Charters: "I hear they give a copy to all newlywed couples."
Caldicott: “I don’t think it’s that kind of book, old man!”
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Yep. In one of my film history classes, we were shown twenty minutes of Triumph of the Will. Five minutes in, I became convinced that authoritarians are some of the most mind-numbing people on the planet.
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Good lord I hope not. That’s a damn engrossing book, especially for people in their teens and early 20s. I get wanting to bash Ayn Rand because a lot of highly offensive people like her work, but whether you want to admit it or not her work is fantastic young adult fiction. And ever since hearing that Fox News boycotted any mention of Kurt Vonnegut on the day of his death I try to avoid these petty battles.
Back on topic, I really hope the German government stops trying to guide people’s thought on this book. Making it such forbidden fruit is bound to be some literary equivalent of the Barbara Streisand Effect.
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Sounds like “Spycatcher”. That turgid, self-serving piece of dreck was banned here for a while on the say so of a foreign government (don’t ask :mad: ). It was very popular for a while … right up until people started actually reading it.
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Wait, isn’t that the Leni Reifenstahl (sp?) movie that everyone thinks is the best thing evah?
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Dickens, “It was the best of brats…”
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The annotated edition of “Mein Kampf” is really supposed to be quite interesting, if you’re into Third Reich history anyway.
During the Nazi regime, the state gave a free copy of the book to every bridal couple as a wedding gift. Presumably few people if any actually read it, but this gesture served as a nice little money-maker for Hitler, who of course received author’s royalties for every copy sold. To ensure that this income didn’t stop, it was illegal to buy or sell “Mein Kampf” second-hand.
Today in Germany the book isn’t actually banned – it’s just that after Hitler’s suicide, the copyright fell to the state of Bavaria (Hitler’s official place of residence when he died), and they didn’t condescend to allowing new print runs before the book entered the public domain this year. There are probably loads of copies still around from pre-war weddings. Anyone who actually wanted an unannotated version of the book would thus just have to check their grandparents’ attic before going to the trouble of procuring one over the Internet, but, in view of the fact that the writing isn’t exactly what one would consider riveting prose, demand used to be pretty low. And of course, in the right circles, there are other more entertaining books to be had that cover similar ground.
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I seem to remember trying to read it once – probably in Middle School.
I didn’t get very far!
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I watched some of it in a Holocaust history class as an undergrad… The film was shown as Cannes… Crazy, huh?
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I don’t understand the “boring” reactions above (and in RB’s original post). I found it not at all boring, though it was often banal in a horrifying way.
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This is rather a misrepresentation. It is not a documentary in the sense that we would generally think of one today. Riefenstahl didn’t show up, and then try to figure out the best place to put her cameras to catch the event. It was all staged for the cameras. The setting was specifically designed to be filmed and she was consulted as to what would look best on camera. There were numerous re-takes to get everything just so. The whole thing is an example of her creativity (and Hitler’s and Goebbels’). It’s more accurate to call it a document rather than a documentary.
And Godwin is it boring. Of extreme historical importance and it can look very striking when contemplated as individual film stills, but unless you’re a committed Nazi, it’s rather hard to sit through. (I still may watch it one more time someday with the commentary which explains who and what everybody is.)
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I can’t forgive Ayn Rand for “Batman vs Superman”.
That didn’t work the first time it was published!
both Mein Kampf and the Bible are/were books mostly owned, not read
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Twilight sparkles (yes, that’s intended) in comparison to Rand’s turgid prose. She makes Dan Brown look like fucking Umberto Eco. She also imparts the ‘philosophical’ content of her work with all the nuance and subtlety of a sledgehammer with ‘RICH PEOPLE ARE BETTER PEOPLE’ written on the face of it in lipstick.
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I have no doubt that the same is true now - people may own it willingly this time, but readership will remain low.
I’m not sure about how often Bratwurst is served in Bavaria, as they have a wide variety of exotic Wurst which - to my knowledge - no Northern German would be seen dead touching. I remember asking about them in the supermarkets and my wife (then girlfriend) responding coldly; “Those are Bavarian.”
Oookay.
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