A fresh batch of copies of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle) were made available Friday in German bookstores. This was the first time Hitler's autobiography was available in stores after the second World War.
A brief history of the extremely controversial Mein Kampf as it gets republished https://t.co/JIK223gdPE
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 10, 2016
The Institut für Zeitgeschichte Munich-Berlin (IfZ) republished "Mein Kampf" 70 years after the author's death, which is when the copyright expires, according to the Copyright Law of the European Union.
He wrote the two-volume book sometime between 1924 and 1926 and was utilized as a Nazi propaganda material, Reuters reported.
Dr. Christian Hartmann led a team from IfZ with members such as Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger and Roman Töppel to produce the "critical edition" of the book, which took a number of years. It was coined as a "critical edition" because the team studied the book and provided over 3,500 comments to explain terms and prove context for the particular people and incidents. They also noted that the republication was not only a scientific undertaking, as they also want to contribute to "historical and political education," according to the IfZ News.
"The aim is to deconstruct Hitler and his propaganda sustainably, thus depriving the still effective symbolic power of this book the ground. Also in this way can be an ideological and propagandistic as commercial abuse of counteracting 'Mein Kampf,'" they added.
Germany did not ban the book, but to reprint it was not allowed. The book can only be viewed for academic reasons, but it can still be accessed in some stores and copies are available online, according to Politico.
