Mein Kampf

Stuff reports:

Old copies of the offending tome are kept in a secure “poison cabinet,” a literary danger zone in the dark recesses of the vast Bavarian State Library. A team of experts vets every request to see one, keeping the toxic text away from the prying eyes of the idly curious or those who might seek to exalt it.

“This book is too dangerous for the general public,” library historian Florian Sepp warned as he carefully laid a first edition of Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto of hate – on a table in a restricted reading room.

I presume people in Bavaria have the Internet. It is on Project Gutenberg.

I know the parliamentary library has a copy also, as once when I worked there I was sent to check out which MPs had borrowed it!

The prohibition on reissue for years was upheld by the state of Bavaria, which owns the German copyright and legally blocked attempts to duplicate it. But those rights expire in December, and the first new print run here since Hitler’s death is due out early next year.

I didn’t realise it was still under copyright. Hitler died in 1945 so I would have thought copyright expired in 1995.

The book’s reissue, to the chagrin of critics, is effectively being financed by German taxpayers, who fund the historical society that is producing and publishing the new edition. Rather than a how-to guidebook for the aspiring fascist, the new reprint, the group said this month, will instead be a vital academic tool, a 2000-page volume packed with more criticisms and analysis than the original text.

Sounds like a good way to do it.

Regardless of the academic context provided by the new volume, critics say the new German edition will ultimately allow Hitler’s voice to rise from beyond the grave.

“I am absolutely against the publication of Mein Kampf, even with annotations. Can you annotate the devil? Can you annotate a person like Hitler?” said Levi Salomon, spokesman for the Berlin-based Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism. “This book is outside of human logic.”

Yes it is an awful book, that represents great evil. But it was the Nazis who banned and burnt books. Trying to ban Mein Kamph would just make it more desirable – and never succeed.