No ‘Mein Kampf’ But Adolf Cartoon Fine

Updated 9:57 AM ET October 15, 1999

FRANKFURT (Reuters) — “Mein Kampf” may have been voted one of the 100 books that shaped the century — but it was no show on Friday for Adolf Hitler’s seminal work at the world’s biggest book fair.

There was no such problem, however, for Adolf the best-selling cartoon character who donned his German helmet time machine to travel “Back to the Future” from Paraguay to Sarajevo.

“Mein Kampf,” which Hitler wrote in prison several years before he led the Nazi party to power in 1933, is banned in Germany as hate literature.

The book trade quarterly Logos had chosen “Mein Kampf” as one of the century’s most influential books even though “it displays utter disdain for freedom and civil morality, virulent anti-Semitism.”

Logos editor Gordon Graham decided to display all 100 influential books in Frankfurt.

“Then a German friend told me you cannot exhibit ‘Mein Kampf.’ We took legal advice and were told it can only be exhibited under locked glass. So we have it hidden now. It is significant this should be happening after 50 years,” Graham said.