Berlin (dpa) – German interior ministers vowed Thursday to prosecute
anyone who tries to reprint and sell Mein Kampf, Nazi dictator Adolf
Hitler‘s manifesto, after the text enters the public domain in 2016.
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, 70 years after the dictator‘s suicide.
Interior ministers of the 16 states meeting at Binz on Germany‘s
Baltic Sea coast left open whether they would tolerate reprints where
each of Mein Kampf‘s falsehoods was annotated and explained by
scholars.
But they said issuing the plain text of the “inhuman” book would
constitute the crime of sedition.
Germany has struggled for seven decades to eradicate every trace of
Nazism, and keeps tabs on 9,600 people described as active neo-Nazis.
Owning and treasuring Mein Kampf was a mark of fanatical devotion to
the Nazi cause during World War II.
Officials concede that Mein Kampf in German is easy to find on the
internet, housed on servers abroad, and survives in many German
attics, but say its republication on German soil would send the wrong
message to victims of the Nazis including Jews.
“The entire democratic world is watching Germany on this one. We‘ve
got to especially respect the feelings of survivors of the
Holocaust,” said Winfried Bausback, interior minister of Bavaria.
Ministers recommended government prosecutors check that sedition law
offers a watertight way to keep the book from sale in Germany.
Hitler wrote the two-volume book in 1924 in Landsberg Prison, setting
out his hatred of Jews and his theory of the Aryan master race.
Bavaria‘s later ownership of the book was convenient as it allowed
authorities to use simple provisions of copyright law to block
reprinting.
Bavaria earlier cancelled state funding for an annotated post-2015
reprint, but says it may tolerate private publication of one.
Bausback said it would have outraged Holocaust survivors if the
German state had supplied any funding for such a project.
There was controversy before the meeting, with some officials
proposing Germany pass a one-off law to ban the book in perpetuity.
Antje Niewisch-Lennartz, the interior minister of Lower Saxony state,
told dpa there ought to be a reprint annotated by respected scholars.
She said Mein Kampf with footnotes would not lead readers towards
Nazi beliefs, but instead make Hitler‘s ideas seem more repellent.
Hermann Glaser, a German author who has written a book about Mein
Kampf, disagreed, saying he feared it might influence young German
Muslims.
“They come from nations that, because of the conflict with Israel,
have a positive leaning towards anyone who is anti-Jewish,” he told
dpa.