page was a struggle to finish without nodding off. You'd think it'd be difficult to make Nazi Germany boring, but apparently not. There were so many names and places and dates that I felt like I was reading a textbook, not a biography. Ultimately I realized that as important and tragic as Anne Frank's story is, I just couldn't get through this particular telling of it. I'll stick with the original diary and leave this tome for those who want every last detail.

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As part of the new national curriculum for 7th, the Holocaust is now part of the social studies curriculum. In language arts we have a coordinating curriculum. So, after many years I had to brush up on my Anne Frank knowledge. We decided to teach the play version of the diary, a choice I would not make again, but it was available. Muller's biography balanced out that treacly oversimplification of Frank and her relationship with the other residents of The Secret Annex, especially better portraying her difficult relationship with her mother. On the whole the biography is balanced though at times leanings towards fawning. Considering the subject this would be difficult to avoid.

[hobbitprincess · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For several years, I taught The Diary of Anne Frank as an 8th grade English teacher. I have read several books on Anne, including a couple of different biographies. I was eager to read this one, and I was not disappointed. I would consider the most comprehensive biography of an incredible young woman. I learned many things about Anne that were only alluded to in other things I have read. I have a clearer picture of the true person that she was than I have had before. Muller does not canonize Anne but presents her as the talented multi-faceted teenager that she was. Sometimes she is a spoiled little girl, and at other times, she is a young woman who has insights that few teenagers would have. Additional information is included in this book also, information about her father's business (which frankly left me confused, to be honest!), relevant historical information, and insights into her extended family. The reader especially gets to know her father much more, which would be expected since he alone of the family survived. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about this extraordinary young lady whose writings have touched so many and who has left a lasting legacy beyond value. **I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.**

[sweeks1980 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" has become such a mainstay in culture and literature that is can be easy to forget that Anne Frank’s life did not begin (or end) in the famous Secret Annex and that the diary only tells a small part of her story. After reading the diary and Francine Prose’s excellent "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife" and teaching the two theatrical versions of the diary, I thought I had a well-rounded knowledge base on Anne Frank’s life. However, Melissa Muller’s "Anne Frank: The Biography" filled in some notable gaps, specifically in terms of Edith and Otto Frank’s early lives. Muller’s biography is impressive on a number of fronts. Although the ending is a foregone conclusion for most people, she builds a sense of suspense. Reading the book, I felt myself hoping for a different outcome even though I knew the inevitable conclusion. This biography skillfully melds meticulous research with an engaging and approaching writing style, and the outcome is a compulsively readable and informative work. I especially appreciated the epilogue, which provides details on the fates of many of the people mentioned in the book. The only problem this caused was that, each time I encountered a person in the book, I felt the urge to flip to the back to see what happened to him or her (this, I realize, is an issue on my part and not on the part of the author).While this book can’t (and wasn’t meant to) act as a substitute for the diary, it makes an excellent companion piece and supplement. I could see it being a great resource for educators who teach the diary, students who want to learn more about Anne Frank, or anyone who has read the diary and wondered about the rest of Anne’s story.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Anne Frank has become one of the most important icons of the holocaust. Her diary and its dramatizations have been most effective at creating the image of an innocent who was murdered by the Nazis for nothing more than being Jewish. Unfortunately, some of her humanity, human relations and family history have been lost in those portrayals. This excellent biography restores that focus, introducing the reader to a new, more human version of Anne and her family. Moreover, it introduces many others to the story -- helpers, possible informers, Nazi officials, etc. The cast of characters is a little overwhelming, but the epilogue his quite helpful in that regard because it follows their fates. The chapter on the fates of Anne and her family is especially hard to read, especially when one considers the magnitude of the crime.

[royalsapphire · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book. If you're at all interested in Anne Frank, it's a must-read. I own the earlier 1998 edition as well, and I'm grateful to Ms. Muller for putting out an updated edition reflecting he ongoing research. The book gives some background on Anne, and can help put her diary in the wider context of her life and the lives around her. One of the neat features of the book is a list of people who Anne knew and mentioned in her diary and what their fates were. It also has a thorough discussion of who betrayed the family's hiding place. It's very well written and very interesting. I was lucky enough to get this through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very readable biography that sheds a lot of light on Frank family history and chillingly recounts the ratcheting up of persecution against Jews, firstly in Germany after Hitler came to power, then in Holland after the Nazis invaded in 1940. The period in the Annex, being the most familiar period, was perhaps the least revealing, but nevertheless pointed up the psychological effects on a young girl of going through adolescent awakening in a confined space (this emerges very clearly in the definitive edition of the Diary). The post-Annex time is, of course, very difficult reading and the tragedy of Anne's separation from the loving bosom of the family in the last few months well described. An appendix details the fates of the key players. A must read.

[carioca_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not a substitute for Anne Frank's own diary, but rather a complement. At its best, it fills in the gaps and provides the reader with a better understanding of Anne as a child and the world she lived in. Armed with a different (even unbiased, when it comes to interpersonal relationships) perspective, the reader can form a more complete picture of the lives and times involved in Anne Frank's story.