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Return of Mein Kampf

Many wish that Adolf Hitler's hate-filled manifesto would simply disappear

February 26, 2015 13:49
26022015 mein kampf

By

Stephen Applebaum,

Stephen Applebaum

4 min read

Many wish that Adolf Hitler's hate-filled manifesto, Mein Kampf, would simply disappear. However, with the book about to enter the public domain in Germany next year, the country is having to confront one of the most charged remnants of its Nazi past.

Since 1945, the state of Bavaria, which took over Hitler's estate after the US occupation, has, as the copyright holder, been able to prevent publication of the tome. But that control will cease when the copyright expires, 70 years after the author's death, on December 31.

The idea of anyone being able to publish their own German-language edition of Hitler's brutal text has, inevitably, provoked heated debate over how the situation should be handled, and whether it is appropriate, safe or moral for the dictator's self-mythologising and virulently antisemitic screed to go on sale in the cradle of the Third Reich.

Dr Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, is in no doubt about what the book represents, or what should happen to it.