"Kein Mampf"
How a Viennese turned “Mein Kampf” into a cookbook
It is regarded as the "evil book" par excellence: Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is probably the most widely read German book alongside the Bible - and it continues to cause heated debate to this day. Since 2016, artist and graphic designer Andreas Joska-Sutanto has been cutting up Hitler's book into its individual letters under the title "Kein Mampf" (No Munch) in order to reassemble them into recipes. With the cutting up of the hundredth page, a quarter of the thoroughly provocative project has now been completed. The artist is inviting visitors to a presentation in Vienna on Thursday.
Everyone thinks they know "Mein Kampf". Hardly anyone has read the dark symbol of National Socialism. The copyrights expired on the 70th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's death, and since January 1, 2016, theoretically anyone can print "Mein Kampf". Today there is an extremely successful annotated edition - historians want to combat the Nazi pamphlet with facts.
Viennese artist Andreas Joska-Sutanto has chosen an equally legal, albeit somewhat more provocative - and possibly disturbing for some - approach to tackling Hitler's "evil book" for his project. Since 2016, he has been cutting up "Mein Kampf" into its individual letters - 1.57 million to be precise - and painstakingly reassembling them into a cookbook.
"A humorous title is just a means to an end"
For the Viennese, nothing makes Hitler smaller than a good joke about him. "The project is a honeypot. I want to get viewers to re-engage with the difficult subject of the Third Reich and the misery associated with it. The humorous title is just a means to an end," says Andreas Joska-Sutanto, explaining the background to the project, which has already won the Franzl Design Award. In 2018, 20 recipes from "Kein Mampf" were also exhibited at the Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance in Vienna's Old Town Hall.
The unusual approach sheds new light on a topic that many people no longer want to deal with after school. According to the Viennese artist, the event is particularly explosive at a time when war is being waged again in Europe. Joska-Sutanto continues: "When the copyright for 'Mein Kampf' expired in 2015, I felt the urge to cut up the book. With this project, I want to draw attention to the fact that living in peace is not a matter of course and that we as a society must be careful not to make the same mistakes as back then."
A quarter of the project completed
On Thursday, April 4, from 18:00, a quarter of the project will be completed after 8 years with the cutting of the hundredth page. The artist invites you to the LOT in the Ankerbrotfabrik, Absberggasse 31, 1100 Vienna. Admission is free, donations will go to the Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance.
Incidentally, only 30% of krone.at readers answered yes to the question of whether the Viennese artist "goes too far" with his Hitler cookbook in an online survey in 2018. 70%, and therefore a clear majority of users, answered in the negative.
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