20260106 Tücken des Urheberrechts

06.01.2026 Tücken des Urheberrechts

Who died in 1955?

Why is that important? Well, because January 1 was Public Domain Day. At the turn of each year, books whose authors have been dead for more than 70 years enter the public domain. They are no longer protected by copyright but become part of the public domain, i.e., they become the property of the general public, according to netzpolitik.org.

Now they can be published without permission

This year, it concerns writers who died in 1955, such as

Thomas Mann with his Buddenbrocks,
Léon Werth with his war-critical narrative "Clavel Soldat" and ""33 Days",
British author Clemence Housman with "The Were-Wolf" and "Unknown Sea",
and it also applies to the works of painters such as Fernand Léger and Karl Hofer,
and films starring Marlene Dietrich such as "Der blaue Engel" and "Marokko",
and in science it applies to the publications of physicist Albert Einstein, physician and co-discoverer of the antibiotic penicillin Alexander Fleming, and mathematician Hermann Weyl.

It should be noted that copyright laws may vary from country to country. In the US, for example, only works published before 1930 are in the public domain.

Mehr dazu bei https://netzpolitik.org/2026/public-domain-day-diese-werke-sind-ab-heute-gemeinfrei/