Painting Totality

Nazi leaders and Politics of Culture

 

 

 

 

By

Dana Arieli-Horowitz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

 

Illustrations

 

Acknowledgments

 

Introduction: Why Politics of Culture?

 

 

 

Part A:  Toward Theoretization:  Art, Ideology and Politics in Nazi Germany

  Nazi Politics of Culture:  Continuity, Uniqueness, or Change?

  The Interrelations between Politics and Aesthetics in Nazism

  Characteristics of the Modern era in dispute:  Degeneration, Alienation and

  Kitsch

 

 

 

Part B: An Artist in Politics: The Case of Adolf Hitler 

              The Artist turns into Politician, 1889-1918

                    A failure at the Academy of Arts

                       Early fantasies on the Gesamtkunstwerk

                      An admirer of conservative art

            Hitler on Modern Degenerate Art

                     Modernism, Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism, Avant-Garde

                     The Weimar Republic as the herald of Kulturbolshewismus

                      Wagner’s Legacy: The Jew as destroyer of Culture

                      Jews and Bolsheviks conspiring to destroy German Civilization

               Art and Politics in a Dictatorship

            How to paint a Dictatorship?: Hitler’s Volkish Alternative

                   Classicism: Optimal Past

                    Early Romanticism versus Late Romanticism

                    The Contents of Art and Leading Artists in the Third Reich

 

 

 

Part C: A Zealot of Nazi Aesthetics:  Alfred Rosenberg

                From the study of architecture to the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

            Weltanschauung And Art

             Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts

             Trying to put ideology into Praxis: The Combat League for German Culture

             Tangled in the Power Struggle: The Argument over Expressionism

             Ideals and alternatives: Volkish Art

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part D: An Architect of Race – Paul Schultze-Naumburg

            The Road to National Socialism

            Toward a theory of art, race and degeneration       

                     From Nordau’s Cultural degeneration to Schultze-Naumburg’s Racial Degeneration

                      Insanity and modern art

                     The History of degeneration and its causes

                     Degenerate artists

           The Racial Ideal of Beauty

                         Ideal Volkish Art: From Ancient Greek to the German Romantic Movement

                         Art and Politics

                         Art and Artists in the service of the regime

 

 

Part E: The Propagandist as Artist: Joseph Goebbels 

             Revolutionary Ideas turns into propaganda

             Romanticism of Steel

             Degeneration delayed

             A Minister of Illusions: The case for Expressionism

 

 

Part F: The Politics of Culture in dispute:

            Nazi Art Critics between Degenerate Art and the Volkish Alternative

             Assault on Modernism

                   The origins of Artistic Degeneration: Chronological Framework

                 “Esperanto art”: Liberalism, Modernism, Degeneration and the Metropolis

                   Cultural Bolshevism as Marxist-Jewish conspiracy

      Different stands in the debate over Expressionism

            Nazi Aesthetics in the Service of the people

                   Ideological and aesthetical foundations

                  The Artist in a Marching Society:

                   Depicting a Dictatorship: The Contents of Volkish Art

      The Interrelations between Art and Politics

 

 

 

Summary

 

Bibliography

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illustrations

 

Figure 1:     Adolf Hitler, Landscape with Farmhouse, 1907.

Figure 2:     Adolf Hitler, Village in the Wachau, 1910-1912.

Figure 3:     Adolf Hitler, The Minorite Church and Minorite Square in Vienna,

                   1910-1912.

Figure 4:     Adolf Hitler, “Vienna Ratzenstadl”, 1910.

Figure 5:     Adolf Hitler, The Franz Ring with Parliament and Burg Theater,

                   1910-1912.

Figure 6:     Adolf Hitler, Lamberg Castle in Steyr, Upper Austria, 1910-1912.

Figure 7:     Arno Breker, Bust of Richard Wagner, 1941.

Figure 8:     Adolf Hitler, Kg. (Königliches) Hofbräuhaus, 1913.

Figure 9:     Adolf Hitler, St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna with Figures, 1910.

Figure 9a:   Cover page of Der Stürmer, June 1939.

Figure 10:   Adrain Ludwig Richter, In June, 1859.

Figure 11:   Adrian Ludwig Richter, Mein Nest is das Best, no date mentioned.

Figure 12:   Moritz von Schwind, The Honeymoon Journey, 1855.

Figure 13:   Arnold Böcklin, Self-portrait with Death the Fiddler, 1872.

Figure 14:   Arnold Böcklin, The Island of the Dead, 1883. 

Figure 15:   Karl Spitzweg, The Poor Poet, 1839.

Figure 16:   Albert Speer, Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1938-1939.

Figure 17:   Arno Breker, The Army and The Party, 1938. Entrance to the new

                   Reich Chancellery in Berlin. 

Figure 18:   Cover page of the Nazi daily Völkischer Beobachter.

Figure 19:   Cover page of the art journal Kunst und Volk.

Figure 20:   Ernst Barlach,  Magdeburg Memorial, 1929.

Figure 21:   Cover page of the art journal Die Kunst im Dritten Reich.

Figure 22:   Philip Beker, The Fuehrer’s Bust, Bronze, 1939.

Figure 23:   Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Kunst und Rasse, 1928.

Figure 24:   Adolf Dresler, Deutsche Kunst Entartete “Kunst”, 1937.

Figure 25:   A page from “Degenerate” Art Exhibition catalog, 1937, including

                    works from the Prinzhorn collection.

Figure 26:   The Bamberg Rider, 1235.

Figure 27:   A page fromPaul Schultze-Naumburg’s book Nordische

                   Schönheit, 1937 including paintings by Adrian Richter depicting

                   Non-Arians. 

