Just in time for what would have been Anne Frank's 90th birthday, the Ernst Klett Sprachen publishing house is releasing an edition that makes the world-famous work of The Diary of Anne Frank accessible to people learning German, but that can also be used as an easy-to-read book in German lessons. This edition was put together with the support of and in intensive cooperation with the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel and the original publishing house, S. Fischer.
The Jewish Frank family went into hiding in a secret annex in Amsterdam in the summer of 1942 to escape the National Socialists. This is where Anne Frank wrote her world-famous diary in which she recorded all her observations, thoughts, and feelings, as if she were talking to a best friend. In the confines of the secret annex and cut off from the outside world, she described her life, which was at constant risk of being discovered and of bomb attacks. However, Anne also wrote about how confusing it was to grow up and about almost daily family arguments. Until the very end, she hoped that they would be rescued. However, they were discovered. Anne Frank's family was deported to a concentration camp, where Anne died in the spring of 1945, shortly before the war ended. She would have been 90 years old on 12 June 2019.
Instructional and easy-to-read texts, which are also used in German-as-a-foreign-language lessons, are increasingly popular in conventional German lessons as a differentiated provision for weak readers. The original text was prepared accordingly for the new Deutsch – leichter lesen (read German more easily) reading series. The classic book for young readers contains a glossary with explanations and background information, exercises to help understand the text, and annotations that explain words at the end of the page. The instructional preparation of the original texts makes popular German-language books for children and young adults more easily accessible to inexperienced readers and learners of German as a foreign language.
The publication of the instructional edition to mark Anne Frank's 90th birthday is accompanied by an on-line further training seminar for teachers provided by the publisher: “We would have liked to congratulate you, Anne!” – An on-line seminar on the new edition “Anne Frank. From the diary.”
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