Commons:Deletion requests/De Kafka Hungerkünstler (1924)
De Kafka Hungerkünstler (1924)
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The Copyright Renewals[1] include a clear renewal for this book (Ein Hüngerkunstler. © 1Sep24, AF12660. R90352, 13Feb52, Schocken Books, inc. (PPW)), which means the URAA does not apply, and it's treated as any US book copyrighted and properly renewed, and thus under copyright for 95 years from publication. Prosfilaes (talk) 14:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Keep PD in the country of origin, let us not worry about URAA complications. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 19:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
- What URAA complications? There are none here; if the URAA had never been passed, this work would still be under copyright.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
- Keep The renewal could IMHO only refer to a new textreview or scientific annotations. --Mbdortmund (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
- Huh? The filing is quite clear: it's for the book published 1 September 1924 by Franz Kafka, titled Ein Hüngerkunstler. That's the year Ein Hüngerkunstler was published, so how would it be anything but the original book?--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
- Keep I have requested permission by an US-Copyright expert who was so kind to send me a long statement on this case to copy this here. It is more than likely that the item entered in the PD in the US --Historiograf (talk) 20:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Statement by Dr Peter Hirtle (Cornell University), author of the well-known Copyright-Chart
[edit]Posted with permission.
"This is an interesting question. When I first started working on this, I assumed that the work would still be protected by copyright in the US (though probably not elsewhere in the world). Now I am not so sure. I think there is a strong chance it is in the public domain.
I looked at the original copyright registration for Ein Hungerkünstler. It occurred in 1952 in order that a renewal could be filed. (Remember that at the time it was not required that one file a copyright registration with the Copyright Office - only that a registration be filed before one sought a renewal.) Here is the entry:
KAFKA, FRANZ. Ein Hungerkünstler. (In His Gesammelte Schriften. New York [c1946] v. 1, p. [215]-260) © Verlag Die Schmiede; 1Sep24; AF12660. (1946 ed. deposited in lieu of original edition.)
This indicates that Verlag Die Schmiede was claiming the copyright in Ein Hungerkünstler. Vier Geschichten (which appears on pp. 215-260 of the Gesammelte Schriften). The date of publication (and original copyright) was 1 Sept. 1924. A copy of the 1924 edition did not appear to be available, so a copy of the Gesammelte Schriften was deposited.
There are a number of things that are potentially wrong with this registration that should have made it impossible to renew the copyright: I believe German works had to comply with US formalities in order to receive copyright protection in the US in 1924. That means that the 1924 edition would have had to carry the notation "copyright 1924 Verlag Die Schmiede" on the title page or reverse of the title page. If it didn't have it, then the work probably would have entered the public domain in the United States. As such, it could not have been renewed in 1952. We don't have a copy of the book in the library, so I can't check whether it was published with notice, but my suspicion would be that it was not. http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ein_Hungerk%C3%BCnstler indicates that Ein Hungerkünstler was first published in 1922. If so, and again if there was no copyright notice on Die Neue Rundschau where it appeared, this probably injected the story into the public domain. Similarly, "Erstes Lied" is listed as having first been published in 1922. Again, that story should be in the public domain in the US. The other two stories which first appeared in newspapers in 1924 may also have entered the public domain. As a result, the only thing that could have been copyrighted in the 1924 volume is content that was not present in any of the stories. And since that content appears to have been missing from the copy deposited in 1946, there may not have been anything that could be registered or renewed. The assertion that Verlag Die Schmiede owned the copyright in the stories is also interesting, and may cause problems for renewal (see below). I am also not pleased with the renewal. It is in the name of Schocken Books, Inc, as "proprietor of the posthumous work." There are at least two problems with this: Did Schocken own the copyright? I have read that at some point, Schocken bought Kafka's copyrights from Kafka's mother, but the registration says that Verlag Die Schmiede and not Kafka owned the copyright. Did Kafka at some point re-acquire the copyrights from his publisher - or was the original registration defective as to copyright owner? If it was defective, was it defective enough to inject the work into the public domain? Schocken does not claim that they own Kafka's copyrights, but rather are renewing as the "proprietor of the posthumous work." They may be doing this because the renewal right in American copyright belonged not to the owner of the copyright, but to the author or, if deceased, a spouse or surviving heirs. If the work was published posthumously, however, then copyright can belong to the "proprietor." So dates here become important. Did all four stories appear in print prior to Kafka's death? Did he assign copyright in the stories prior to his death? If either are true, there are court cases that would suggest that the "publication" (in the copyright sense) occurred prior to his death, and the right to renew the copyright would have belonged to Kafka's copyright heirs, and not Schocken. If Schocken didn't have the authority to renew copyright, it would have entered the public domain. There is one other approach I might take. The Appeals Court in the Far West of the US - California, Washington, Arizona, etc. - has concluded that publication in Germany without a copyright notice would not have injected the title into the public domain, but rather left it in limbo. Publication for copyright purposes would have occurred the first time the work was published with copyright notice. We don't have a copy of the 1935 edition of the Gesammelte Werke published by Schocken in Berlin, but if it carried the copyright notice, that would mean that the stories were first published then, and they should have been renewed in 1963 (28 years after 1935). Since they were not renewed, they would have entered the public domain. Alternatively, if the first publication with copyright notice occurred in 1946, the work should have been renewed in 1974. It wasn't so the book would be in the public domain.