Figure 28:   Hans Schweitzer (“Mjölnir”), Horst Wessel on his death bed

                    A caricature included in Goebbels’s book Kampf um Berlin, 1941.

Figure 29:   Nazi Kitsch

Figure 30:   Hitler on the entrance to the house of German art, 18.7.1933.

Figure 31:   Gallery in the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung, 1937.

                   View from room 4, Entaretete Kunstasustellung, 1937.

Figure 31a: Ernst Barlach, Der Berserker, 1910.

Figure 32:   Wolfgang Willrich, Säuberung des Kunsttempels, 1937.

                   A table marking Jewish artists with the letter “J”

Figure 33:   Wolfgang Willrich, Säuberung des Kunsttempels, 1937.

                   A Collage of “degenerate” art,.

Figure 34:   Hans Thoma, Sunday Morning, 1866.

Figure 35:   Adolf Wissel, The Peasant Woman, 1938.

Figure 36:   Adolf Ziegler, The Goddess of Art, 1939.

Figure 37:   Hans Schmitz-Weidenbrück, Farmers, Soldiers, Workers, 1941.

Figure 38:   Paul Herrmann, And victory is also yours, 1942.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

 

          At a dinner in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1990s George L. Mosse stated that as the years went by he was more and more occupied with the question what would have happened if Hitler had been accepted to the Academy of Art in Vienna.  This question has bothered me throughout the fifteen years I have devoted to research into the connections between art and politics in Nazi Germany.

          The works of Mosse were my main source of inspiration in attempting to understand the unusual importance the Nazis placed on art, culture, and aesthetics.  Mosse’s groundbreaking interdisciplinary research approach produced generations of scholars many of whom share a willingness to break down disciplinary boundaries.  I have also tried to build here an interdisciplinary approach combining political science, the history of ideas, and the history of art.

          Over the years of my studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem I found many scholars who were open to this sort of combination, especially  in the Political Science Department. They were extremely helpful and took me on a fascinating voyage through the world of knowledge.  I can only mention here a few of my wonderful teachers at the university:  Shlomo Aronson, Aryeh Unger, Yaron Ezrahi, Steven Aschheim, Itzhak Galnoor, Yehezkel Dror, Robert Wistrich, Ziva Amishai-Maisels, Barucn Knei-Paz, Mario Sznajder, and the late Bathja Bayer, who helped me find my way through the maze Wagner’s music.  A particularly dear man, the late Dan Horowitz, my son’s grandfather, came up with this topic.

          Special thanks go to Emanuel Gutmann, who is especially dear to me.  It seems to me that I particularly gained from his great experience and from the good will others extended to me as his student.  When I became a university lecturer this experience became an example to follow and something I particularly admired.

          During the last few years I have been able to once again examine, investigate, update, and especially focus in on the questions I discussed in my Romanticism of Steel: Art and Politics in Nazi Germany, which was published in Hebrew by the Magnes Press.  During this time, I have had the help of my colleagues in the Political Science Department of Tel-Aviv University, including Azar Gat, Eyal Chowers, Michael Keren, and Yossi Shain.  Their wise advice throughout the writing of this book, and especially their great friendship, were of immeasurable help.  I would also like to thank my students, who year after year forced me to rethink the foundations of this book until it received its present form.  Some of them, such as Yagil Eliraz, taught me how to rethink about this topic.

          I would also like to thank all of the librarians who helped me over the years, especially those in the Jewish National and University Library, the Israel Museum, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Wiener Collection at Tel Aviv University; the Lord of Bath, Longleath House, Warminster, Wiltshire, who has graciously granted permission to include some of Hitler’s paintings in this book; Silke Schaeper;  Christoph Schmidt;  Jacques Ehrenfreund; Ruth Shalgi, Vice President and Dean for Research at Tel-Aviv University;  and Dan Benoviciof the Magnes Press in Jerusalem.  Special thanks go to the staff of the University of Wisconsin Press, especially Robert Mendel and Tricia Brock.

Amos Oz said once in a lecture he gave in London that he would like to apologize for the fact that in English he is obliged to say what he can and not what he wants. I wish to thank my dear friend and the translator of this book, Andrew Lang, for the many hours he put into the translation of the book but especially for enabling me to write what I want, although in English.

 

          Finally, I owe everything to my family;  to Assaf, who inspires me every morning with his wonderful smile, to Vita, who is always ready to help and especially to listen, to Neri, without whose long talks on this topic I have no idea as to what might have turned out, and to my late father, Arieli, who was always an example as I grew up and who will always be with me.

 

 

Jerusalem, June 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction:  Why Politics of Culture?

 

          For the first thirty years after World War II, discussions of the connections between art and politics in Nazi Germany mainly focused on the plight of the oppressed.  Works on the subject dealt with the fate of modern art and emphasized the barbaric persecutions which took place there.  They often detailed the tragic fate of many artists active in Weimar Germany who were forced into exile, or even executed, after 1933. However, the Nazi art produced between 1933 and 1945 was not the focus of these studies.  The main explanation given by historians of art for this lack, perhaps the result of the moral dissonance stemming from the examination of the works, was that there was no point in studying them, as they lacked all aesthetic value.  Nazi art was described as “non-art”.

            This sort of argumentation has faded over the years as intensive study of dictatorships in general and more specifically Nazi Germany have made it clear that culture and aesthetics played particularly important roles, and supplied the “repertoire of images”[1] available to the citizens of the Third Reich.  It is therefore not surprising that since the 1980s researchers, influenced by the strengthening of interdisciplinary trends, have focused on the art and aesthetics produced in Nazi Germany, and not just on the avant- garde modern art that was rejected.

