German academics want Hitler’s book reprinted

Posted on 30 April 2008 By Mark O'Neill
Tags: books, germany

meinkampf30042008 German academics want Hitlers book reprinted

There’s an interesting debate going on here in Germany at the moment about Adolf Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf“. German academics want the book re-printed before the copyright expires in 2015.

Normally the copyright expires 70 years after the author’s death, which is of course 2015 in this case. After that, the book falls into the public domain whereupon people can print their own copies for free, distribute them for free and so on. We might even see copies springing up on Project Gutenberg.

The whole issue is contentious of course because of the author and the subject of the book. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (German for “My Struggle”) in 1923 while in Landsberg prison, serving a sentence for treason. I read the book while at school - it is an awful book, full of anti-semitic hatred and vitriol. Hitler hates everyone, blames everyone and advocates killing everyone. Plus Hitler is no writer. He dictated his ranting and raving to his private secretary, Rudolf Hess, who wrote down every word, verbatim.

After the war, publication of the book was banned in Germany (for obvious reasons), the copyright was passed to the Bavarian finance ministry and existing copies of the book were very strictly controlled as to second-hand re-sale and private viewing. If you try to sell a used copy on eBay Germany for example, it is stopped. If a student wants to see a copy for study purposes, they need a letter of introduction from a teacher / professor explaining exactly why they need it and what course of study they are in which requires the book. They just can’t walk in and take the book off the shelf. This has led to copies being highly sought after by book collectors and I touched on this in an article some years back.

But now with the copyright deadline fast approaching, academics fear that right-wing extremists will use the public domain to circumvent the German laws and bring out their own versions of Mein Kampf with their own interpretations, their own introductions, their own glossaries, their own illustrations….

Far better, academics argue, that the German government takes a pro-active approach and brings out an officially sanctioned annotated version put properly into context. True, this won’t stop the right-wingers bringing out their copies in 2015 but at least by then, the official version will be out and this will give teachers and parents a chance to show curious schoolchildren the proper version. With anti-semitism on the rise in Germany, we need to show children SOMETHING.

But the government is not willing so far to budge. I really don’t understand their reluctance. You only have to go to Google and put in “Mein Kampf” to get this. It isn’t THAT hard to find it. Isn’t it better to work with the German Jewish community and put this vile book into its proper context? The Jewish community is all in favour and is ready to help and the Bavarian governor is apparently being approached. But they need to hurry because a project like this takes years to be done and the clock is ticking.