In short, I believe that there are grounds to examine in more depth Schocken's copyright in Ein Hungerkünstler. Vier Geschichten. If I am right and all the stories were published without copyright notice prior to their appearance in the volume, they would have entered the public domain in most of the US. Or if they were first published in the volume and it did not contain a copyright notice, they would have entered the public domain (and copyright could not have been renewed). Even in the West, they would have remained unpublished until 1935 and then entered the public domain because of failure to renew. If the stories all had been published prior to the appearance of the book and a copyright notice did appear in the volume, it could only cover the new content that had not appeared previously.
Finally, I am going to assume that copyright restoration would not apply here. I am guessing that Kafka's work was in the public domain in Germany on 1 January 1998 since he died in 1924. 1924 + 70 takes us to 1994. Copyright could only be restored in works still protected by copyright in their home country on 1 Jan. 1998. Of course, I have never mastered the special rules surrounding German copyright and the war, so I suppose there is a chance that Kafka's term ran for longer than 70 years. If his copyrights had been restored, they would have gone to his survivors, and not Schocken, since copyright in a restored work goes to "the author or initial rightsholder of the work as determined by the law of the source country of the work."
Addendum by Hirtle: "The one important caveat that I would make is that more information is needed. Did the 1924 book have a copyright notice? Did it include content that had not been published earlier? Did all four stories appear before the publication of the volume? Most of all, were Kafka's works in the public domain in Germany (or actually, I suppose, the Czech Republic) in 1998. If the were protected, then US copyright would have been restored."
Answer to the copyright status of Kafka in Germany and the Czech R. in 1998: not protected (normal 70 years pma term) --Historiograf (talk) 21:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
- Very interesting, but it should be 1 Jan. 1996, not 1998. Not that it mattered: the work was in the PD in both Germany and the Czech Republic also in 1996. Lupo 15:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
All four stories had been publsihed earlier. --enomil 16:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
- Ein Hungerkünstler. In: Samuel Fischer (Editor): Die neue Rundschau. Jg. 33, No. 10, S. Fischer Verlag, Leipzig/Berlin October 1922, pp. 983-992.
- Erstes Leid. In: Carl Georg Heise und Hans Mardersteig (Editor): Genius. Zeitschrift für werdende und alte Kunst. Jg. 3, No. 2, Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich Autumn 1922, pp. 312-313.
- Josefine, die Sängerin [oder das Volk der Mäuse]. In: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (Editor): Prager Presse. Jg. 4, No. 110, Orbis Verlag, Prague 20. April 1924, easter supplement »Dichtung und Welt«, pp. IV-VII.
- Eine kleine Frau. In: R. Keller (Editor): Prager Tagblatt. Jg. 49., No. 95, Heinrich Mercy Sohn, Prague 20. April 1924, easter supplement, p. 5 column 1-3.
- Keep In Germany (Contry of publish) it is PD. HBR (talk) 14:46, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
- Based on all the above, Keep. It sounds like two of the four stories were published in Germany before 1923, and so are public domain in the United States (and in Germany), so all of those page images are definitely OK. The other two were first published in Czechoslovakia in 1924, which did not have bilateral relations with the U.S. at the time, so it is highly unlikely that they contained a valid copyright notice. They were also not posthumous, which per the above makes the renewal even more in doubt. Since the URAA did not affect these, all of the U.S. formalities would have been needed to be followed correctly by Kafka, heirs, and all companies involved, and it seems there were probably issues in that area. Given all that, and that the works are definitely PD virtually everywhere in the world other than the U.S., deletion seems overly cautious. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:50, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Kept. The arguments for keeping the book are overwelming the request for deletion, which is only argued with a link to a Gutenberg project without further information (no scans, no link to an official U.S. gov-database). Furthermore the renewal was for Ein Hüngerkunstler while this book is named Ein Hungerkünstler. Without further information it is to assume that Ein Hungerkünstler is within the Public Domain in the United States, too. --32X (talk) 21:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
