Challengers vow to publish Anne Frank diaries as foundation moves to keep control of copyright

A French MP and an academic are set to defy an attempt by the Anne Frank Fonds to keep control of the copyright on Anne Frank’s diary by publishing online texts of the world famous second world war account from one of the Holocaust’s most recognisable victims.

Anne Frank wrote her red-and-white checked diary between 12 June 1942 and 1 August 1944, charting the time she spent in hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse until three days before her family was betrayed. She died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, age 15, in 1945.

Copyright across much of Europe expires 70 years after an author’s death, but the Anne Frank Fonds, the Swiss foundation established by her father Otto Frank in 1963, informed French publishers in October that the diaries would not be entering the public domain on 1 January 2016 because Otto, who died in 1980, had done so much work on the most widely published version that he had “earned his own copyright”.

Isabelle Attard, a French MP who is preparing to publish the Dutch text online on 1 January, warns that this argument dilutes the impact of the diaries.

She is prepared to go to court to defend her publication. “Many revisionists, people who want to deny the extermination camps existed, have tried to attack the diary for years. Saying now the book wasn’t written by Anne alone is weakening the weight it has had for decades, as a testimony to the horrors of this war,” said a spokesperson for Attard. “She lost her grandparents in Nazi camps, she had uncles who were hidden like Anne Frank was – for her it is a very touchy subject, and she wanted to react and not to let the Anne Frank Fonds use its interpretation of the law.”

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The spokesperson added: “On 1 January, Mein Kampf will enter the public domain, and [Attard] feels the symbolism of this, Mein Kampf entering the public domain, and a counterpart, Anne Frank’s diary, this very important work about the horrors of the second world war, not entering at the same time, was inacceptable for her.”

Olivier Ertzscheid, a lecturer at the University of Nantes, is also preparing to publish the text of the original Dutch edition of the diaries on 1 January.

“All the arguments of the Anne Frank Fonds are false and legally inaccurate. Otto Frank cannot be considered a ‘co-author’ of the text,” said Ertzscheid.

Earlier this year, Ertzscheid illegally published a French translation of the diaries, and was asked to take it down by its French publisher. He said his illegal publication had accomplished what he set out to do: to move the debate “into the public arena”. He is now also hoping to produce a new, free French translation of the text for publication in January.

At the Anne Frank Fonds, Yves Kugelmann, a member of the board of trustees, said the foundation wasn’t attempting to extend copyright. “AFF is merely applying to existing laws under which the diary remains protected after 2015, and has decided to inform people about it. We have made clear that in certain territories the copyright is protected for a longer time, because this is our duty.”

He said: “Otto Frank is not the co author of the original diaries. We as a foundation have been fighting for 40 years against Holocaust deniers who have said the book is a falsification. We proved that it was not - the diary is authentic.”

But he added: “After the war, Otto Frank merged, or compiled, the two versions of the Diary that Anne Frank left, that were both incomplete and that partly overlapped, into one reader friendly version. He typed over Anne Frank’s manuscripts and with scissors and glue subsequently, literally, ‘cut and pasted’ them into the version that was published in English from the early fifties. The book he created earns his own copyright. For the purposes of copyright, he is to be viewed as an ‘author’ of that version. Please note, again, that this does not imply that he ‘co-wrote’ anything.”

On its website, the foundation says that Otto, along with Mirjam Pressler, who published a later adaptation in 1991, “in effect created readable books from Anne Frank’s original writings”, and so “Anne Frank’s original writings, as well as the original in-print versions will remain protected for many decades”.

With regard to Attard and Ertzscheid’s planned publications, Kugelmann said that “if someone takes a risk to infringe copyright, that is their risk”.

“Sometimes we act, sometimes we don’t. It’s not so important for us – we’re a foundation, not a commercial enterprise,” he said. “We use the income for charity and we’re a voluntary organisation. We grant rights all the time, for theatre, books, performances, films. Anyone can put a request in.”

At the Anne Frank Trust in the UK, chief executive Robert Posner said: “What’s most important to us, as an educational charity which works with the diary, is that it is seen as Anne Frank’s own work – her writing, her work, her thoughts. For many, she represents the true horror of the Holocaust, and she’s one of the most recognised victims, certainly the most recognised teenage victim. Anything which puts the veracity of her work into question is saddening and disappointing for us.”