Is it permissible to sit in a cafe and read Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf?" British publisher Peter McGee, 51, has no doubt. "Of course it is. It's long overdue that a broad public should get the opportunity to deal with the original text."
And because McGee is so sure he's right, he plans to serialize extracts of the book in three small 15-page brochures with an initial print run of 100,000 copies each. The front cover features a photo of Hitler with a black bar obscuring his eyes and a headline that translates to "The unreadable book."
The plans could trigger opposition from Bavarian civil servants, though. Contrary to common belief, "Mein Kampf" is not banned in Germany. But the state of Bavaria, which seized Hitler's assets after his death, owns the copyright to his infamous treatise and has so far consistently prohibited efforts to reprint it.
McGee likes a fight and is no stranger to scandal. In 2009, he published reprints of vintage Nazi newspapers like Der Angriff and Völkischer Beobachter with print runs of up to 300,000, delivered alongside comments from historians. » | Martin U. Müller and Florian Zerfaß | Monday, January 06, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Parts of Mein Kampf to be published in Germany: A British company plans to break one of the great taboos of Germany by publishing excerpts of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. ¶ Starting in two weeks Albertas Press, a London based publishing house, will print sections of the book in German with critical commentaries printed alongside. The company plans to print three 15-page editions, each with a print run of 100,000. ¶ Witten by Hitler as he served a jail sentence for his role in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Mein Kampf has not been published in Germany since the end of the Second World War. In the book Hitler mixes autobiographical elements and expositions of his political thesis, outlining his hatred of communism and Jews, and his conviction that Germany was destined to fight the "Judeo-Bolshevik regime" of the Soviet Union. » | Matthew Day | Monday, January 16, 2012
