"That's our Hitler!": Mein Kampf to be republished after understandable absence from German shelves - BookMachine
After all the huffing and puffing earlier in the week from parents concerned that their children were about to start talking like old-timey hobos who’ve just downed a couple of jugs of Old Maw Pepper’s moonshine, The Guardian has word of an overturning of censorship that will certainly test the mettle of free speech defenders: the imminent republication of Mein Kampf, the sole literary endeavour of a frustrated visual artist who just happened to go on to wider infamy with his state-sponsored murdering of millions (shall we get the Producers quotes out of the way early? Let’s: ‘Hitler… there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!’)
For reasons that should be largely self-evident, the book has been absent from German shelves since 1945, with publication, prominent display for sale and ‘flaunting in public’ all forbidden by law. Weird as it is to think of Hitler as a copyright holder, upon his death at the end of the Second World War (say, you don’t think the two might be connected, do you?) all rights to the title passed to the Bavarian state finance ministry, and the book was given the standard 70 year window on copyright expiration after the author’s death.
Unless you have a particularly poor grasp of rudimentary arithmetic, then, it shouldn’t come as too much of a shock to realise that we are fast approaching this 70 year cut-off, which will arrive in 2015, and at which time the text will enter into the public domain. Obviously even the staunchest defenders of free speech would acknowledge the potential dangers inherent in releasing such a deliberately inflammatory text in a form devoid of context or refutation (or even, should it find its way into the hands of neo-Nazi movements, given endorsement).
In a bid to control the damage that could be wrought by unscrupulous types looking to capitalise on the text’s infamy, German authorities are compiling an annotated version featuring academic commentary that thoroughly debunks Hitler’s rabid bile. Their aim is to ‘demystify’ the book, and discussions are also taking place with bookshops and publishers asking that they voluntarily refuse to carry any unannotated editions. Expected: the Bavarian edition will be translated into English and published internationally, and an e-book edition will also be made available. Slightly less expected: so will an audiobook (imagine being the actor who gets that call). Prediction: it won’t sell quite as many copies as it did in, oh, let’s say Germany in, oh, let’s say the 30s.
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[…] // Chris Ward Posted in // Articles, Blog, News Between the re-publication of Mein Kampf and the revelation that Osama Bin Laden liked to keep up on his correspondence (which at least […]
Andrew Turner is Marketing Executive at Nelson Croom (who are currently offering 10% off their online publishing courses for BookMachine readers) and current chair of the Society of Young Publishers. Emma Smith has 6 questions for him…
The SYP helps people break into the industry or progress within it. How has it helped you get where you are today?
I joined the SYP after I started in my current role as Marketing Executive at Nelson Croom so the SYP didn’t have a direct role in me securing this position. However, the SYP has helped me to immerse myself in to the publishing industry, allowing me to meet new people, stay up to date with news and views and attend some brilliant events. All of which I think will be invaluable as I progress in my career.
It is difficult to single out one thing as the most rewarding experience but up there would have to be the last issue of our magazine InPrint. We restructured the committee in January and, after a year where InPrint wasn’t at its strongest, the team managed to deliver what I think was the best issue yet.
For people considering becoming members, what would you say are the biggest benefits of joining? And what’s coming up in the near future for the SYP?
If I was to summarise the benefits of the SYP into one heading I would have to say support. Through our events, articles and job alerts we aim to help people as they start and progress in their career. This could be as simple as allowing them to network at events or replying to questions we get emailed or tweeted but our biggest goal, and the biggest benefit we provide, is that we offer impartial advice and support from people who are at the same level of their careers as our members.
Publishing remains a seriously competitive industry. What do you think young publishers (or those aspiring to be) should be doing to get ahead?
For me there is no one thing people should be doing to get ahead, rather it is about building up transferable skills and networking. These are the two most important things and each has a lot of facets to its build up. You need a social media presence, a physical presence – at events – you need to understand digital AND traditional publishing methods and models and also be aware of new ideas and concepts which both succeed and fail.
Nelson Croom are offering 10% off publishing courses to BookMachine folks (great!), why have you made that decision, and why should people take these courses?
Nelson Croom, who I work for, has a selection of great online publishing courses, from Introduction to Publishing to Social Media for Professionals. Luckily I get to complete the courses as part of my job but it is something my bosses and I thought could be valuable to people starting out in the industry and so we wanted to do all we could to make them accessible to them. BookMachine provided this opportunity and we were very happy to offer a discount to their members for this.
I have to say our February ‘Last night a speed date saved my . . . career’ event was probably my favourite. It was the first event of my time as chair and we were really ambitious with it. We had over 20 speakers and thankfully the turnout was amazing, with over 100 people registering for the event. The night was fun and I really believe people learned a lot about areas of the industry they had never considered. You can see a full write up of the event here. I also have to give special mention to our Literary Pub Crawl event as it combined two of my favourite pastimes, fancy dress and beer, to allow me to get merry in central London in my PJs and a dressing gown.
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