Excerpts from adolf hitler’s pamphlet "mein kampf could soon be available at german newsstands – in annotated form. The british publisher peter mcgee, who with the "newspaper witnesses annotated reprints of newspapers from the nazi era on the market, wants the issue of 26. Enclose a 15-page brochure with each of the january and two subsequent issues. Mcgee’s spokesman alexander luckow, who himself had worked on the "newspaper witnesses"-project, confirmed a corresponding report of the "spiegel" in hamburg on monday.
The bavarian ministry of finance, which owns the copyrights to "mein kampf halt announced on monday that it would take legal action against the project.
The three enclosed booklets deal thematically with hitler’s autobiography, propaganda and ideology. They are to be published in an edition of 100.000 pieces appear. On the right side should be the original text, on the left the corresponding commentary. Should "mein kampf" as an insert in the "zeitungszeugen" newspaper if it turns out to be a bestseller, further editions with annotated excerpts are possible, luckow said and emphasized: "the language is really degrading in many parts."
His boss, mcgee, had published supplements to the "spiegel" in said:""mein kampf" is an extremely bad book" and demanded: "it is long overdue that a broad public gets the opportunity to deal with the original text."
In the year 2015 the copyrights of "mein kampf" expire until then they are at the bavarian ministry of finance.
"The bavarian ministry of finance is currently considering legal action against a publication that does not fall within the scope of the small-quotation regulation under section 51 no. 2 copyright stop", he said in a press release.
The makers of "newspaper witnesses" refer to the citation rule as the "citation rule" for the "newspaper witnesses". "You can quote from historical documents without violating copyright", emphasized luckow. "The copyright refers to the publication of the complete work. We have no intention of reprinting this."
In 2009, bavaria had already taken legal action against the publication of reprints of nazi hate publications and lost in two instances. Previously, in january 2009, the ministry of finance had published the second issue of "newspaper witnesses" confiscation of reprints of the nazi newspaper "volkischer beobachter and "the attack from 1933.
"Our project is far from being suspected of being a right-wing ideological product", emphasized luckow. In the "newspaper witnesses"-the editorial team includes renowned historians hans mommsen and sonke neitzel, as well as wolfgang benz, director emeritus of the center for antisemitism research at the tu berlin. In addition to nazi inflammatory papers, the editorial team also publishes other papers from the time, such as the SPD newspaper "vorwarts".
For the period after 2015, the institute for contemporary history in munich is also planning the publication of an annotated "mein kampf-edition. Work on the project began in 2010, and historians have estimated that the project will take two to four years to complete.