By
our dpa-correspondent and Europe Online
Berlin (dpa) – German state officials were divided Wednesday over
whether to allow a reprint of Mein Kampf, Nazi dictator Adolf
Hitler‘s manifesto.
The state of Bavaria has controlled the copyright since 1945 as a
result of impounding Hitler‘s entire legal estate. But that control
expires at the end of 2015, when the text will enter the public
domain.
The anti-Semitic tirade has been banned in Germany since the end of
World War II. Interior ministers are to debate next steps Thursday at
Binz on Germany‘s Baltic Sea coast.
The proposals so far range from passing a law banning the book in
perpetuity to reprinting it with each of its falsehoods annotated and
explained.
Antje Niewisch-Lennartz, the interior minister of Lower Saxony state,
told dpa a reprint annotated by respected scholars was best.
She suggested that Mein Kampf with footnotes would not lead readers
towards Nazi beliefs, but instead make Hitler‘s ideas seem more
repellent.
The German version of Mein Kampf can easily be downloaded from the
internet. But officials have been concerned about the symbolism of it
being legally reissued in Germany, where it sold 10 million copies in
1943 alone.
“I can well understand that it‘s an almost unbearable idea to Jewish
groups that it could go on sale again in Germany,” said
Niewisch-Lennartz. “But I don‘t believe you should pass a one-off law
to ban a single book.”
The state of Bavaria aims to keep the book out of bookshops after
2015 by prosecuting any publisher who re-issues the book in Germany
for sedition. But Niewisch-Lennartz said this would be ineffective.
A state Justice Ministry spokeswoman in Bavaria conceded this was
uncertain, saying there might be circumstances in which an annotated
Mein Kampf would not break any law, but only a court could decide
this.
Hitler wrote the two-volume book in 1924 in Landsberg Prison, setting
out his hatred of Jews and his plans to take over Europe.
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter
weiter