Hermann van Daan

Hermann van Daan is one of the adults sharing the Secret Annex with the Frank family, and Anne’s diary depicts him through the routines and frictions of confined life. At meals he commands attention and treats his opinions as authoritative; as money runs out, however, his household’s possessions become necessary resources, and his disagreements with his wife expose the material pressures of hiding.

Identity and Place in the Annex

Hermann is referred to in Anne’s entries as Mr. van Daan and, in a domestic exchange, as Putti. He is among the people who enter hiding with the Frank family in the office building where Otto Frank works. The move was originally planned for July 16, but Margot’s call-up notice forced the family to leave ten days earlier, with less time to prepare their rooms. The diary’s account establishes the setting that would shape Hermann’s daily life: a concealed refuge within an active business building, sustained by a small circle of informed helpers.

The building’s lower floor contained a warehouse and workrooms, including a milling room where cinnamon, cloves, and a pepper substitute were ground. This was not a detached residence but a workplace whose ordinary activity continued around the hidden occupants. Hermann’s life in the Annex therefore depended on remaining out of sight while the people below carried on their work.

Authority and Domestic Conduct

At dinner, Anne presents Hermann as the first to be served and as someone who takes a generous helping of whatever he likes. He joins the conversation readily and, once he has spoken, behaves as though his word settles the matter. Anyone who challenges him can draw him into a fight; Anne likens his angry hiss to a cat’s and remarks that his confidence in his own knowledge is matched by a swollen sense of importance. She grants that he has a good head on his shoulders, making the portrait pointed rather than wholly dismissive: competence and self-importance coexist.

A kitchen scene gives this household portrait a lighter, more intimate scale. While the others peel potatoes, Hermann’s wife tries repeatedly to get the attention of Fritz Pfeffer, who keeps his eyes on his work. She then tells Putti to put on an apron so she will not have to spend the next day removing spots from his suit. His brief answer—that he is not getting it dirty—leaves the exchange unresolved in the excerpt. The moment places him within the Annex’s repetitive chores and teasing domestic talk, rather than presenting him only as a public voice in arguments.

Money, Possessions, and Conflict

Financial strain becomes one of the diary’s clearest accounts of Hermann’s circumstances. Anne reports that he has run out of money and that his last hundred guilders were lost in the warehouse. The unexplained loss prompts suspicion among the men working there, while the money itself has been stolen. The incident turns a private shortage into a source of anxiety within the wider network on which the Annex depends.

Attempts to raise money by selling clothing bring further difficulty. Hermann and his wife try to sell his overcoat and suit, but find no buyers at the prices he asks. His wife’s rabbit-skin fur coat, which she has owned for seventeen years, sells for 325 guilders after a furrier is suggested. She wants to keep the proceeds for clothes after the war; Hermann argues that the household urgently needs the money for current expenses. Anne records that it takes effort to make her accept that need. The disagreement is not simply about a garment: the coat carries the prospect of a future beyond hiding, while its sale answers an immediate crisis.

Anne also notes her wife’s abundance of dresses, coats, and shoes, none of which she feels able to do without, and says that the firm should pay for the family’s upkeep—a view Anne calls unreasonable. The dispute ends in a fierce quarrel and a return to affectionate forms of address, summarized in the diary through their pet names for one another. Their conflict thus moves between financial urgency and familiar intimacy rather than resolving cleanly.

Hiding Under Pressure

Hermann’s domestic world is bounded by security rules and dependence on helpers. After a break-in, Peter van Pels discovers that both the warehouse door and street door are open. The occupants follow orders to avoid washing or running water, remain quiet, dress by eight, and not use the bathroom. The burglars have forced doors with a crowbar and stolen cashboxes, blank checkbooks, and the group’s entire allotment of 330 pounds of sugar. The episode shows the danger surrounding the building and the fragile material arrangements on which its hidden residents rely.

A later security scare brings the threat closer to the Annex’s daily routines. New precautions include assigning Peter to patrol the house in the evening, restricting his open window, and forbidding toilet flushing after half past nine. A night watchman is hired, a carpenter from the underground is expected to build a barricade from the white Frankfurt bedsteads, and the residents debate whether the watchman can be trusted and whether dogs will bark at someone behind the door. Mr. Kugler reproaches them for carelessness, while Jan advises them not to go downstairs. Within this precarious shared life, Hermann’s forceful manner and money disputes are individual strains inside a larger condition of confinement, danger, and dependence.