The Book Problem

30 April 2015 is an odd day in Germany.

Germany has this plain and simple law in effect that copyright of books is guaranteed for seventy years.  After that, it all goes into public domain.  That means anyone can print the book and profit from it.  The original writer and family?  Nothing.

On this spring-like day in 2015, the copyright to Mein Kampf will run out.  For the last couple of years....various political and media folks in Germany have talked of the implications.  The state of Bavaria is the current owner of the book and has been able keep it under wraps.

Across the internet, illegal copies of Hitler's book have been around.  If left to the current German government....they'd like to allow publishing of the two-volume series....with a slight change.  There would be commentary inserted into the new publication to openly criticize the original material.

So for a number of months, this project was discussed.  A number of people were willing to involve themselves into the discussion and help pile on negative commentary.  Along the way....some folks came up and said printing of any part of Mein Kampf was wrong.  Even if you put into critical commentary and heavy featured the thinking as 'stupid'.....it was wrong to print the book.

This week, it appears the anti-printing group has won.  The project to piece together negative commentary and print the book in 2015....won't happen (at least with the current thinking).

I sat years ago and tried to read Mein Kampf.  It was a copy from the Air Force base library.  I doubt if I got more than twenty pages into it....before coming to a conclusion that it was an awful bad piece of political commentary.  I stopped at that point...questioned myself on how I'd possibly continue reading it, and then just put it down.

The odds of a thousand Germans ever reading the whole thing and comprehending it (in the 1920's and 1930s)?  Less than a fifty-percent chance.  I suspect the mass of people who bought the book in 1925 and 1926....put it on their coffee table or desk at work.  They impressed people with a quote or two, but I doubt if one percent of the book owners ever read it.

So this brings me to this whole project of commentary added to the original book.  Once you get into this practice....it starts to invite people to view the idea of all books eventually having a commentary added.  Maybe the Bible?  Maybe the Koran?  I'm not of the belief that commentary added....ever gets read, or accepted.

It's a fair sized mess, and as we come to the end of 2014, you can suspect that this is one of the top ten issues resting on German society as they enter 2015.