            The main theses found in these works are considered in detail in this book, yet some fascinating questions have been left untouched.  Why was aesthetics so unusually important?  Why did questions of culture and art bother the leaders of the Third Reich, especially Hitler?  How did the Nazi regime use culture and art to mobilize millions of citizens?  What was there in Nazi art which allowed it to present a compensating view of the world to its audience?

          This book presents a new angle on art in Nazi Germany;  it does not emphasize the activities of artists there but rather focuses on the Nazi leadership, or, as I describe it here, on those who developed and shaped the Nazi politics of culture.  These figures are clearly important in totalitarian regimes which encourage the cult of the leader and eliminate political, social, and cultural pluralism, but in Nazi Germany their role was particularly vital.  The central assumption here is that the discussion of the image of alternative art, often referred to as volkish art, started before the Nazi seizure of power and played a central role in the worldview of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.  The Nazi case is unique in that visual means were not just used to establish the regime, but were instead a central factor in Nazi ideology;  they were presented as indicating historical, philosophical, and intellectual continuity.  Art was therefore mobilized not only as part of a desire to increase the legitimacy of the regime;  art and aesthetics were described as basic to a worldview in which they were not infrequently seen as having higher priority than politics. Increasing legitimacy, though it did bother the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture later on, was only a small project derived from a much broader and comprehensive weltanschauung.

            Research on dictatorships has generally presented art as subservient to politics, and the leadership as those mobilizing art in order to answer the needs of the regime.  I see this type of argumentation as providing only a partial explanation of the German case.  Even though German cultural policy was dictated and controlled so that it would fit the needs of the regime, the Nazi regime was certainly characterized by a worldview giving aesthetics, art, and culture unusual weight, so much so that Nazism can be described as having not only a “visualization of ideology” but also a “visual worldview”.  This visualization did not remain a matter of ideas alone;  it was expressed in the praxis of the regime.

            The main goals of this book are thus to outline the boundaries of the Nazi politics of culture and to examine the main characteristics and components of Nazi aesthetics as they developed both before 1933 and in the dictatorship which followed.  The book is based on the assumption that the different ideological influences onthe Nazi politics of culture led to the creation of different stands and opinions on the nature of the ideal art.  These differences led to the development of a vague consensus, and not to a complete Gleichschaltung, as has commonly been argued. This consensus was meant to provide an alternative for all of the existing cultural and artistic systems which were defined as hostile to Nazism;  the hope wasthat it would lead to the establishment of a complete Gleichschaltung.  

I have intentionally chosen the expression “vague consensus” in order to emphasize that even in Nazi Germany, generally described as the best example of the ideal-type dictatorship to appear between the wars, no full agreement was achieved over the nature of the ideal volkish art.  Disagreements over the politics of culture among the leaders of the Nazi Party were eventually settled, but their very existence, together with the differences in ideas and content which they reflected, is a fascinating discovery which undermines those researches which have emphasized the homogeneity of ideas which supposedly characterized dictatorships.

            The many definitions which have been offered for the terms culture, art, and aesthetics make a clarification of the issue necessary.  Scholars have made use of terms such as the politics of aesthetics, the politics of art,[2] metapolitics, and even mobilized art, art in the service of the state, and political liturgics.   In this book I have chosen to use the term the politics of culture (Kulturpolitik), not only because it connects “volkish” aesthetics to the social reality of Germany and in this way hints at the continuity of ideas,[3] but particularly because it emphasizes the inseparability of politics and culture.  The claim that the two are inseparable leads to an explanation different from the existing Marxist and neo-Marxistinterpretations which have emphasized the subservience of culture to politics.  Consideration of the Nazi worldview clearly shows that aesthetics is so central to an understanding of Nazi politics that the attempts to explain the mobilization of the muses as only meant to increase the legitimacy of the regime are insufficient.  The Nazi demand for the total subservience of German society placed culture at the center and even went so far as to claim that without the cultural side Nazi ideology could never be established.

            Unlike the Marxist and materialist approaches, the idea of the politics of culture is based on the assumptions that aesthetics, art, and culture cannot be separated from politics and that sometimes they even become a sort of metapolitics when they are part of a worldview focusing on order and form.  From this point of view the Nazi politics of culture is a more developed version of social analyses produced by the German right of the fin-de-siècle.  These analyses display a yearning for order and consider aesthetics to be a replacement for normative categories.  In the context of their consideration of German society the very existence of the term is a reaction to the Weberian tradition dominant in political science before World War I.

            The politics of culture as a tool for the analysis of the National-Socialist worldview leads in two contradictory directions.  One is the pessimistic, “degenerate” view of the world, while the other is the desired “volkish” view which would compensate for the various kinds of alienation.  This distinction is also made here, as it allows an examination of the worldviews of a large proportion of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture and also of part of the praxis of the regime as expressed in the “Degenerate” Art exhibitionand the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung, which opened on two consecutive days.

            The Nazis made frequent and varied use of the term “degeneration”.[4]  Three categories were mentioned in an attempt to create a typology of degeneration;  these characterized the Nazi worldview and drew on different sources.  According to Nazi ideology these three categories had been expressed in different ways in German culture from 1848 to the 1930s.  The first sort of degeneration was individual degeneration;  it was connected to madness, perversion, and physical deformations.  By the end of the nineteenth century it had already been applied to creative individuals;  the introduction of psychiatric concepts to the European intellectual world at the turn of the twentieth century led to certain changes in its definition.  The views of men such as Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso were of great importance in the development of the idea of individual degeneration.  The Nazi worldview saw it as applying mostly to individuals associated with modernist avant-garde movements.  For example, Impressionist art was criticized, claiming that only a disconnected and mentally-unbalanced artist could adopt such artistic techniques in order to describe reality.

            The second type of degeneration was collective degeneration;  the Nazis saw it as reaching a peak in modern society (Gesellschaft).  Collective degeneration was used to describe several groups of people, including those who found refuge in the big city and those who did not belong to the rural racial community (Volksgemeinschaft).  This sort of degeneration was ever more common in the big cities where it was supported by racially-inferior social groups who suffered from alienation and a lack of creativity.  The city, the ground on which internationalist ideas developed, sprouted subversive views which undermined the foundations of German society and threatened its very existence.  Collective degeneration even led to the dissolution of art and culture, and therefore the Nazis attacked artistic schools such as “The Blue Rider” (Der Blaue Reiter) and “The Bridge” (Die Brücke), which tended to depict the urban scene;  Rosenberg called these groups “asphalt culture”.

            The Nazi politics of culture described the third type, racial degeneration, as dependent on racial origin and mainly as a Jewish conspiracy to distribute degeneration in order to destroy German society;  the latter claim used language similar to that found in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  This type of degeneration was based on the overrepresentation of inferior races (blacks, Asians, etc.) and especially the Jews.  It drew its inspiration from Romantic traditions in German linguistics from the beginning of the nineteenth century and from the works of Richard Wagner.  The carriers of such racial degeneration defaced German culture, but were not capable of creating culture themselves.

          After the seizure of power the Nazis made frequent use of the ideas of collective and racial degeneration;  they also expanded the term degeneration to cover political groups which were often described as intentionally subversive and as having connections to the Communist Left.  The Nazi worldview called this sort of degeneration “cultural Bolshevism” and saw it as the most dangerous form.  In this context they attacked, among others, modern art movements such as DADA, the November Group, and The Red Group.

            The distinction made here between the different types of degeneration comes from a systematic examination of the writings, speeches, and statements made by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.  This typology is necessary because of the extremely frequent use of degeneration as a general description of fundamentally different phenomena.  It is not merely a term used by the Nazis to indicate their discontent with modern art, but rather was derived from a comprehensive and developed worldview distinguishing between those belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft and those rejected by it.  Degeneration represented different aspects of the modern Gesellschaft.  The attacks on the “degenerate” became sharper and more dangerous as the Nazi politics of culture developed;  the use of collective and racial degeneration, whose meanings clearly extended from the aesthetic into the political, became most popular.

            Unlike degeneration, the term “volkish” as used by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture was vague.  This vagueness has led some scholars to see Nazism as an opportunistic movement which selectively rejected modernism.  However, the lack of agreement over what was volkish does not mean that the content of the term was not discussed systematically or that its meaning was unimportant.  The opposite is the case;  volkish art as an alternative to modernism is central to an understanding of the Nazi politics of culture.

The lack of agreement over the nature of volkish art is evident on two levels.  One is the placing and nature of the anchoring of such art in German history, while the other is the tension between harmonious and militant contents in the interpretation of this Nazi alternative.  The different interpretations of the history on which the Nazi politics of culture was based were characterized by disagreement over the way in which Ancient Greece was seen.  Some of the developers of the Nazi view described Hellenism as an early form of Nordic culture;  they based their opinions on vulgar historical, anthropological, and racial analyses of the past.  Other approaches based their views on the mythology and history of the early Germanic tribes.  The decision which approach to adopt had great implications for a politics of culture which aimed to prepare a visual version of Nazi ideology. 

The early Romantic movement in Germany was also a source of disagreement.  Some saw it as a foreshadowing of the desired volkish art while others dismissed it as an art which had declined, even degenerated, according to certain interpretations.  The argument over premodernist schools of art was pointed, but the lack of modernist alienation in their works prevented unbridgeable gaps in the Nazi politics of culture, and therefore certain well-known medieval works were generally seen as acceptable sources of inspiration.

The second tension inherent in the term volkish is connected to different definitions of its contents.  Some of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture wanted expressions of a warrior spirit which would provide a national compensation for the feeling that Germany had declined;  this feeling had started with the French Revolution and had then appeared intermittently up to the time of the Weimar Republic.  Others defined the contents of volkish art as counteracting personal alienation and as providing the absolute solution for it in a harmonious old-new world expressed in the image of the German village.  Saul Friedländer has defined kitsch, among other things, as the product of a psychological solution for this tension;  the opposing foundations were combined into a single creative framework.[5]

The Nazi politics of culture was an all-embracing program, vague for functional reasons so that its meaning could extend beyond the context of mere different forms of “aesthetic” or “artistic” expression to touch on a significant part of Nazi historical, anthropological, racial, and archeological research.  The different forms of leisure activities and entertainment available in Nazi Germany were also influenced by the politics of culture and cannot be analyzed in the limited context which some studies have offered, that of simple manipulation or mobilization.

The conclusions of this book outline the boundaries of the politics of culture as based on a consensus resting on a clear rejection of anything defined as degenerate.  The boundaries of degeneration were generally those which would be expected, although along the edges efforts to blur the distinctions can be seen, as in the attempt to include non-Communist German Expressionist art within the consensus. At the same time, it must be emphasized that almost all types of modern art were labeled degenerate.  The designation of pre-modern artistic schools is somewhat blurred, and without the modernist content the intensity of the arguments were reduced and no movements were labeled in a way which would have had bureaucratic or political implications.

          The consensus over the volkish alternative is even more vague.  This sort of vagueness existed for a number of reasons which were connected to the gap between the theory of the politics of culture and volkish creations, which seemingly had not yet sufficiently developed.  It may also be that the idea that Romantic and Neo-Classic art went together, as opposed to an alienated, unclear modern art mobilized in the service of cultural Bolshevism, a popular view among Nazi Party members who did not deal with art, helped maintain the boundaries of the vague consensus over what was volkish.

            This vague consensus was not intentionally dictated from above;  it was instead an expression of voluntary Gleichschaltung, showing a desire to solve the problem of alienation and replace it with a new cultural and aesthetic order.  The developers of the politics of culture imagined themselves, in the spirit of the title of a book written by a Nazi art critic, as the “cleansers of the temples of art”.  They saw themselves as wanting to correct Germany in the political, cultural, and moral spheres, but never as limited to creating tools for the strengthening of National Socialism as a mobilized totalitarian regime.

 

The Nazi politics of culture is mostly examined in this book through the visual arts, though other areas of Nazi culture such as architecture, movies, literature, and research on folklore are also mentioned.  The emphasis on the visual arts is the result of the need to focus the discussion, but can also be justified methodologically for a number of reasons.

            The most important of these reasons is that the visual arts allow an examination of one of the central questions about the Nazi politics of culture, the question of continuity.  Movies, popular music, and radio are “new” arts which cannot be placed in the broad historical context which painting and sculpture can, and therefore research on Nazi films has suggested that it is hard to find the point at which German films of the 1920s become Nazi films.[6]  The use of new media is also problematic in the present case because radio and movies were so instrumental in Nazi propaganda.  It is no coincidence that most of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, except for Goebbels, did not see film as a form of high art because they could be reproduced.[7]  The visual arts, unlike film, could not be reproduced, and therefore they were seen by the Nazis as the highest representatives of high culture and even as the field which would be used to create the myth of continuity.

            The discussion of the visual arts also allows an examination of the evolution of Nazi thought during three periods:  the struggle for power (1920s-1933), the development of cultural policy (1933-1937), and the period of unity (1937-1945).  The “Degenerate” Art exhibition of 1937 and the first of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen, which were held annually from 1937 to 1944, mark the beginning of the final stage, which can be seen more clearly in the visual arts than in other fields.

            Part of the discussion of Nazi architecture is connected to that of the visual arts, but the fact that the Nazis did not succeed in popularizing architecture and using it as a tool for penetrating the life of the individual helped lead to the decision to focus on the visual arts here.  One expression of this failure is the many Nazi architectural plans which were never built, unlike the massive presence of events such as German art days and the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen.[8]

            Another reason for focusing on the visual arts is connected to the attempt to isolate Nazi symbolism, which has often been described as a “secular religion”,[9] from a broader discussion of popular culture.  The nationalization of holidays, the illusion of the restoration of a volkish culture in the form of rallies, festivals, icons of Hitler, and the use of the Nazi salute and the swastika served psychological purposes.[10]  The Nazis were worried about the low, popular art which was distinguished from the high, ideal volkish art they desired as the main representative of race theory and saw as a replacement for degenerate art.

            The division on issues of the politics of culture was made here according to the distinction between degenerate art associated with the modern era and the volkish art which represented Nazi Germany.  This division does not imply the acceptance of these categories but merely serves the description of the Nazi worldview on the issue of the politics of culture as its shapers saw it.  This representation of the topic stems from the dialectic connection between the description of modern art as degenerate and that of the volkish alternative which was meant to correct the situation.[11]  This dichotomy, which was created by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, led to a comprehensive and total way of viewing the world which was based on philosophical assumptions about the place of man in society, his degree of rationality, and the parameters of good behavior.

            The consideration of “degenerate” art here focuses on terms such as alienation, madness, avant-garde, and internationalism;  these terms form a central axis in outlining the boundaries of the cultural framework which was rejected.  Social typologies such as the Jews or the purveyors of cultural Bolshevism, who were seen as the carriers of degenerate culture, were connected to this sort of art.[12]  The main claim made here is that the Nazis not only rejected avant-garde artistic movements but abandoned the discussion of modernist styles, contents, and artists for a much broader discussion of the Nazi worldview.  The rejection of the avant-garde therefore cannot be examined solely in terms of the styles of its works, but must be seen as reflecting a much larger rejection of the modern Gesellschaft and all that accompanied it.  The Nazis rejected the metropolis with its alienated residents, the foreign races living in its slums, and the modernist bohemians who were seen as representing alienation, degeneration, and of course madness.

          Volkish art or aesthetics, on the other hand, were described in the Nazi worldview through the discussion of a community living harmoniously close to nature and expressing organic views of “blood and soil”.  In the different works on volkish art special emphasis was placed on the artist and his place in National-Socialist society, both in the present and in its plans for the future.  The preference for a realist style was therefore a first step in ensuring the establishment of the Nazi worldview.  The style was to be clear, light, unambiguous in interpretation, and full of the symbols of Nazi ideology. It would reflect the utopian community which lived in the villages and was centered around the harmonious family group.  The Nazi family would be depicted not just with an emphasis on continuity, where each member maintained his or her traditional role, but with total loyalty to the Aryan racial ideal.  In most cases volkish art was described as representing a long artistic tradition and therefore a discussion of the Neo-Classic and Romantic movements as representing authentic artistic traditions was often included in this context.  The discussion of the golden age of German art was often accompanied by an appreciation of one of several different periods in German history.

            The dichotomy between degeneration and volkism also served an approach where the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture saw a sort of Kulturkampf[13] going on during the Weimar Republic.  This book gives special emphasis to the central place of this war of cultures, assuming that it sheds light on important historiographic, philosophical, scientific, and moral questions in the context of the politics of culture.

            The examination of the politics of culture in Nazi Germany is carried out here through a discussion of the views and works of a group of individuals who shaped it.  These figures, who dictated to a great extent Nazi cultural policy, were chosen as part of an attempt to cover many different levels within the vague consensus which provided the boundaries for the Nazi politics of culture.  The figures described here not only held key positions within the bureaucracies which dealt with the broad category of culture, but also expressed themselves on, wrote on, and designed the terminology and analyses on which the bureaucratic apparatus within which they worked was based.[14]

            The place of Hitler in the development of the Nazi politics of culture stemmed from the Nazi political system and government structure, but even more so from the role he gave to aesthetics and culture in his worldview and the great importance he gave them in the Nazi agenda.[15]  Even though I add no new biographical information here, the isolation of his views on the politics of culture places him within the intellectual context of National Socialism. The chapter dealing with Hitler is divided into four sections dealing with his early artistic inclinations, his attitudes towards modern art, the centrality of art in politics and the inability to separate between the realms, and his ideal of Nazi volkish art.

            The choice of Alfred Rosenberg stems from the fact that many of the Nazi elite saw him as the originator of a social-nationalist-racial theory which was used to evaluate aesthetics, art, and politics. Rosenberg, usually described as the “ideologue” of National Socialism, is generally seen as one of the main shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.  His works cover many different fields and are characterized by a fanaticism which did not take political issues into consideration.  To a great extent Rosenberg distilled the essence of Nazi ideology and worked to implement it completely within the framework of the National-Socialist regime.  He was the product of the formative years of the Nazi movement;  his theories on aesthetics and politics, which have never been the focus of a coherent study, need to be examined.  Even though he was pushed aside during the second half of the 1930s and given positions whose status far exceeded their power, his written works were a necessary reference in the development of the politics of culture.

            Paul Schultze-Naumburg was a contributor to the development of a theory about the connections between art and race;  his approach has never been examined systematically.  He worked together with Rosenberg to outline a common basis for the philosophy of the Nazi politics of culture.  Unlike Rosenberg, he did not come from the ranks of the National-Socialist Party but joined it at a relatively late date.  An architect by training, he focused on the politics of culture and did not deal with topics of a historiographic or theological nature, as Rosenberg and Hitler did.

            The influence of Schultze-Naumburg on the Nazi politics of culture stemmed from his sharpening of the distinction between degeneration and volkism in an attempt to combine them systematically with race theory.  His works were therefore better structured and included formulae which were fit the development of the politics of culture.  Traces of his dichotomy can be found not only in the literature on the Nazi politics of culture but also in Nazi praxis as exemplified by the establishment of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen in parallel to the “Degenerate” Art exhibition, and even in the way degenerate art was displayed as connected to social perversion and madness. Hitler, Rosenberg and Schultze-Naumburg represent the radical hard-liners who shaped the Nazi politics of culture.

          Joseph Goebbels appears because of his role as the one who actually carried out cultural policy, but in his case there is a blurring of the lines between the politics of culture and propaganda.  The literature tends to overemphasize Goebbels’ role in the development of the politics of culture, which was the least systematic of all.  Even so, Goebbels was of great importance as the head of the organizations in charge of carrying out policy, and the overemphasis on his role may explain the conflict between Goebbels the propagandist and a group of ideologues and art critics.  The heightened interest scholars have shown in Goebbels as the head of the Propaganda Ministry fits a theory which describes the Nazi position on questions of art as instrumental opportunism and Nazi art as kitsch and non-art. The instrumental use of art went beyond propaganda into the politics of culture but, as I will try to show, it did not guide art.  It is therefore necessary to consider Goebbels in the context of the politics of culture in order to illuminate things in a different context from the politics of propaganda.

 

            In order to examine the more popular character of the Nazi politics of culture, an additional circle, those who disseminated these ideas, is considered.  This group includes prominent Nazi “art critics” who held key positions in implementing cultural policy;  their books were on recommended reading lists issued by the Party.  In their works, these art critics dealt with various aspects of the politics of culture.  Most of them had connections in the Party elite, and there is evidence that the latter knew of their works.  Some of them held positions within the bureaucracy which were connected to the implementation of the politics of culture.

            The importance of this group stems from the fact that it allows an examination of the way in which a sort of Gleichschaltung developed in the politics of culture, the evolution of the aesthetic components of race theory, and the development of the ideas of Hitler, Rosenberg, and Schultze- Naumburg.  An examination of the positions of the art critics shows the levels of disagreement which characterized the Nazi politics of culture. They present a path, though sometimes a contradictory one, which enables a discussion of the way in which the Nazi worldview was shaped.

In each case the biographical details relevant to aesthetics are considered and used to chart the intellectual environment which influenced the development of views and tastes.  The common background includes shared views on the connections between aesthetics and politics and shared claims about German nationalism in general.  This biographical discussion provides an introduction on which is built an analysis of texts written by these individuals starting at the beginning of the 1920s, including most of their works on the politics of culture, and not just those from after the seizure of power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toward Theoretization:  Art, Ideology and Politics in Nazi Germany

 

 

 

               A broad examination of the connections between art and politics indicates general agreement that a fertile analysis of the National-Socialist worldviewcan only be carried out by conceptualizing the political contexts of art and the aesthetic contexts of politics.  A great deal of work has been put into examining the art and aesthetics of Nazi Germany using the tools of many different disciplines and placing different phenomena under the same heading. For this reason there is no consensus over the definition and boundaries of the topic.

               A simplistic, schematic distinction divides the studies into history of ideas, political science, sociology, art history, and social psychology and considers each group separately.  I believe that such an approach is less appropriate than that which I have chosen.  This chapter focuses on three topics, giving it a double advantage:  these topics represent the main questions which the book discusses, and they also cover the main issues the literature has posed and therefore make use of the existing material from many disciplines.  The first section focuses on the question to what extent the Nazi politics of culture reflects continuity, uniqueness, or difference.  The second examines the existing literature on the relations between art and politics, using the case of Nazi Germany as an example. I also discuss terminology, including my reasons for preferring “politics of culture” over “engagement”, “politicization of art”, or “aestheticization of politics”.  Finally, I indicate how a discussion of fundamental terms characteristic of the modern age, such as kitsch, degeneration, and alienation, helps in understanding the Nazi politics of culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nazi Politics of Culture:  Continuity, Uniqueness, or Change?

 

               This section analyzes the historical background, both specifically German and more generally European, on which Nazi art developed.  It examines the depth of the historical roots of the Nazi politics of culture in the German nationalism of the nineteenth century, what has been called the German Sonderweg.[16]  This placing of the Nazi politics of culture in historical context leads to the question of how the years 1933-1945 fit into the flow of German history.  Was it a matter of continuity or perhaps a historical “accident”?[17]  The German art world will be used to attempt to answer this question here.

               Those who claim that German history justifies seeing it as having its own unique path through history generally describe the Nazi position on aesthetics as an elaboration and adaptation of views common among the German right.[18]  The present book makes a similar claim about the Nazi politics of culture;  it was a synthesis of existing ideas, but unique in the way in which they were combined into a developed worldview.  This worldview was expressed in a radicalization of existing views and in an attempt to implement them on the political level;  the latter was often accompanied by disagreements and did not necessarily lead to monolithic unity.

               When describing the Nazi politics of culture as reflecting the continuity of ideas, one unambiguous exception must be made.  The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century individuals whose views are presented here were not announcing the coming of Nazism and the Nazis often made use of their works out of context.  Historians of ideas who have written on this subject, such as Stern, Mosse, and Aschheim, frequently make the same point and emphasize that the claim that the roots of Nazism are a “natural development” of German nationalism cannot be proven.[19]

               An examination of the views on which the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture rested their approach is carried out here while accepting the assumption that there was indeed a German Sonderweg.   However, this does not answer the question as to which parts of history are relevant in tracing the nature of this Sonderweg. For this reason I believe that the thinkers who provided the basis for the reactionary side of Nazi ideology must be identified in order to determine how myths such as the Thousand-Year Reich were established and how much of the Nazi worldview was indeed original.  These goals become even more complicated given that the Nazis were interested in creating a myth of continuity and displaying Nazism as a natural development of German history, as Emmerich has correctly claimed.  It is thus not surprising that the Nazi saw their regime as the pinnacle of victory for the unifying forces of the Volk in German history.[20]

               Most works on the subject emphasize the end of the nineteenth century as critical.  Stern, for example, has suggested the term “conservative revolution” to describe the reality of life in Germany from the end of the nineteenth century until the seizure of power in 1933, when “an ideological attack on modernity, on the complex of ideas and institutions that characterize our liberal, secular and industrial civilization” took place.[21]  According to his explanation, 1933 was the peak of a conservative revolution in the Weimar Republic resulting from the unique combination of a conservatism characterized by nostalgia and a revolutionary enthusiasm fueled by despair over what was seen as the modern lack of order.[22]  The combination of the national frustrations around which nineteenth-century German nationalism developed and cultural dissatisfaction provided the conservative elite with the inspiration for fantastic nationalist utopias which were based on spiritual, though not necessarily material, longings.[23]

               The preference for the spiritual over the material as it existed in the conservative elite expressed tensions which had previously been seen in German history, for example in some of the arguments of the supporters of the Romantic movement.  Bracher has thus described the conservative revolution as a uniquely German phenomenon reflecting Romantic delusions.[24]  He sees Hitler not as an “accident”, but rather as a “German condition”.[25]  Explanations of the type offered by Bracher see the uniqueness of Germany as reflected in the case of Hitler as stemming from the fact that the dissatisfaction with the Weimar Republic, bourgeois politics, and modern life in general could not be compensated for in material terms but rather needed balancing in spiritual, idealistic terms.[26]  Thus, Nazism, through German eyes, was a medicine, not an economic answer, for what Stern has called “cultural pessimism”.

               Some of the works emphasizing the existence of a war of cultures (Kulturkampf) in the Weimar Republic, such as those of Gay, have suggested that Wilhelmine Germany was critical.[27]  In their view, World War I only speeded things up at the height of a process which was expressed as an artistic, political, and cultural conflict.[28]  This view is especially useful because it describes the conservative revolutionary spirit as a development of the German right which reached a peak during the Weimar Republic.

               I accept the view that the Weimar Republic was the high point of a process which pushed culture to the extreme what has even been called a “latent civil war”.[29]  The lack of a unique and stable political culture pushed the political system in the Weimar Republic into controversies over the nature of the ideal political system.  The world of art played a not inconsiderable role in this process;  it was mobilized to express ideology in the uncompromising struggles between the factions.  However, the description of the Weimar democracy as the height of the cultural controversies indicates that the beginning must be found earlier.

