December 2015 | Nate Pedersen

Hitler's "Mein Kampf" to be Reprinted in German

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In 2016, "the world's most dangerous book," Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, will be released into the public domain. The book has not been reprinted in German since the conclusion of World War II. The Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, however, will publish an extensively annotated edition of Mein Kampf in January. It will be the first German printing of the book in seventy years.

The Institute has been working on a critical edition of Mein Kampf since 2009 and will publish the work in two volumes with 3,500 annotations. The annotations will expose the "lies, half-truths, and vicious tirades" of the book, said a representative of the Institute.

The first run will be limited to 3,500 to 4,000 copies, priced at about $60.

Plans to reprint Hitler's autobiographical manifesto have met with resistance from Jewish groups who have argued that the book should never be printed again. 

The south German state of Bavaria was granted the copyright to Mein Kampf by Allied powers after the conclusion of WWII. They refused to allow the book to be reprinted again in German out of respect for the victims of the Nazi regime and to prevent the spread of hatred.  

The book's copyright, however, officially enters the public domain on January 1, 2016, seventy years after Hitler's death.

Image via Wikipedia.