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Berlin: German historians want Adolf Hitler's infamous manifesto, Mein Kampf, to be republished in the country before the copyright lapses in 2015.
Though widely available in the English-speaking world, the book's publication has been banned in Germany since Second World War and its resale is tightly regulated.
But German copyright law dictates that an author's work enter the public domain 70 years after his or her death, and that deadline is fast approaching.
Hitler killed himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. Before that anniversary, historians want Bavaria - which controls the copyright because Hitler's last official address was in Munich - to authorise an annotated version of Mein Kampf.
They say a thorough, academic presentation that places Hitler's work in historical context would be the best defence against radical right-wing groups and neo-Nazis who might want to use the book to advance racist agendas.
"The legends and myths connected with this book should be destroyed once and for all," said Hans-Christian Taeubrich, director of the Documentation Center at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, the Bavarian city where Hitler staged some of his notorious mass rallies.
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