My Dearest Petel: A Teenage Fantasy of First Love
On January 8, 1944, from the confines of the Secret Annex, Anne Frank poured a passionate fantasy into her diary, centered on a boy from her past: Lutz Peter Schiff.
Peter Schiff, whom Anne affectionately called “Petel,” was her “one true love.” They got to know each other in 1940, and Anne was clearly captivated by him, describing him as “the ideal boy: tall, good-looking and slender, with a serious, quiet and intelligent face.”
In her diary, Anne’s longing for freedom, love, and emotional release merged into a vivid fantasy. She wrote of imagining herself with Petel in the attic:
“after talking for a while, we both began to cry! Moments later I felt his mouth and his wonderful cheek! Oh, Petel, come to me. Think of me, my dearest Petel!”
The entry is a beautiful, if heartbreaking, expression of a girl in love, finding solace in her imagination for the companionship she was denied. Anne was deeply saddened when they lost contact after the summer of 1940, and he became a recurring figure in her dreams and diary entries during her time in hiding.
Sadly, their romance was never to be realized. Peter Schiff, who was born in Berlin on September 9, 1926, did not survive the war. He is believed to have died on a forced evacuation march sometime between April 26 and May 4, 1945. Anne’s diary preserves a poignant memory of a first love that was beautiful, intense, and tragically curtailed by the war.
