Opekta
Encyclopedia
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
's father Otto Frank
Otto Frank
Otto Heinrich "Pim" Frank was a German-born businessman and the father of Anne Frank and Margot Frank...
, which distributed a pectin
Pectin
Pectin is a structural heteropolysaccharide contained in the primary cell walls of terrestrial plants. It was first isolated and described in 1825 by Henri Braconnot...
-based gelling preparation, to be used in jam making. It traded from the building in which they hid from persecution during the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
Occupation of the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
.
History
The Opekta company was based in CologneCologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
when Otto Frank, then residing in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, was appointed to aid their expansion into The Netherlands. Frank had considered moving his family there after the election of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, so he accepted the post and moved alone to Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
to find accommodation for his family and premises for the company. He had briefly managed a large rival firm, Pomosin, which traded pectin to factories from the Dutch town of Utrecht
Utrecht (city)
Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...
but decided that retail trade would be more lucrative in the Dutch market than wholesale. His franchise for the Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
branch of Opekta was established in September 1933.
Victor Kugler
Victor Kugler
Victor Kugler was one of the people who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and friends during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he was referred to under the name Mr...
, an ex-colleague from Pomosin, came on board almost immediately to help run the company. The workforce was small; apart from a junior clerk, the only other employee was a secretary, who left a few months after the company started trading. She was replaced by Miep Gies
Miep Gies
Miep Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and several family friends in an attic annex above Anne's father's place of business from the Nazis during World War II...
, whose duties extended from the secretarial, to public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
and advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
. In 1938, she appeared in a promotional film to promote the Opekta product, which was used to demonstrate to consumers how easy it was to use in cooking. That year they were joined by two other employees, Hermann van Pels as an herb specialist and Johannes Kleiman
Johannes Kleiman
Johannes Kleiman was one of the Dutch citizens who helped hide Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In the published version of Anne's diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he is given the pseudonym Mr. Koophuis...
as a bookkeeper. Bep Voskuijl
Bep Voskuijl
Elisabeth "Bep" Voskuijl helped conceal Anne Frank and her family from Nazi persecution during the occupation of the Netherlands.Bep was born in :Amsterdam...
, who was the administration manager when war broke out, had been taken on the previous year, 1937.
After the arrival of the German occupiers in 1940, the company was re-registered under the names of Jan Gies and Johannes Kleiman to prevent it from being confiscated as a Jewish-owned business. It moved to new premises, Prinsengracht 263
Anne Frank House
The Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is a museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank, who hid from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people in hidden rooms at the rear of the building...
, and changed its name to Gies & Co. Although Otto Frank had to resign in December 1941, he continued to act as a silent partner
Silent partner
Silent partner may refer to:*An anonymous member of a business partnership, or one uninvolved in management*The Silent Partner, the name of several films*Silent partner , a piece of climbing equipment...
, when he and Hermann van Pels and their families were forced into hiding in the upper rear rooms of the building in July 1942. Their two year confinement, which was aided by Kleiman, Kugler, Gies and Voskuijl, was famously chronicled by Otto Frank's youngest daughter, Anne, in a diary
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Diary of a Young Girl is a book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen...
published in 1947.
Otto Frank retired as director of Opekta in 1953 and was succeeded by Johannes Kleiman, until Kleiman's death in 1959. The building at Prinsengracht 263 was sold to developers in 1954 and Opekta was given notice to vacate the premises. By this time, Anne Frank's diary had drawn readers to visit the premises and a successful campaign saved the building from demolition
Demolition
Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures, the opposite of construction. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use....
. Opekta left the building in 1955 and five years later it re-opened as a museum dedicated to the life and writings of Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
.
Sources
- Anne Frank House: a museum with a story, Janrense Boonstra and Marie-Jose Rijnders, 1992
- The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee, 2003
- The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition, Anne Frank, (edited by David Barnow et al.) 2003