The Collector | Signed copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf on sale at Hong Kong book fair, and Chinese collectors are driving demand

At least three booksellers had early copies of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s 1925 autobiography, on sale at the recent China in Print antiquarian book fair at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, in Central.

The Collector happened to be there with a Jewish friend, who, unperturbed by her encounter with a volume that had been signed by the man who sent members of her family to con­cen­tration camps, said, “These are collectibles.”

In 2015, the year Bavaria’s exclusive rights to the work expired and the state could no longer restrict its circulation, there was a lot of debate over the book’s republication in Germany. Those opposed to it said Mein Kampf had caused harm on a catastrophic scale and its poison remained virulent amid a resur­gence of anti-Semitism. Others felt it was an important resource for studying one of the darkest chapters of modern history and that keeping it hidden would elevate Hitler’s megalomaniacal rant by giving it an air of mystique. They also pointed out that the book was already widely available online and in many libraries around the world (Hong Kong public libraries included). Even in Germany, the law never prevented the many pre-1945 copies in existence from being sold in anti­quarian bookshops, because they were not covered by the copyright.

The Collector finds the idea of dignifying the book with the term “collectible” repulsive but we can see how in a free market there could be a divorce between the value of the words and the price on the ticket.

Seeing the copies here in Hong Kong, however, raises another question. Do Western book­sellers cynically believe that it would be easier to find someone here to pay €185,000 (HK$1.7 million) for “The Nazi bible” (as one booth marketed it at the fair) because there is less sensitivity? After all, Hong Kong public figures often expose their historical ignorance by using casual and inappropriate analogies with the Jews (when playing the victim card), or the Nazis (when describing opponents as evil incarnate).

When we put it to the German dealer sharing the booth where the signed copy was being sold by Austria’s Inlibris, he said the book­sellers were the passive party and that “Chinese collectors have specifically requested the title. Maybe you should ask yourself why there is demand for it here.”