Anne and Auguste van Pels

Anne and Auguste van Pels is a strained, repeatedly contested relationship in the Secret Annex. Anne’s diary presents Auguste—called Mrs. van Daan in the book—as an adult who takes an active interest in correcting her, and Anne as a young person who resists being treated as a perpetual subject of criticism. Their quarrels concern ordinary matters, especially food and upbringing, but confinement turns those small disputes into recurring tests of authority and belonging.

Identity and setting

Auguste van Pels was born on September 9, 1890. Anne’s manuscript uses the name Petronella for her; the book calls her Mrs. van Daan. The relation therefore appears through the diary’s literary naming as well as through the people living together in hiding: its names differ across versions, but the recurring conflict is between Anne and the older woman who comments on how she should behave.

Their shared setting was not an ordinary household. After Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands, anti-Jewish restrictions curtailed where Jews could go, what transport they could use, and how they could live in public. Anne’s family entered hiding earlier than planned after Margot received a call-up notice. Their hiding place was in Otto Frank’s office building, where several informed helpers worked, while the warehouse below remained part of the everyday environment around the concealed household. The residents had to live closely and quietly, dependent on one another and on those who helped them. Within that restricted space, a disagreement over a plate of vegetables could not simply be left behind; the people involved continued to share the same rooms and routines.

Everyday correction and resistance

Anne describes a pattern in which the van Daans take an interest in raising her, while Margot is regarded as naturally good, kind, and clever. Anne, by contrast, says she seems to have enough mischief for both sisters. The adults’ admonitions and Anne’s saucy replies become a familiar exchange. Her parents defend her, but also tell her to talk less, mind her own business, and be more modest. Their patience, Anne suggests, helps her recover her composure and continue to hope that she might meet their expectations.

The sharpest domestic example begins at dinner. Anne takes only a small helping of a vegetable she dislikes and eats potatoes instead. Mrs. van Daan urges her to eat more, saying vegetables are good for her and that Anne’s mother agrees. Anne refuses politely, but the insistence continues until her father intervenes and upholds her right to decline a dish. The disagreement is about food, yet its force comes from who may decide what Anne must eat and whose judgment counts in the household.

Mrs. van Daan turns the meal into a broader criticism of Anne’s upbringing. She says Anne is spoiled and contrasts her with the children she says were properly raised in her own home, repeatedly beginning the thought of what she would do if Anne were her daughter. Anne records that refrain as both a rebuke and an affirmation of distance: she is relieved not to be Mrs. van Daan’s child. The recurrence matters. The complaint does not remain a single reaction to dinner; it becomes a familiar way of asserting an adult’s authority over Anne.

Anne’s father answers by defending her manners and turning the charge of hypocrisy back on Mrs. van Daan. He notes that Mrs. van Daan herself dislikes beans and cabbage in the evening. Anne relishes the reversal: the adult who insists that a child eat what is good for her is also unable to tolerate certain vegetables. The episode ends with Mrs. van Daan soundly defeated in the argument, though Anne’s hope that she will stop talking about her is not evidence that the underlying friction has disappeared.

Quarrels as a way of knowing

Anne’s diary places these disputes within her wider surprise that grown-ups quarrel so often over petty matters. The residents, she observes, call their exchanges discussions rather than quarrels, but the distinction seems evasive to her. She feels that nearly everything about her—her behavior, personality, and manners—is discussed and criticized. From her perspective, the conflict is not only about a specific fault but about being repeatedly made the subject of adult judgment while being expected to bear insults without answering back.

The clash over Anne’s supposed pushiness gives this criticism a public, comic turn. Mrs. van Daan defends herself as someone who must look after her own interests or starve, then becomes tangled in her account, speaking in a mixture of German and Dutch. Anne follows the tirade so intently that she involuntarily shakes her head, a gesture she describes as combining compassion with irony. Mrs. van Daan notices and turns on her with a tongue-lashing. Anne finds the scene so comical that she wishes she could draw it; the image she records is her own vivid, unflattering impression, not an impartial portrait of the older woman.

The episode changes the way Anne understands the quarrels. She concludes that a person becomes knowable through a fight, because conflict reveals character. That conclusion belongs to the diary’s immediate, partisan account: Anne is at once an observer of the household and a participant defending herself within it. Her humor, anger, and sharp descriptions show how she tries to reclaim interpretive authority from adults who, as she sees it, discuss and define her without taking her own view seriously.

Confinement, fear, and dependence

The household’s arguments unfold under conditions that magnify their emotional pressure. Anne writes that the fear of discovery is terrifying, and the diary also records news of Jewish friends being taken away. She hears that the Gestapo transports people to Westerbork in cattle cars and describes reports of overcrowding, little food and water, and the near impossibility of escape. Later, information brought into the Annex describes night searches and families taken from their homes. These reports do not establish that Anne and Auguste share the same response to every danger, but they show the circumstances in which their daily relationship is lived: private friction exists alongside the knowledge that people outside are being arrested and deported.

The residents’ dependence on assistance also places their conflicts in a larger network of risk. Anne describes Jan and Mr. Kleiman talking about people in hiding, prisoners who have been freed, and resistance groups that forge identity cards, provide money, arrange hiding places, and help people go underground. She emphasizes that the Annex’s helpers come regularly and risk sharing the fate of those they protect. The household’s disputes over food and manners therefore take place within a fragile arrangement sustained by others’ labor and courage.

That dependence becomes immediate when burglars enter the warehouse and office building. Peter notices that doors are open; the residents follow strict instructions to stay quiet, avoid using water, and dress by eight. The burglars have forced doors with a crowbar and stolen cashboxes, blank checkbooks, and the residents’ entire allotment of 330 pounds of sugar. After a later security scare, the household’s precautions tighten: Peter is assigned a patrol, a night watchman is hired, and a carpenter from the underground is to make a barricade from the white Frankfurt bedsteads. These episodes do not describe a new resolution between Anne and Auguste, but they clarify the shared conditions that make retreat from conflict difficult: the household must remain together, obey restrictions, and preserve its concealment.

Narrative significance

Anne’s account does not turn Auguste into a detached symbol of adult authority. It gives the relationship its particular texture through repeated incidents: the vegetables Anne refuses, the refrain about what Mrs. van Daan would do with her own daughter, her father’s defense, and the involuntary shake of the head that provokes another outburst. The diary’s humor makes the clashes readable without erasing their hurt. Its sharply subjective judgments also keep the reader close to Anne’s experience rather than pretending to provide a balanced transcript of every side.

The relation is thus both domestic and structural. Anne’s resistance is personal—she refuses the role of a child who must accept every correction—but the diary places that contest within a household where privacy, freedom of movement, and ordinary choice have already been severely restricted. Their recurring quarrels reveal how authority is negotiated in the small space left to them, while the surrounding danger prevents those quarrels from being mistaken for the whole of life in hiding. The diary preserves no final reconciliation between Anne and Auguste in these episodes; instead, it leaves their relationship as an ongoing, unresolved part of the Annex’s shared existence.