Signed Copies of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ May Fetch $25K
Copies of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” signed by the German Nazi leader will go under the hammer on Thursday in Los Angeles, auction house Nate D. Sanders said.
The autographed copies of the two-volume work steeped in anti-Semitism are inscribed as Christmas gifts to Josef Bauer, an officer in the German SS during World War Two and a participant in Hitler’s failed Munich coup in 1923.
Bidding in the online auction for the signed books starts at $20,000 and is expected to sell for around $25,000 when the auction concludes at 10 p.m. EST on Thursday (0300 GMT on Friday), the auctioneers said.
The Bauer books fetched $25,000 in a sale at Bonhams auction house in London in 2012.
In the two-volume “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), Hitler lays out his vision for a resurgent Germany after World War One along with his racist National Socialist political ideology.
Nate D. Sanders, who himself is Jewish, said his auction house does not shy away from selling memorabilia linked to some of history’s most reviled figures.
“I think it’s very heinous,” Sanders said, “but it is an auction item, it is a memento, it’s a piece of memorabilia, and a piece of history.”
“Mein Kampf,” unlike Nazi insignia and some Nazi films and songs, is not banned in Germany. Its German copyright has been owned by Bavaria since the end of World War Two, and the southern German state has prohibited sales and printing.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO