BERLIN — The German state of Bavaria said Tuesday it is preparing for the 2015 expiration of the copyright on Adolf Hitler’s infamous memoir “Mein Kampf” by funding the preparation of editions with critical commentary – including one for students.

While “Mein Kampf” isn’t actually banned in Germany, Bavaria has over the years used its ownership of the copyright to block publication. But it acknowledges it won’t be able to once the copyright expires, 70 years after the author’s death.

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The German state of Bavaria says it’s preparing for the 2015 expiration of the copyright on “Mein Kampf” by funding editions with critical commentary. The Associated Press

Bavaria’s finance minister, Markus Soeder, said the idea of a version aimed at students was a reaction to concerns that the book could then circulate without commentary among young people, German news agency dapd reported.

“The book will contain commentary by experts that are clearly understandable for young people,” Soeder said. He said the aim is to show “what a worldwide catastrophe” Hitler’s thought led to.

Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf” – “My Struggle” in English – after he was jailed in Bavaria in the aftermath of the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 – an anti-Semitic book outlining his ideology. After World War II, the Allies agreed to give the rights to “Mein Kampf” to the Bavarian state government.

Bavaria also is supporting a more comprehensive version with academic commentary.

The state’s minister for science, Wolfgang Heubisch, said that without such editions “there is the danger that charlatans and neo-Nazis could take possession of this infamous work” after the copyright expires.

The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Dieter Graumann, has noted that the book is already available on the Internet and has said he’d prefer for Germans to read annotated excerpts than access it online.

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