PARIS — When Otto Frank first published his daughter’s red-checked diary and notebooks, he wrote a prologue assuring readers that the book mostly contained her words, written while hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex of a factory in Amsterdam.
But now the Swiss foundation that holds the copyright to “The Diary of Anne Frank” is alerting publishers that her father is not only the editor but also legally the co-author of the celebrated book.
The move has a practical effect: It extends the copyright from Jan. 1, when it is set to expire in most of Europe, to the end of 2050. Copyrights in Europe generally end 70 years after an author’s death. Anne Frank died 70 years ago at Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp, and Otto Frank died in 1980. Extending the copyright would block others from being able to publish the book without paying royalties or receiving permission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books ... v=top-news
There have been rumbles about this in recent months (phdnm posted about the public domain issue in the French forum in October: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9838), but here's confirmation from the New York Times itself. They don't want those royalty checks drying up, so Otto Frank is now officially co-author of the diary. (Notice how the NYT puts "co-author" in scare quotes in the headline, though. He's legally the co-author but, you know, not really the co-author. )
So it turns out that Felderer and Faurisson were right all along. Imagine that!
Ditlieb Felderer Anne Frank's Diary, A Hoax (pdf)
Robert Faurisson Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine?