Given this history of cultural xenophobia, Nazi propaganda made sure that the discourse surrounding the notion of the "unhealthy" in a people became a common concept among the general populace. It could then be easily directed at intellectuals, artists, Jews, Communists and all opponents to the Reich’s philosophy.
I find this very ironic. Germany had emerged as a leading centre of the avant-garde in music, art, film and architecture, giving to the world the Brucke Group, Otto Dix, Ernst Kirchner, Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill and Fritz Lang. But the Nazis viewed the culture of the Weimar period with reactionary disgust. Their response stemmed partly from conservative aesthetic taste and partly from their determination to use culture as a propaganda tool.
Klee, Head of a Man
The so-called Jewish nature of all impenetrable, distorted or depraved art had to be suppressed. By propagating the theory of degeneracy, the Nazis combined their anti-Semitism with their drive to control the culture. And in Nazi Germany from 1933 on, the terms Jewish, Degenerate, modernist and Bolshevik were all used to refer to non-Germanic art, whether it was created by German artists or not. Hitler, Goebbels and others did not dislike art. On the contrary, they were passionate art patrons, collectors and sometimes connoisseurs. In fact as an art-loving chancellor, Hitler viewed art as the expression of a racially pure culture and as a means to unite a community.
Dix. War Cripples
While modern styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis actively promoted paintings and sculptures that were narrowly traditional in manner and that exalted the True Blood and Soil values of racial purity, nationalism, militarism, health and obedience. They referred to this style of art as Heroic Romantic Realism. Hitler himself said that “we have come to the end of artistic lunacy and with it, the artistic pollution of our people. National Socialism has set out to rid the German Reich, and our people, of all those influences which threaten its existence. And although this purge cannot be accomplished in one day, from now on we will wage an unrelenting war of purification against the last element of putrefaction in our art”.
By 1937 racial purity was firmly entrenched in Nazi policy, and authorities purged German museums of modern art now labelled degenerate. The selection criteria were to be scientifically based on the new Aesthetics: all German art had to serve a state purpose. Heroic German Art symbolised racially pure art, while modern styles deviated from the prescribed norm of classical beauty. Racially pure artists produced racially pure art; modernists of an inferior race produced contorted works. Any that "insults German feeling, or destroys or confuses natural form, or reveals an absence of adequate manual & artistic skill" was culled. Inventory lists indicate that at least 16,500 works were seized from Germany’s galleries.
Joseph Goebbels ordered that once this purging of all of Germany’s public collections was done, the art that had been selected out for destruction would be shown to the German people for the last time. A special Exhibition of Entartete Kunst/Degenerate Art was to be held in 1937 in Munich. Painter Adolf Ziegler was professor at Munich Academy of Fine Arts and under Joseph Goebbels, he became president of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts in 1936. Ziegler was authorised to confiscate works for the Entartete Kunst Exhibition and in 2 weeks, he chose 650 works by 112 artists, many being Jews or married to Jews.
Hitler’s vicious speech against modern art in July 1937 was the opening gambit to the Degenerate Art show which opened 1 day later. Trying to outdo his Führer, Professor Ziegler succeeded in invoking equally evil forces in his speech at the exhibition opening.
The massive Munich exhibition astounded its German audience: the queues were very long for the 4 months of the exhibition! The show was intended as an official condemnation of modern art, and included 650+ paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of 32 German museums. Expressionism and the Bauhaus were heavily represented. Pictures were hung badly, in poor lighting and were surrounded by scribble. Modernism was shown to be a conspiracy by artists who hated German decency; those artists were identified as Jewish-Bolshevist. At least half were neither Jewish nor Bolshevist, but the damage was done.
By 1937 racial purity was firmly entrenched in Nazi policy, and authorities purged German museums of modern art now labelled degenerate. The selection criteria were to be scientifically based on the new Aesthetics: all German art had to serve a state purpose. Heroic German Art symbolised racially pure art, while modern styles deviated from the prescribed norm of classical beauty. Racially pure artists produced racially pure art; modernists of an inferior race produced contorted works. Any that "insults German feeling, or destroys or confuses natural form, or reveals an absence of adequate manual & artistic skill" was culled. Inventory lists indicate that at least 16,500 works were seized from Germany’s galleries.
