Anne and Hermann van Pels

Anne and Hermann van Pels are bound together by the close quarters of hiding, but not by easy affection: Anne records repeated clashes with the older man she calls Mr. van Daan, as well as brief reversals in which he becomes unexpectedly pleasant. Their relationship gives the diary a domestic scale for life under persecution. A dispute over vegetables, a sermon about Anne’s behavior, or a change in Hermann’s manner takes place inside a refuge made necessary by anti-Jewish decrees and the threat of deportation; the smallness of the quarrels does not make the danger outside less real.

Identity and Context

Hermann van Pels was born in 1889, and Anne’s published diary calls him Mr. van Daan. In her manuscript, she used the name Hans van Daan for him; the published book instead identifies him as Hermann. The changing names belong to the diary’s protective disguise, while the relationship itself is recorded through Anne’s candid, immediate judgments of the person sharing her confined life.

The family’s move into hiding was accelerated when Margot received a call-up notice. Anne recounts that she, her parents, and Margot had been preparing to leave the apartment, with furniture and clothing moved out over a period of months; the plan had been to enter hiding on July 16, but Margot’s notice brought the date forward by ten days. Their refuge was in Otto Frank’s office building. The memoir’s account of that transition places Anne’s relationship with Hermann within a household assembled under pressure, where several adults and children had to share a limited space and its routines.

Early Friction in the Annex

Anne’s early assessment of Hermann is blunt. She says they are “always at loggerheads with each other,” and places that conflict alongside her irritation with Edith Frank, whom she thinks treats her like a baby, and her warm regard for Otto Frank, whose anger rarely lasts. Hermann is therefore not an isolated source of tension: Anne’s sense of being corrected or constrained runs through several family relationships, but her account makes clear that she and Hermann frequently collide.

The friction is not fixed. In a later comment dated September 21, 1942, Anne says Hermann has recently been “as nice as pie” to her. She has said nothing, she adds, and is enjoying the change for as long as it lasts. The note matters because it interrupts the portrait of uninterrupted hostility: Anne notices the improvement but treats it cautiously, as a temporary reprieve rather than a settled reconciliation.

Disputes About Manners and Food

One recurring point of conflict is the adults’ involvement in raising Anne. She describes the van Pels as eager to help bring up other people’s children, and says their admonitions often meet her “saucy replies.” Her parents defend her, even while urging her to talk less, mind her own business, and be more modest. The pattern puts Hermann within a larger household argument over who may correct Anne and how she should behave.

Food makes that argument concrete. When Anne takes only a small portion of a vegetable she dislikes and eats potatoes instead, the van Pels—especially Auguste van Pels—object that she is spoiled. Anne refuses more vegetables, and Auguste turns the episode into a broader complaint about how Anne is being raised. The repeated opening and ending of her rebukes—if Anne were her daughter—becomes, in Anne’s telling, a familiar refrain. The relationship with Hermann is part of this family’s friction, although the diary’s vegetable scene specifically identifies Auguste as the speaker rather than attributing her words to him.

Otto intervenes after one of these lectures. He tells Auguste that he considers Anne well brought up and points out the contradiction in criticizing Anne’s food choices when Auguste herself cannot tolerate beans or cabbage in the evening. Anne presents the exchange as a decisive defeat for the lecture, then adds her own teasing observation that Auguste flushes quickly and is annoyed that Anne does not. This domestic scene gives the tension its particular shape: criticism, parental defense, and Anne’s sharp counter-observation all unfold around the shared table.

Conflict Against the Larger Danger

The diary’s account of life with Hermann also sits beside news of persecution that reaches the Annex through other people. Anne reports that Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away by the Gestapo and transported to Westerbork in cattle cars. What she knows of conditions there comes through Miep’s account of someone who escaped: severe deprivation, little water, overcrowded sleeping arrangements, and the shaving of women’s and children’s heads. The residents’ domestic arguments take place against this accumulating knowledge of what may happen beyond their refuge.

When Fritz Pfeffer arrives, he brings further reports of nighttime roundups. Anne describes his account of military vehicles moving through the streets, searches for Jews, families being taken away, and people marched under guard. She writes of the guilt she feels sleeping in a warm bed while friends suffer outside. The contrast does not resolve her quarrels with Hermann; instead, it shows that intimacy and irritation coexist with fear, gratitude for shelter, and distress at being unable to help those in danger.

Anne also records how the residents respond when the threat becomes immediate inside the building. After a break-in, the household follows instructions to remain quiet and avoid ordinary routines while the situation is assessed. Later security changes include restrictions on movement, a hired night watchman, and plans for a barricade made from the white Frankfurt bedsteads. These precautions describe shared vulnerability rather than a specific act by Hermann, but they clarify the conditions under which his relationship with Anne unfolds: daily cooperation and domestic conflict are both contained within a place that must remain concealed.

Significance of the Relationship

Anne’s account makes the relationship legible through changes of tone rather than a single resolution. She can call Hermann persistently difficult, then note with satisfaction that he has been kinder; she can recount adults’ criticism of her while preserving the exactness of a household joke or the indignity of a lecture. The diary does not turn their friction into a reconciliation story. Its evidence instead shows a relationship repeatedly renegotiated through proximity, authority, food, and the ordinary moods that confinement cannot eliminate.

That record of shifting domestic feeling is part of the diary’s larger method. In March 1944, Anne reflects that a postwar collection of diaries and letters might interest readers, and imagines writing a novel about the Secret Annex. She wonders whether people later would find it curious to read how those in hiding lived, what they ate, and what they discussed. The small disputes surrounding Hermann and Anne belong to precisely that everyday record: they reveal neither the whole of the relationship nor the whole of the danger, but preserve how life in hiding was experienced from inside the household, one uneasy conversation and temporary easing at a time.