Müeller, Melissa 1967-

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MÜELLER, Melissa 1967-

PERSONAL: Born 1967, in Vienna, Austria.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011.

CAREER: Journalist and author.

WRITINGS:

Anne Frank: The Biography, translated by Rita and Robert Kimber, Metropolitan Books (New York, NY), 1998.

ADAPTATIONS: Anne Frank: The Biography was adapted for film by ABC-TV and broadcast as Anne Frank, 2001, and adapted for documentary in the Home Vision Entertainment Collection as Anne Frank: The Missing Chapter.

SIDELIGHTS: Melissa Müller, an Austrian-born journalist living in Germany, decided to write a biography of one of the Holocaust's best-known victims, Anne Frank, after re-reading as an adult the tragic diary of this teenage girl. In Anne Frank: The Biography, Müller addresses the context in which Frank wrote of the two years she and her family spent in Holland hiding from Nazi persecution.

Müller's background research included Frank's two original versions of her diary (what Anne first wrote in her notebook she later edited on loose sheets of paper), family correspondence, Nazi documents and personal interviews. Müller sought out and recorded the memories of several of Frank's childhood friends as well as those of Miep Gies, Otto Frank's secretary who aided the family when they were in hiding and rescued the diary after the police had arrested the Franks.

Müller also uncovered five pages of Anne's diary that Otto Frank omitted from the published version because they include candid remarks about his relationship with Anne's mother, Edith. These pages, in the hands of Cor Suijk at the Anne Frank Center in New York, reveal some insights into Edith Frank's character. Müller, however, could only paraphrase this material in her biography since legally she could not quote from them directly.

Müller's biography begins with Anne's death from typhus in a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, near Hannover, Germany, and then flashes back to her birth and early childhood in Frankfurt. She follows the family through Otto Frank's decision to take his family to Amsterdam in 1942, where they hid out in the back of one of his office buildings. Anne herself best chronicles those two years, but Müller attempts to answer such questions as the reasons behind Anne's difficult relationship with her mother, and who finally betrayed the family's secret whereabouts to the Nazis.

Müller does not end her story with Anne's final journal entry on August 1, 1944. Instead she recounts what happened to each member of the Frank family following their arrest three days after Anne wrote her last words. Though records are sketchy, Müller details what she learned about the separation of the family, the death of each—except for Otto who survived Auschwitz and lived until 1980—and even the numbers tattooed on the Franks' arms.

R. Z. Sheppard wrote in Time magazine, "Müller pays respect to the legend, but she also does something long overdue. She saves Anne Frank from idolatry and impersonal symbolism by restoring her physical presence: an extraordinary woman-not-to-be with greenish eyes, a trick shoulder and an overbite that kept her from whistling."