Posted on 08/07/2006 11:47:44 AM PDT by nickcarraway
German officials have made diplomatic protests and threatened legal action after learning Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is being illegally printed and sold again abroad.
The book, published as My Struggle in English, is on its way to becoming a best seller in some countries, but is still banned in Germany.
Last month it was revealed that in Turkey it sold out in all the shops where it was on sale and that new copies could not be printed fast enough. Experts estimate that up to 100,000 copies of the work have been printed so far in Turkish, although no official figures exist.
A bookseller in the capital Ankara, where it was number three on the bestseller lists, said the £2 price tag meant it was particularly popular among students. "Turks love this kind of read," he added.
A spokesman for the local Jewish community said: “This is a democratic country and the book can’t be banned, but it would be good if the government openly said they don’t like it being sold. Unfortunately there has been no such approach.”
In Poland, meanwhile, where Mein Kampf was banned under the Communist regime, publishers have announced plans to print thousands of new copies to keep up with demand.
And in the Czech Republic, a publisher who was given a three-year suspended sentence for supporting the Nazi movement when he produced a Czech translation of Mein Kampf, was acquitted last week, The Supreme Court ruled there was no evidence Michal Zitko supported the movement by publishing the book, clearing the way for more sales there.
Mein Kampf, which was once more popular than the bible in Germany, was written by Hitler in Landsberg prison after his incarceration for the failed Munich putsch in 1923. It served as a blueprint for his wars of conquest and clearly outlined his anti-Semitic policies.
A spokeswoman for the German foreign office said that the state of Bavaria, which inherited the copyright for the work after Hitler’s demise, was monitoring where the book was being sold and was planning to take action.
The state has announced it will not allow domestic or foreign companies to print further copies of the book, with finance minister Kurt Faltlhauser pledging to crack down on illegal editions wherever they surface.
Bavaria holds the copyright until December 31, 2015. According to historian Werner Maser, Hitler's great nephew Peter Raubal, would have the strongest case for winning the copyright. However, he has stated he wants no part of the book.
In 1999, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre documented that major internet booksellers like amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com sell Mein Kampf to Germany. After a public outcry, both companies agreed to stop those sales.
I thought I had read in the past that an edited version of Mein Kampf has been very popular in many Arab cultures for some time.
Scary
Wouldn't surprise me if so. They've certainly taken the section on propoganda to heart.
I read Mein Kampf as part of the literature for a college course in European history between WWI and WWII.
What's really scary is that such insane drivel seems to inspire so many people.
A frighteningly large percentage of the human species is crazy.
It seems to me that another actual world war is in the offing.
This current War on Terror is a global war on terror, but it isn't being fought with the vigor and dedication that the previous world wars were fought. With the exception of the U.S. and a few allies, the rest of the world is treating the war on terror like it treats the war on drugs, or the war on the human slave trade - they ignore it except when it becomes inconvenient to do so, and then they deal with a small portion of it, and get on with ignoring the rest of it.
World war is one of those things you don't have to ask yourself if we're in one. If we're in one, there is absolutely no doubt about it.
This is not censorship, this is a copyright violation issue. Copyright holder has every legal right to prevent publication.
No doubt some of the sales are to people with evil agendas, but there's no reason why normal people shouldn't read this book. It has tremendous historical significance. And the notion of a government entity holding a copyright to a book which it didn't write, when that copyright wasn't sold to it by the original writer/copyright holder, is repugnant. Why should the government of the state of Bavaria be allowed to restrict dissemination of a book in countries whose laws permit its dissemination, especially of a book which is of substantial interest to many legitimate scholars?
I'm happy to say I have a copy in my personal library. I haven't read it, but at least one of my revolving cast of college student boarders has. Several years ago, a student who rented a room from me for the summer, just after returning from a semester abroad in Germany in a program focusing on Holocaust studies, happened upon the book on my shelf and read it. Her purpose was certainly not to fuel neo-Nazism, but rather to gain a deeper understanding of how that tragic segment of history came about.
Mein Kampf is popular because we now have Chavez, Ahmadinejhad ,Kim Jung Il and a Dying Castro all who have planned or now plan on being the new Hitler.
And my German mother says she had no idea all this was going on right in front of her.
I never understood banning Mein Kampf in Germany: I'd have forced every high school student to read it just before touring the death camps as part of their required education.
I bought a copy about 10 years ago. Read two chapters put it back on the book shelf abd haven´t had the desire to read any more. Anyone who can read that and be inspired is a lunitic anyway.
This sounds more like a copyright-stealer than a copyright-holder. Just how did the government of Bavaria "inherit" the copyright? But aside from the copyright issue, something with this much historical and political significance simply shouldn't be subject to copyright beyond the lifetime of the author.
Question, you think enforcing copyrights equals censorship?
Reading this article, I think the real anger isn't this book getting sold, it looks more like people are mad they aren't getting paid.
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