Adolf Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" is to be republished in Germany in 2015 for the first time since being banned under the country's constitution at the end of the Second World War.

Under the post-1945 German constitution, the dissemination of Nazi philosophy has been a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.

But the copyright, held by the state of Bavaria where the Nazi movement began life in the 1920s, expires in 2015, 70 years after the death of its author in his Berlin bunker.

On Thursday the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) pledged to publish an "annotated version" with historical notes that it hopes will see the book used in schools and colleges.