102590 | GREAT BRITAIN, NETHERLANDS & GERMANY. Anne Frank cast bronze Plaque.

102590  |  GREAT BRITAIN, NETHERLANDS & GERMANY. Anne Frank hinged cast bronze Plaque. Issued 1986 (81mm x 92mm, 1,077.5 g, 12h). By R. Elderton and cast by Niagara Falls.

 

Meant to mimic a diary, featuring a floral design on the front, with a small bookcase and three rows of books on a hinged panel to the left; the top row of books features a number of books each with a letter on the spine, which collectively spell "Anne Frank;" the hinged panel turns outward to reveal a portrait of Anne as well as eight people in an act of prayer at a dinner table before eating // Similar to the obverse, with the background design instead featuring a tree, a clock, a radio, the text SECRET ANNEX, and the same dinner table as on the secret panel of the obverse, but this time with empty chairs, eight stars of David, and the date 4th / AUGUST / 1944. Edge: 16 RCE.

 

The Medal 10 (Winter 1986), pp. 70-71. Essentially as made. Olive-brown surfaces, with the hinge being fully working. A poignant and incredibly rare work of modern medallic art, and one of just 25 produced.

 

Ex: Paul Connor Collection (acquired directly from Elderton in 1986).

 

Born in Frankfurt in 1929, Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank would become known posthumously worldwide on account of the diary which she kept during her and her family's period of hiding from the Nazis. After the rise of Hitler in Germany in 1933, Frank's family moved from Frankfurt to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, as hostilities toward Germany's Jewish citizenry quickly escalated. This escape was short-lived, however, as the Netherlands would eventually become occupied by the Nazis, leaving Anne and countless other Jews with neither national status nor safety. The family would soon go into hiding in a "secret annex" in a building in which Anne's father had worked. For just over two years, Anne, her older sister, her mother and father, and four others, sought refuge from the Gestapo tasked with finding and imprisoning all Jews. They were discovered and arrested on 4 August 1944, the date represented at the empty dinner table on the reverse, with Anne ultimately dying at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945. Her story via her diary, however, was quickly disseminated following World War II, producing play and movie adaptations, and making her one of the most recognizable symbols of the Holocaust.

 

Upload: 17 June 2024.

 

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