BERLIN -- A Munich court has ruled that a British publisher cannot print excerpts of Adolf Hitlers infamous memoir Mein Kampf in Germany. The Munich state court said Thursday the excerpts would violate the books copyright, which is held by the state of Bavaria until 2015. Bavaria was given the rights by the Allies after the war, and it has successfully prevented the publication of the book in Germany since then. Reprinting the Nazi dictators autobiography, which outlines his ambitions to seize vast areas of land in eastern Europe to provide living space for the so-called master race, is outlawed in Germany except for academic study. London publisher Peter McGee, head of London-based publishing firm Albertas, had proposed reproducing three 16-page segments of Mein Kampf with critical commentary as an insert to his weekly magazine Zeitungszeugen, which reproduces Nazi-era newspapers alongside expert analysis. A court issued a temporary injunction against printing the excerpts in January, which was upheld in Thursdays ruling. McGee said in January that the first of three 16-page extracts from the book, accompanied by a critical commentary, would be published with a print run of 100,000 each. It is a sensitive subject in Germany but the incredible thing is most Germans dont have access to Mein Kampf because it has this taboo, this black magic surrounding it. We want Mein Kampf to be accessible so people can see it for what it is, and then discard it. Once exposed, it can be consigned to the dustbin of literature, he said. The excerpts were to be distributed as a supplement to the companys existing weekly publication, a controversial series called Zeitungszeugen, or Newspaper Witnesses, which reprints pages of Nazi newspapers from the 1920s and 1930s, along with a commentary. A January edition of the series sold more than 250,000 copies, according to McGee. In addition to a ban on the distribution of Nazi ideology for non-educational purposes in Germany, swastikas and Nazi salutes are also outlawed.
