World Jewish News

A court in the state capital Munich ruled in March that British publisher Peter McGee would violate Bavaria's copyright on the work if he went ahead with plans to sell excerpts with explanations and commentary on German newsstands.

German state says will republish Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'

The German state which owns the rights to Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" said Tuesday it would republish an annotated edition of the book 70 years after the Nazi dictator's suicide.
After winning a court battle last month against a British publisher who planned to release parts of the anti-Semitic tract alongside commentary from historians, Bavaria said it would put out its own version by 2015.
State Finance Minister Markus Soeder told German news agency DPA the decision was taken after talks with advocates and opponents of the move, and said it was aimed at "demystifying" the pages drenched in hatred and paranoid fantasy.
"We want to make clear what nonsense is in there, however with catastrophic consequences," Soeder said of the book on which much of the Nazis' genocidal ideology was based.
He said the state aimed with the release -- the first since the end of World War II -- to already make future publication as "commercially unattractive" as possible.
In addition to the annotated book, Bavaria -- which holds the rights to all publications from the main Nazi publishing house -- also plans to put out an edition for schools that encourages a critical approach to the work.
Holocaust survivors and their families have expressed fears that neo-Nazis could seize upon the book as propaganda.
The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, told AFP he wanted to withhold comment until he had taken a closer look at the publication plans.
A court in the state capital Munich ruled in March that British publisher Peter McGee would violate Bavaria's copyright on the work if he went ahead with plans to sell excerpts with explanations and commentary on German newsstands.
McGee has vowed to appeal the decision.
Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle) in 1924 while languishing in a Bavarian prison, and combined elements of autobiography with his views on Aryan "racial purity", his hatred of Jews and his opposition to communism.
The book was published long before Hitler took power in 1933.
Around 10 million copies were published in Germany until 1945, according to British historian Ian Kershaw. From 1936, every German couple marrying received a copy as a wedding gift from the Nazi state.
It is not banned as such in Germany but since the end of World War II, Bavaria -- which holds the rights until the end of 2015 -- has not permitted reprints.
From 2016, third parties will be able to release copies of the work without obtaining permission from the state "unless it is used to incite racial hatred," Soeder said.

EJP