Joseph Goebbels ordered that once this purging of all of Germany’s public collections was done, the art that had been selected out for destruction would be shown to the German people for the last time. A special Exhibition of Entartete Kunst/Degenerate Art was to be held in 1937 in Munich. Painter Adolf Ziegler was professor at Munich Academy of Fine Arts and under Joseph Goebbels, he became president of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts in 1936. Ziegler was authorised to confiscate works for the Entartete Kunst Exhibition and in 2 weeks, he chose 650 works by 112 artists, many being Jews or married to Jews.
Hitler’s vicious speech against modern art in July 1937 was the opening gambit to the Degenerate Art show which opened 1 day later. Trying to outdo his Führer, Professor Ziegler succeeded in invoking equally evil forces in his speech at the exhibition opening.
The massive Munich exhibition astounded its German audience: the queues were very long for the 4 months of the exhibition! The show was intended as an official condemnation of modern art, and included 650+ paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of 32 German museums. Expressionism and the Bauhaus were heavily represented. Pictures were hung badly, in poor lighting and were surrounded by scribble. Modernism was shown to be a conspiracy by artists who hated German decency; those artists were identified as Jewish-Bolshevist. At least half were neither Jewish nor Bolshevist, but the damage was done.
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The list of degenerate artists included some of the best modern artists in Europe, but why were these particular artists and not others, defined as Degenerate? Being at Bauhaus was the kiss of death: Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Herbert Bayer, Ludwig Hilberseimer, the Moholy-Nagys, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Lyonel Feininger were all included. So were George Grosz, Emil Nolde, Hannes Beckmann, Amadeo Modigliani, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger, Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Ernst, Josef Albers, Jankel Adler, Ludwig Meidner, Kurt Schwitters and Otto Dix. These were my favourite early C20th artists.
Pechstein, Self Portrait with Death
It was far more popular than the nearby Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung/Great German art exhibition, featuring officially sponsored Heroic Art. But not just in Munich. After Munich, the touring exhibition covered 11 other cities in Germany & Austria, attracting 3 million visitors in the two countries by the time the tour ended April 1941.
Kirchner. Berlin Streets
Other art shows were mounted outside Germany in the late 1930s, trying to alert the public as to what was happening to modernist works in Munich. The C20th German Art Show was held at the New Burlington Galleries London in 1938. In 1938 MoMA in New York mounted an exhibition called Bauhaus 1919-1928. And The Herald Exhibition of French & British Contemporary Art travelled around three Australian capital cities in August 1939. Although successful, these “alternative” art programmes were most modest, less strident and less Jewish versions of modernism that the Nazis themselves mounted.
A Blog About History has given us access to The Free University in Berlin's data base, documenting 21,000 works of art which were labelled by the Nazis in 1937 as Degenerate.
I feel the same (ironic).
ReplyDeleteCarmen said...
ReplyDeleteI agree that the Nazi propaganda is a really important time in rhetoric and art for people to remember and examine so that something like that never happens again. Your site is a really great resource for learning about a wide range of different topics.
Thanks,
Carmen Hagget
Sachin,
ReplyDeletethanks for your note. I have been quite interested in Indian history recently and will certainly have a look at your 2011 exhibition. Let me also refer you to a post on the Delhi Durbar at http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2010/12/delhi-durbar-grandly-celebrating.html
Carmen
ReplyDeleteI come back to the question of degenerate art over and over again - in the blog, of course, but also in lectures and at conferences. It seems we still have so much to learn about the 1933-45 era.
Harry
ReplyDeleteAn article on "The Forgotten Story of Degenerate Dealer Alfred Flechtheim" was forwarded to me last week. You may find it interesting.
http://www.galleristny.com/2012/02/haunting-moma-the-forgotten-story-of-%E2%80%98degenerate%E2%80%99-dealer-alfred-flechtheim/?show=all