{"id":10526,"date":"2015-12-28T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T17:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/hitlers-mein-kampf-returns-to-germany\/"},"modified":"2015-12-28T09:00:51","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T17:00:51","slug":"hitlers-mein-kampf-returns-to-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/hitlers-mein-kampf-returns-to-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ returns to Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

BERLIN \u2014<\/strong> For 70 years since the Nazi defeat in World War II, copyright law has been used in Germany to prohibit the publication of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d \u2014 the notorious anti-Semitic tome in which Adolf Hitler set out his ideology.<\/p>\n

That will change next month when a new edition with critical commentary, the product of several years\u2019 work by a publicly funded institute, hits the shelves.<\/p>\n

While historians say it could help fill a gap in Germans\u2019 knowledge of the era, Jewish groups are wary and German authorities are making it clear that they still won\u2019t tolerate any new \u201cMein Kampf\u201d without annotations.<\/p>\n

Under German law, a copyright expires at the end of the year 70 years after an author\u2019s death \u2014 in this case, Hitler\u2019s April 30, 1945, suicide in a Berlin bunker as the Soviet army closed in. That means Bavaria\u2019s state finance ministry, which holds the copyright, can no longer use it to prevent the work\u2019s publication beyond Dec. 31.<\/p>\n

The book has been published in several other countries; in the U.S., for example, Bavaria never controlled the copyright.<\/p>\n

In Germany, many argue that holding back \u201cMein Kampf\u201d merely created mystique around the book. The idea of at least a partial version with critical commentary for the German market dates back as far as the late 1960s. The Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History, which is behind the new version, sought and was denied permission to produce the book in the mid-1990s when it published a volume of Hitler\u2019s speeches.<\/p>\n

Hitler wrote \u201cMein Kampf\u201d \u2014 or \u201cMy Struggle\u201d \u2014 after he was jailed following the failed 1923 coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Millions of copies were printed after the Nazis took power in 1933.<\/p>\n

The rambling tome set out Hitler\u2019s ultranationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-communist ideology for his National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi party, airing the idea of a war of conquest in eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book should not be underestimated as a historical source and also as a key to understanding the history of National Socialism,\u201d the director of the Munich institute, Andreas Wirsching, said ahead of the new edition\u2019s mid-January publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong serious historians in Germany, you won\u2019t find one who is against a commented edition and hasn\u2019t been calling for one for years,\u201d said Sven Felix Kellerhoff, a journalist with the daily Die Welt and a historian who has written about \u201cMein Kampf\u201d himself. \u201cThat goes from conservatives to the left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jewish opinion varies. The head of Germany\u2019s Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, says that knowledge of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d is important in explaining Nazism and the Holocaust \u2014 so \u201cwe do not object to a critical edition, contrasting Hitler\u2019s racial theories with scientific findings, to be at the disposal of research and teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of his predecessors is more critical. Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor who heads Munich\u2019s Jewish community, says she trusts the expertise of the institute\u2019s researchers but doubts that the new edition will achieve its aim of \u201cdemystifying and taking apart \u2018Mein Kampf.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It is likely to awaken interest \u201cnot in the commentary, but the original \u2014 and that remains highly dangerous,\u201d Knobloch said. \u201cIt could still have an impact because both of the core ideas are timeless: ultranationalism and racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that \u201cMein Kampf\u201d is already widely available in university libraries and on the internet, \u201cwe don\u2019t see a need to print more copies of it and thus ensure mass distribution, including of an annotated version,\u201d said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.<\/p>\n

The publishers say they understand the objections, while noting that the book is already freely available secondhand and online, not to mention in other languages, without annotations. Christian Hartmann, who led the team putting together the heavily annotated version, says that \u201cwe are linking Hitler\u2019s text and our commentary firmly together \u2014 we are practically encircling Hitler with our remarks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hartmann said they have attempted \u201cthe most intensive examination and rebuttal that is possible\u201d of \u201cMein Kampf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid disagreement over the annotated edition\u2019s merits, there is wide agreement that Hitler still shouldn\u2019t be left to speak uncontradicted.<\/p>\n

In mid-2014, Germany\u2019s federal and state justice ministers agreed that new editions without commentary should continue to be prevented after the copyright expires, likely using laws against incitement.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether their resolve will be tested. There are currently no known plans to publish a Hitler-only \u201cMein Kampf\u201d in Germany.<\/p>\n

After the end of World War II, the Allies turned over what remained of Hitler\u2019s assets \u2014 the Nazi leader was officially registered as living in Munich \u2014 to the Bavarian government. Those included the copyright of the German original of \u201cMein Kampf.\u201d Authorities in Munich subsequently ensured it wasn\u2019t republished, though there was no official ban on the book.<\/p>\n

That use of the copyright \u201cof course had its reasons,\u201d Wirsching said. In the early years of West Germany, \u201cthere were any number of Hitler admirers; there wasn\u2019t just neo-Nazism, there was also old Nazism.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cthis is a different generation, a different political culture, a solid political democracy that in my view can definitely withstand an edition with commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Bavarian government took the same view when, in 2012, it said it would put 500,000 euros ($545,000) into backing the project and was even considering a version specifically aimed at students. But the following year, governor Horst Seehofer did an about-turn, arguing that supporting publication of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d didn\u2019t fit with Bavaria\u2019s participation in a drive to have modern Germany\u2019s main far-right party banned.<\/p>\n

However, the Institute for Contemporary History insisted that it would go ahead, Bavarian officials then indicated that they wouldn\u2019t object, and the researchers didn\u2019t have to return the funding.<\/p>\n

The new edition of \u201cMein Kampf,\u201d which has expanded to nearly 2,000 pages with the Munich institute\u2019s commentary, roughly double the length of the original, doesn\u2019t appear likely to fly off the shelves. With a print run of up to 4,000 copies, it costs 59 euros ($64).<\/p>\n

There won\u2019t be an e-book, since the edition\u2019s layout can\u2019t be adapted to the format, but publishers are considering an online edition, perhaps in 2017.<\/p>\n

Any proceeds will go to charity, Wirsching said, but given the costs of dedicating historians to the task and producing the voluminous tome, he doesn\u2019t expect any.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, I think this will be an entirely nonprofit enterprise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BERLIN \u2014 For 70 years since the Nazi defeat in World War II, copyright law has been used in Germany to prohibit the publication of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d \u2014 the notorious anti-Semitic tome in which Adolf Hitler set out his ideology. That will change next month when a new edition with critical commentary, the product of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10526"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}