Copyright ends late 2015 for Adolf Hitlers book Mein Kampf (my struggle )

[Australia]

Quoted from web source
What Happens When Mein Kampf's Copyright Expires? | The New Republic



While historians have long debated how many Germans actually read Mein Kampf during the Third Reich, today a different question has arisen: Will anyone in Germany read it once it can be legally published there in early 2016? And what might be the impact on a digital generation for whom the Führer is a distant memory or internet meme?

Later this year, the official copyright for Mein Kampf expires—70 years after the demise of its author. Since 1945, the Bavarian State (which owns the copyright) has refused to allow anyone to publish the volume. But in expectation of the copyright’s expiration and in the hope of getting a jump on neo-Nazis who may try to publish their own slanted versions of the text) the esteemed Munich and Berlin-based Institute for Contemporary History decided some years ago to publish its own, critically annotated version. The move has generated some opposition, with some arguing against the release of any new version; “Can you annotate the Devil?” one critic asks.

The question is whether anyone will have the strength to lift, let alone read, the new edition. The volume will be hefty, numbering more than 2,000 pages—the result of nearly 5,000 annotations supplied by scholars. These annotations will critically engage Hitler’s ideologically rooted claims in Mein Kampf, the goal being to prevent gullible readers from accepting any of them at face value.

Who will read the new edition of Mein Kampf?
Neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists will surely shy away from this new volume. But what about younger Germans who may simply be curious about the book? To be sure, they—like all German readers—have been able to access used and online versions of Mein Kampf for some time (even though selling or distributing the book is against German law) thanks to Internet vendors. But if they haven’t found their way to a version of the book by now, will they be tempted to look at the forthcoming edition?

Perhaps some will. But the likelihood is that the weighty tome will appeal to very few who belong to the millennial generation. Younger Germans, like their peers worldwide, have grown up reading brief Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. When browsing the web, their attention spans, if estimates are to be believed, run to less than thirty seconds per website. Moreover, they have been exposed to countless examples of the “Hitler Meme,” in the form of irreverent images that spoof the former Führer, in the form of satirical videos on YouTube, websites like Cats That Look Like Hitler, and online games like Six Degrees of Hitler. Today’s youth culture, in short, is accustomed to superficially mocking, rather than deeply engaging, with Hitler and his legacy.

For this reason, those who fearfully imagine adverse political repercussions arising from the re-issuing of Mein Kampf probably needn’t worry. Indeed, in important ways, the book runs counter the essential dynamics of present-day web culture.

My new book, Hi Hitler! highlights my research into the increasingly common commercialization and normalization of the Nazi past. I argue that a new internet rule has recently come into being, which I term the “Law of Ironic Hitlerization.” It asserts that the likelihood of an image getting attention on the web increases as soon as a Hitler moustache, swastika, or any other Nazi iconography is applied to it. For those brave enough, doing a brief image search on Google will turn up endless images of otherwise blameless characters—Hello Kitty, Colonel Sanders, the Teletubbies—who have fallen victim to this dynamic.

In all likelihood, however, Mein Kampf will resist the “Law of Ironic Hitlerization.” Unless intrepid web users can devise a way to “Hitlerize”—that is, to affix Nazi iconography to—Mein Kampf’s textual passages and footnotes, the reappearance of the book, for many readers, will be akin to stumbling upon a fossil.

[TrondK]

Let those who want to print the book. Let anyone buy it. They will VERY quickly see it is a nonsense book.

If it will be forbidden, then all twisted minds want to have it to brag over the super-duper evil book they have. "very illegal-very dangerous"

[Glenn66]

Once they edit all the $hit out of the orginal they might be left with a single sheet of A4...blank.

[MAP]

I remember trying to read it years and years ago... Got through it basically as an excercise to "know thine enemy" but boy, did it suck.

[Glenn66]

I could only make it about 1/2 way through...utter dross.

[MAP]

I could only make it about 1/2 way through...utter dross.

Agree, a waste of time but I was much younger and more foolish and wanted to prove a point. What that point was...I don't remember

[bigmacglenn]

The old, original copies of Mein Kampf have been legal to own/buy/sell in Germany, it's the reprinting that was illegal in Germany...that is about to change with the expiration of the copyright...Sounds like this annotated reprint will be far too analytical for the average neo-nazi to digest, just as the original was impossible to read & understand by the readers during the Nazi-era...Something for scholars, perhaps...It really is an awful book, and I've only been able to read a few chapters, never the entire book...a mentally challenging, uniquely tortuous read....UGH!
cheers, Glenn

[MAP]

Glenn,

I'm not sure if "mentally challenging" is a correct assumption given that it is gibberish. I equate mentall challenging with a view toward improving oneself....LoL!!

EDIT: Left out "not"....doh! and have since corrected

[HPL2008]

I'm sure if "mentally challenging" is a correct assumption given that it is gibberish. I equate mentall challenging with a view toward improving oneself....LoL!!

No doubt, though, that the typical fanboy of the author is mentally challenged.

[bigmacglenn]

It really is the only book I've ever been able to describe honestly as being "impossible to read", lol....
Glenn