Old News Brings Fresh Outrage

Reprints of 1930s Nazi Articles Rile German Censors

BERLIN -- The news is really old -- from the 1930s -- but it's as shocking and controversial as ever. So controversial, in fact, that German censors are working overtime and police have raided newsstands across the country to cover it up.

Last month, a British publisher broke a long-standing German taboo by reprinting contemporary newspaper accounts of Hitler's rise to power. Among them: reports from the Voelkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party house organ, breathlessly covering the Feb. 27, 1933, arson in the Reichstag, the German parliament.

"Enough is enough!" screamed the headline, blaming the blaze on communists and heralding Hitler as Germany's savior. Included in the reprints was a full-page Nazi campaign poster featuring a large swastika. Hitler used the Reichstag fire as a pretext to gain emergency powers.

The stated purpose of the reprints, collectively titled Zeitungszeugen, or Newspaper Witnesses, is to reeducate the public about the darkest moments in German history by giving them a view of how the news was reported at the time by various sources.

In addition to the Nazi screeds, the reprints include coverage of the same events by newspapers across the political spectrum, as well as modern-day commentary and analysis by respected historians. An issue costs about $4.50. A new one is published weekly, each covering a different event from when the Nazis held power between 1933 and 1945.

But the publisher, Albertas Ltd., quickly ran into trouble. The swastika has been banned in Germany since the end of World War II; any display of the symbol can land offenders in jail. Also, copyrights for the Nazi newspaper and other assorted propaganda churned out during the Third Reich are held by the state government of Bavaria, which was not consulted in advance.

On Jan. 22, the Bavarian Finance Ministry announced criminal and civil charges against Albertas and ordered police to grab any unsold copies they could find. The ministry fiercely guards its copyrights, which were granted to the Bavarian government after the war by the Allied powers. Usually, officials give permission to excerpt Nazi publications only to selected academics and researchers, under closely monitored conditions.

The restrictions are necessary to prevent neo-Nazi groups and other extremists from spreading Hitler's propaganda, said Judith Steiner, a spokeswoman for the ministry. "We believe there is a real danger of abuse wherever Nazi material is reproduced," she said.

Sandra Paweronschitz, the Vienna-based editor in chief of Zeitungszeugen, said her publisher did not try to obtain authorization in advance because it assumed Bavarian officials would reject the request.

She said Albertas had filed a complaint to challenge the ministry's copyright, which she asserted rested on dubious legal grounds. Some researchers have long questioned Bavaria's right to restrict publication of Nazi materials, including "Mein Kampf," Hitler's autobiography.

The copyrights do not extend to the United States and Britain, where researchers and publishers freely make use of the material. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, for example, has a major new exhibit on Nazi propaganda.

"In Germany, they are still afraid of this stuff," Paweronschitz said. "In 2009, it should be possible to discuss such things and not just lock the news in the archives, away from the public."