Unsurprisingly, the “Mein Kampf” project has stirred uproar in some Jewish circles. Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Israelite Cultural Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, said “there is still a danger” of catalyzing far-right sentiments. Uri Chanoch, an 86-year-old Israeli Holocaust survivor, added that Germans “somewhere in their hearts still have a hatred for us” and has campaigned aggressively against the book’s republication, calling for international pressure on Bavaria to block it.

After such sentiments were expressed to Bavaria’s premier, Horst Seehofer, during a trip to Israel, he decided to halt his state’s planned participation in the “Mein Kampf” project and cancel the $684,000 it had given in research funding.

That decision, in turn, triggered an outcry among academics and in the Bavarian Legislature, which had earlier approved the book. Even some Jewish leaders were taken aback. “I was astonished by this decision,” said Salomon Korn, the leader of Frankfurt’s 7,000-strong Jewish community. “We should have already had a critical edition of ‘Mein Kampf.’ ”

In an awkward dance, Mr. Seehofer’s government was forced to reconsider its reconsideration. It agreed to leave the money in place while withholding its governmental seal of approval. This reverse fig leaf may or may not mollify opponents, especially in Israel, who thought they had stopped the book.

But with the funding in hand, the institute is proceeding. Its edition will serve a political purpose, countering the negative impact on Germany’s image and political culture of raw reprints of the book that might flood the market. Whether it impedes such publications or not, the academic edition can always be held up as authoritative, especially in schools and universities. This is a good thing. Sixty-nine years after World War II, it no longer makes sense for Germans not to have unfettered access to the same book that can be easily bought in other countries. Keeping Hitler’s dreary and often incomprehensible diatribe under wraps, out of misplaced fear of a Nazi revival, is a vast overreaction: Germany’s only pseudo-Nazi party received 1 percent in the recent European Parliament vote; in France, the far right received nearly 25 percent.

In 1959, West Germany’s first postwar president, Theodor Heuss, recommended republishing “Mein Kampf” as a cautionary document for the German people. Not yet ready for such a confrontation, the political establishment ignored him. Today, 55 years and 10 presidents later, Heuss’s good idea is finally coming to fruition.