"The longer it remains forbidden, the more attractive it becomes." The vast majority of Germans are sufficiently educated and responsible to read it and draw their own conclusions, he said. "It also represents a chance to demystify 'Mein Kampf,'" he added. "I understand the survivors, but the publication is going to come anyway," Kramer said. "I'd rather see the book with commentary than printed in a normal version," Stephan Kramer told The Associated Press. The president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, opposes publishing the book - but her organization's general secretary takes the opposite view. It argues that holding back the book is matter of respect for the victims of the Holocaust. While its position may be softening somewhat, it still isn't keen and says it hopes publication of "Mein Kampf" can be prevented beyond 2015 under laws against incitement to hatred. The Munich historians tried to initiate a similar project two years ago, but the Bavarian Finance Ministry was categorically opposed. In Hitler's case, that is just over five years away: the Nazi dictator killed himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.Īfter World War II, the Allies agreed to hand the rights to "Mein Kampf" over to the Bavarian state government. While possession is not illegal, resale of old copies is tightly regulated, essentially limited to research purposes.īut German copyright law dictates that any author's work enters the public domain 70 years after his or her death. Though widely available in the English-speaking world, the book has never been reprinted in Germany since World War II. Raim noted that "if someone really wants to get a copy of the book, then he can do so anyway, for example over the Internet." She says that would be the best defense against those who might want to use the book to advance racist or anti-Semitic agendas. "Once Bavaria's copyright expires, there is the danger of charlatans and neo-Nazis appropriating this infamous book for themselves," Wolfgang Heubisch said Thursday.Įdith Raim, a historian at the Munich institute, envisions a thorough, academic presentation that places Hitler's work in historical context. This week, the state's science minister emerged as an energetic backer of printing a critical edition. The memoir has been under a de facto publishing ban in Germany since the end of World War II, with the government body that holds the rights refusing to let anybody print it.īavaria's Finance Ministry has rejected proposals by Munich's Institute for Contemporary History to publish the tome, but there has been growing support for the idea. Historians lobby for right to reprint Adolf Hitler's infamous memoirīERLIN - Publish Hitler's infamous memoir "Mein Kampf" in Germany? It sounds like the ultimate taboo.īut a group of German historians is lobbying to do just that, arguing that it's necessary to get an authoritative annotated edition ready for bookshops by the time the copyright runs out in 2015, opening the way for neo-Nazi groups to publish their own versions.