Reprint of Adolf Hitler's MEIN KAMPF Becomes Best Seller in Germany

A reprint of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' has become a bestseller in Germany since it first appeared 70 years ago, selling more than 85,000 copies.

The publisher, the Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ), believes that the interest is due to educators promoting the book, not neo-Nazi readers.

IfZ director Andreas Wirsching said, "These sales figures have taken us by storm. No one could really have expected them."

IfZ decided to publish the new edition after the copyright expired on December 31, 2015.

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Mein Kampf is Hitler's most important programmatic text. He composed it between 1924 and 1926 in two volumes. In a strongly stylized form, Volume 1 centres on Hitler's biography and the early history of the Nazi party (NSDAP) and its predecessor organization, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP). Volume 2 mainly deals with the political programme of the National Socialists. Large sections of Volume 1 were written during Hitler's incarceration in Landsberg am Lech subsequent to his abortive coup attempt in November 1923. Its failure, his imprisonment and the prohibition of the NSDAP interrupted Hitler's political career. He utilised this time in order to weld everything that he had previously experienced, read and thought into an ideology in written form, and to develop a new perspective and strategy for his now outlawed party. After his release from prison, Hitler wrote much of the second volume at his mountain retreat in Obersalzberg. Once Hitler was installed as Reich Chancellor in January 1933, sales of the book skyrocketed, and it became a bestseller. Down to 1945, it was translated into 18 languages and 12 million copies were sold.

After Hitler's suicide and the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945, the victorious Allied powers transferred the rights to Hitler's book to the Free State of Bavaria. The Bavarian state government then repeatedly employed the copyright in its possession to prevent any new printing of the work. But with the expiration of the copyright 70 years after Hitler's death, effective 1 January 2016, this legal instrument is no longer available.

Photo Credit: Matthias Balk

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