“The Diary of a Young Girl”: “This battle posthumously rights leaves me a bitter taste” – Le Point

How old is The Diary of a Young Girl ? He will enter the public domain on 1 January 2016, 70 years after the death of his young author at Bergen-Belsen? The issue sparked a lively debate since the publication of a statement of Anne Frank Fund in Basel founded in 1963 by Otto Frank, Anne’s father, who owns the property rights of the work. According to this document, passed Wednesday in Livres Hebdo, the operating rights of the Journal running until at least 2030. Reason? The final version of Journal dates from 1986. This argument was immediately excited researchers, academics, publishers, some crying “complete bluff.” Ertzscheid Olivier, lecturer in information sciences and blogger himself has decided to put online the text “illegally”. “Since the public is denied you, may we collectively have the intelligence to finally give you the light you deserve,” he wrote Thursday in a post titled “Dear Anne Frank, I free your text illegally “, echoed by several media. Master Emmanuel Pierrat, specialist publishing right, discusses the controversy and difficulties in defining the “public domain”

The Point.fr. What do you think of the release of the Fund Anne Frank

Emmanuel Pierrat: This Battle posthumous rights leaves me a bitter taste. The fund advances a particularly confused legal interpretation. But the situation is actually very clear. In 1947, two years after the tragic death of his daughter, Otto Frank publishes The Diary of a Young Girl in Dutch. The book is then translated into over 70 languages, including French Calmann-Levy in 1950. It’s this version, purified, we all read, adolescents, in paperback. Father cuts were also certainly less related to moral reasons – as has often been said – that editorial requirements. What interests in the work, it is more the drama that saw the hidden child that his feelings common to all young people of his age. In the 1980s, finally, seems a complete and annotated edition. For the Anne Frank Fund, the full version of the Journal should be considered as a new work, and as such benefit from the system of posthumous works, which would protect, at least, until 2030. The Foundation also considers the 1947 version as a composite work, which would be the co-author Otto Rank, which would decline this time entered the public domain in 2051, 70 years after his death. These interpretations are obviously not acceptable.

Attempts to back up the entry of works in the public domain are they common?

When a publisher has a monopoly in a work, it has every incentive to get out a variation or new translation to delay as much as possible competition. This is what makes publishers to keep control of Proust or for versions in modern French of Rabelais or Montaigne, for example. For foreign works sometimes just impose a great way to gain a kind of monopoly. I think of the Wuthering Heights . The French title, created by Hazan in 1950, has quickly imposed sweeping its path reformulation attempts by other houses. The Wold Heights tormented or Stormwind Mountains never sells.

Anne Frank passport photo placed on the specifications of the newspaper she wrote in the attic of the Amsterdam house where she had taken refuge with his parents to escape the Nazis between June 1942 and August 4, 1944, the day she was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne Frank died of typhus, at the age of 15 in March 1945. His “Diary” was published over 20 million copies and translated into 55 languages ​​since its first publication in 1947. © Anne Frank Fonds AFP

The controversy surrounding the Diary of Anne Frank relaunching the debate on the legislative framework of the “public domain”. What protection he enjoys today?

It’s very complicated. In 1993, a European directive had tried to harmonize and simplify things. But the Ministry of Culture we made three mistakes in the four lines of the Directive. The errors have been corrected by a decree in the Official Journal, but the exceptions to the rule were allowed, that had been removed elsewhere in Europe. I think, for example, if the author dies for France: the rights are extended for a period of thirty years. All this has created a strange mess. He clearly lacks now a clear definition of what public domain, where one enters for the moment that the “default” when the economic rights no longer apply.

The beneficiaries seem to fear that Holocaust deniers and revisionists seized the Journal . What answer that?

This is absurd. Copyright consists of the economic right and the moral law, which, in many countries, does not go out after entering the public domain. In France, it is the same “perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible” and is transferred to heirs, which can prevent possible denaturations. Furthermore, the frame of freedom of expression in French law punishes racist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust deniers … I think The Diary of a Young Girl is an integral part of our heritage and it is important that adolescents are confronted them, whether in book, comic, television or cinema. It can be much more concerned, however, regarding works like Mein Kampf – which must also fall into the public domain in 2016. There, one can not anticipate the problem, yet it is certain that all fascist splinter groups will want to publish it. The Bavarian regional government, which holds the copyright of the Nazi manifesto, had managed to impose publication of a warning in the introduction of any new edition. But from January 1, this text will no longer be mandatory. In Germany, a critical scientific edition, annotated by academics, will finally emerge. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort is currently planned in France.

READ also the article by Frédéric Dos Santos Lewino and Gwendoline “June 12, 1942. Anne Frank began her diary in The book received the day of his 13 years. ”