Artist transforms ‘Mein Kampf’ into a cookbook

Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’: a toxic manifesto that incites hatred? A Viennese artist sees it differently. He uses the text as raw material to distill a cookbook from it.

It is a patient job that involves scissors and glue. Since 2016, the artist Andreas Joska-Sutanto has been carving Hitlers Mein Kampf into separate parts, and then put them back together again. He cuts out the controversial manifesto letter by letter. The result should be a cookbook with a satirical title Kein Mampf (‘No gobbling party’).

The idea arose when the copyright of the work expired after 70 years, in 2015. For the first time since 1945 Mein Kampf then reissued, in a version with extensive commentary. The publication was not without criticism, but the publisher insisted that it served exclusively pedagogical purposes.

Hitler wrote his pamphlet in 1924 and 1925, while he was in prison for a failed coup. The book has 782 pages, good for more than one and a half million letters that Joska-Sutanto cuts out by hand. After eight years, the Viennese artist has already invested more than 800 hours in his work of art. He estimates that a quarter of the way has already been completed.

Chicken tacos

Nothing makes Hitler smaller than a good joke about him, Joska-Sutanto told the newspaper Der Standard. He wants to distill something positive from something negative. He especially hopes that people will focus more on the Nazi era, in order to realize that society cannot make the same mistakes again.

In 2018, his art project was presented for the first time at the DÖW in Vienna, the Documentation Center of the Austrian Resistance.

It is not yet known how many recipes will ultimately be available Kein Mampf will be included. So far 22 have been completed. The first ideas were suggested by friends and family. They suggested, among other things, an asparagus preparation, a recipe for pizza from the artist’s father and instructions for chicken tacos.

Also included is a recipe for Eiernockerl,a typical Viennese dish. Hitler was an Austrian and Eiernockerl was one of his favorites. The artist wants to ‘depoliticize’ this simple classic from Austrian cuisine. (gvds)