Alasdair Sparks contributes his two ha’porth, September 12, 2005, on Anne Frank’s controversial use of ballpoint pens in writing her diary Ballpoint pens and Anne Frank (2) I AM one of those who has emailed you several times about ballpoint pens and the Anne Frank Diaries , but you never took note, nor amended your website. As the matter has arisen again, and in the hope that you might do so, I point you to some links which make it clear it is not an issue.

From “The Straight Dope”: “In 1980 the German criminal investigation bureau [BKA] fanned the embers of the controversy by issuing a report that made an eyebrow-raising claim: While the paper used in the diary appeared authentic, some corrections to Anne’s rewritten version had been made using a ballpoint pen supposedly not available till 1951. (For the record, ballpoint pens were popular in Britain as early as the late 30s.)

The German magazine Der Spiegel published a sensational account of this report alleging that (a) some editing postdated 1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was possibly fake. This logic is faulty, in no small part because premise (b) is wrong–it’s now known some page numbering and other minor edits were done after the war, probably by Otto [Frank] or his assistants.”

The ” BBC website” [ sic: but see response below! ] says the following: “Deniers also make the claim that the diary is in green ballpoint pen, something that was not readily available during the war. And there are, in fact, some minor stylistic marginal notes in green ink. However, as the Dutch investigation demonstrated, the only ballpoint writing is on two scraps of paper included among the loose leaves, and these have no significance whatsoever in terms of content.

Moreover, the handwriting on the scraps of paper differs markedly from those in the diary, indicating that they were written by someone else, an editor perhaps.” Finally, the website of the Anne Frank Museum makes matters clear: “In August 1980 Otto Frank died. His daughter’s manuscripts were left to the Dutch State, which deposited the documents with the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, or NIOD).

Otto Frank appointed as his heir the Anne Frank Fund in Basel, which therefore also inherited the