WI Anne Frank Lived

There have been threads similar to this before -- on if Anne's family hadn't been betrayed, or if she had survived the camps -- but I thought I'd bring it up again.

Specifically, what would Anne's literary career be like? (To start, would the diary even be published as OTL?) And what impact would this career have on the world?

EDIT ADD: Double checked, realized Anne Frank actually had aspirations of becoming an actress; that's another possibility for this thread.
 
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Anne Frank said:
Bolkestejn, a Cabinet Minister, was speaking in the Dutch News from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course they all made a rush at my diary immediately.

Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annex." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story. But, seriously, it would be quite funny 10 years after the war if we Jews were to tell how we lived and what we ate and talked about here. Although I tell you a lot, still, even so, you only know very little of our lives.

The diary would've been published, in a reworked format.

I could see Anne Frank having a literary career of a sort. Maybe a poet?
 
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If Anne Frank had lived she would have been like countless other survivors, trying to get along with her life and move on. I suppose she would have gotten married eventually and gone on with her life. Who knows if she would have stayed in Holland.

They were well written and were very thought provoking so I think eventually either her or an heir would have published them.
 
Specifically, what would Anne's literary career be like? (To start, would the diary even be published as OTL?)


This is going to sound heartless, but I can't believe she'd have a post-war literary career. She'd be a Holocaust survivor and thus gain some minor measure of celebrity as the years passed, but she isn't going to be anything other than a housewife.

As I'm sure you know, when we read her diary, we aren't reading her actual diary. It was extensively edited. Not to make the story more poignant or dramatic mind you, but to turn the diary of a teenage girl into something you could actually read.
 
Oops -- when I wrote the OP, I thought I recalled that Anne aspired to be a writer -- double checked, turned out it was as an actress. :eek:

Seems perfectly plausible she could succeed. (Any ideas there?) And I still wouldn't dismiss prospects of her as an author -- regardless of post-war publicity and editing, Anne clearly had the talent at a young age to write.
 
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This is going to sound heartless, but I can't believe she'd have a post-war literary career. She'd be a Holocaust survivor and thus gain some minor measure of celebrity as the years passed, but she isn't going to be anything other than a housewife.

As I'm sure you know, when we read her diary, we aren't reading her actual diary. It was extensively edited. Not to make the story more poignant or dramatic mind you, but to turn the diary of a teenage girl into something you could actually read.

Agreed. In fact, if the diary remains in her possession, it's perfectly likely it'd never be published at all. Or, it might only be published after her death and be of interest only to historians.

One of the tragic ironies of historical memory is that people are more memorable if they die young and horribly. People who live relatively ordinary lives are forgotten.
 
And I still wouldn't dismiss prospects of her as an author -- regardless of post-war publicity and editing, Anne clearly had the talent at a young age to write.


Have you read any unexpurgated excerpts from her diary? I have.

Believe me, good editing can make a laundry list into Shakespeare.
 
Well, maybe "writing talent" is a debatable point -- even though her published diary contained very inspired thoughts and passages, a full writer really needs the additional skill and discipline to turn that inspiration into even a decent work of literature.

That's not to say she couldn't develop this capacity, though I admit now she was far from destined to do so. Would you admit she had the "inspiration" (or spark, or whatever you want to call it) to be a writer?
 
Well, maybe "writing talent" is a debatable point -- even though her published diary contained very inspired thoughts and passages...

There was a rather quiet but decades long debate in literary academic circles over just how much of the diaries were Frank's work and just how much of the diaries were the work of her father Otto and inquiries into the same. Because the Frank diary is often the target of Holocaust denying assholes of all stripes, the debate and inquiries were necessarily muted.

Otto's death and the subsequent release of the original materials to a Dutch organization settled the issue somewhat. IIRC a conversation I had with a friend who taught at Brown, she informed me that Frank had two diaries: an original one with all the banal teenage girl stuff and another which she edited and expanded on from the first in the hopes it would be published post-war. Otto then further edited the second version.

The Frank diary is powerful, in part because we know the ending in advance and in part because Frank herself composed powerful passages. Because Frank began the editing process herself, she was able to rewrite certain earlier portions several times for better effect and we know little about whether she had help or read passages to others for advice.

Of course Otto later edited other passages for the same reason.

That's not to say she couldn't develop this capacity, though I admit now she was far from destined to do so. Would you admit she had the "inspiration" (or spark, or whatever you want to call it) to be a writer?
I'm not saying she could never do so. I'm just playing the odds. How many "one hit wonders" have there been in the world of literature? For instance, Harper Lee had only one To Kill A Mocking Bird in her.

Could Franks make the leap from an writing intense personal memoir of a horrific period in human history from a teenage perspective to writing about other subjects from an adult perspective? We must admit that much of the power of her diary flows directly from it's setting and not directly from Frank's abilities as a writer.

Sadly, I think the odds are very much against her.
 
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As being a writer goes, I think you've got a good point...


I guess the best way to answer this is to say that if someone wrote a time line in which a surviving Frank became a writer I wouldn't bat an eye. But if someone asked me about the odds of a surviving Frank becoming a writer I'd set them very low.
 
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Otto Frank went back to Amsterdam after the war was over, married there and then emigrated to Switzerland, where he died. So, if Anne survives, living in Holland with her father seems like the most realistic possibility to me.

Or, IIRC, they had relatives in the United States (New York?). That's also an option. I don't imagine them going to Israel, because if Otto didn't go alone after the war, why would he go with his daughter?
 
Otto Frank went back to Amsterdam after the war was over, married there and then emigrated to Switzerland, where he died. So, if Anne survives, living in Holland with her father seems like the most realistic possibility to me.

Or, IIRC, they had relatives in the United States (New York?). That's also an option. I don't imagine them going to Israel, because if Otto didn't go alone after the war, why would he go with his daughter?


the father probably had limited motivation for travel after his children died.

if his children did live, then perhaps the children could have spurred him into taking the family to the near-future site of Israel.

she's pretty civic-minded. I reckon she's in politics by her early adulthood, and her character allows strong friendships with and support from people who like being able to trust political leaders. maybe foreign minister before she turns sixty?
 
Agreed. In fact, if the diary remains in her possession, it's perfectly likely it'd never be published at all. Or, it might only be published after her death and be of interest only to historians.

Sympathy for Holocaust survivors was running very high through the late forties and beyond. Otto and Anne might have teamed up to write a book based on the diary and concurrent events. Anne keeps the diary as her reference source. If she aspired to be an actress, why not a commentator? Any writings and presentations she delivers later would eclipse the diary itself.

Edit: She was born the same year as Barbara Walters and might still be making appearances today.
 
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