‘Tagebuchtag’, a nationwide series of events in Austria celebrating the diary as a literary form, was founded by Austrian artist Traute Molik-Riemer in 2006. This autumn the ACF London is presenting this unique project for the first time outside Austria.

The main focus of the evening at the ACF London will be Ruth Maier’s Diary, which has been recently published in a number of European countries. Born into a Viennese Jewish family in 1920, Ruth started keeping a diary as a young girl and maintained a prodigious output until her deportation from Norway – to where she had emigrated after the Anschluss in 1938 – to Auschwitz in November 1942. Besides displaying an incisive grasp of European political affairs, Ruth’s entries document the everyday anxieties of an adolescent girl growing up in any age. She also had a precocious talent for writing. The diaries, which were never intended for publication, reveal a sharp wit, a keen sense of narrative, and lyrical flair, making this book one of the most original testimonies to emerge from the Nazi era.

As a counterpoint to Ruth’s account, the event will also consider Kurt Schuschnigg’s part memoir, part diary, Austrian Requiem. Schuschnigg was head of the quasi-Fascist Austrian state between 1934–38. Although he opposed the Anschluss, Schuschnigg’s position was too weak to prevent the Nazi takeover in March 1938, and he ended up a prisoner first in Dachau, then Sachsenhausen. Unlike Ruth Maier, he survived by the war, and became a lecturer in the USA.