               Herf, who describes himself as a student of Stern, has coined the term “reactionary modernism”, which helps in understanding the nature of the  “conservative revolution”.  By emphasizing the contrasts built into Nazi ideology, Herf has shown that the hostility toward modernism shown by German nationalism and Nazism was selective.  In this way he has bridged the contradiction inherent in Nazism, which drew its idealist inspiration from a view of the past yet did not reject technological progress.[30]  His explanation states that technology was effectively separated from the context of the values of the Enlightenment and combined into technical values which formed part of the foundation of German culture.  The latter values were not part of the phenomena of civilization but rather tended to be those of culture, as Spengler put it.[31]  Thus the contradiction between the acceptance of the tools of the Enlightenment and the rejection of its values was effectively solved.  It seems to me that even if Herf has clearly contributed to an understanding of this central principle of Nazism, the term Nazi politics of culture gives greater importance to reactionary ideas.  Herf’s description suggests that there was an inherent contradiction between modernism and reaction built into Nazism, while this book indicates instead that the use of modern technology stemmed mostly from instrumental motives.  Modern technology did indeed play a major role in Nazi praxis, but its role in understanding the Nazi worldview was less significant.

               Another explanation for the development of the conservative revolution is as the product of a social stratum with unique social characteristics and hostile to modern developments.  Grunberger sees this group as including craftsmen as well as groups holding conservative and chauvinist views.[32]  The Nazi art and culture bureaucracies provide a good example of this sort of argument because they expressed trends of continuity.  Steinweis, who has focused on artists’ organizations and unions on the eve of 1933, has confirmed such claims and has even demonstrated how they served as the basis for social organization in Nazi Germany. [33]  However, his book does not consider the large number of members of the National-Socialist leadership whose profession and the background from which they entered politics were connected in different ways to artistic-cultural production or its criticism.

               The bohemian background of Nazi leaders and supporters led Viereck to use the term metapolitics to describe the “half-political” worldview of this group.[34]  The origin of the term metapolitics may be found in the nationalist circles connected to Richard Wagner;  they presented this approach as a uniquely German ideal derived from various rationalist and non-rationalist sources.  Viereck has claimed that by using this term German nationalists distinguished themselves from Western civilization and the materialism of Western political theories and sees metapolitics as more Weltanschauung than ideology.[35]  Viereck’s pointing to the biographies of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture is a unique contribution to the field, but he did not go beyond this indication to examine the way in which these biographies were later reflected in the worldviews of the figures.  In addition, his claim that biography led to “half-political” views is not borne out by the present book.  While Nazi politics did place unusual weight on aesthetics, it did not derive partial or undeveloped political views from aesthetics.

               The term Weltanschauung in the context of the German right and German nationalism refers to a group of political, cultural, aesthetic, and historical questions.  The distinction between worldview and ideology was made even before 1933, as Smith has claimed.  He has described how culture and the sciences of culture (Kulturwissenschaften) in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany were seen as a new approach to political science and has indicated the uniqueness of this German phenomenon.[36]  The antimodernist tendencies of those dealing with the sciences of culture created the conditions for the development of the racial

components of Nazi culture[37] and affected the centrality of aesthetics in Nazism.  The latter centrality thus does not just appear; the contribution of German Romanticism was crucial, as can be seen in the figure of the artist- genius, who appeared during the middle period of the Romantic movement (1800-1815).  The artist-genius was described as a replacement for the statesman and the politician.[38]

               Mosse has focused on the development of historical, philological, and anthropological analyses commonly found in Europe;  he has suggested that different nationalist movements derived different ideological conclusions from the same seemingly scientific theories.  He has particularly emphasized the way in which scientists used of physiognomy and phrenology in order to create artistic stereotypes. “Anthropologists accepted the ‘facial angle’ as a scientific measurement.  But in so doing, they also accepted a standard of beauty as a criterion of racial classification”.[39]  These stereotypes would later become the center of Nazi race theory.  Nazi race theoreticians made use of visual physiognomic means to demonstrate the main points of their approach.  Thus the image of the ideal Aryan figure was not just a matter of laboratory study but led instead to the creation of exhibitions which were meant to identify the ideal Aryan head.[40]

               Stereotypic thought of this type was characteristic of the semi- academic circles which developed at the end of the nineteenth century and affected the development of the Nazi ideology of the Volk.  Bausinger has emphasized the contribution of these circles and the fact that they were not based on the research which formed the heart of Volkskunde.[41]  The semi-academic structure of these organizations led to a situation in the Third Reich in which ideology, science, and ideological distortions could not be separated.[42]  The popularity of the sciences of culture was therefore part of a desire for regression and the abandonment of history in favor of irrational myths.  Emmerich has explained that ideas about race, people, and Germanicity were accepted in alienated and rootless urban circles which wanted to consider the German race, feel the fatherland, and deal with the volkish peasantry.[43]

               The use of a compensatory view of the world was a phenomenon which had accompanied German nationalism since the struggle against Napoleon and throughout the nineteenth century.[44]  According to Mosse, considerations of beauty and the aesthetics of politics led to the development of an independent way of representation which was desired by the people.[45]  As the criterion for national behavior was connected to aesthetic and symbolic expressions, a “liturgy” was created which gave German nationalism the form of a secular religion[46] as a replacement for political language.

               The discussion of the Nazi politics of culture is based here on the idea that the symbols of the German secular religion were based on different sources:  Classicism, Hellenism, the Romantic movement, and occult sources.[47]  These sources themselves did not suggest anything new, but the synthesis created out of them was expressed by the Nazis in a new and monumental manner. For the Nazis, monumentalism was more than an architectural principle. Mosse has claimed that it helped them combine nationalism and aesthetics.[48]  A number of works dealing with Nazi architecture have demonstrated the importance of monumentality as expressed in the structures built by the Nazi regime and in those which they did not manage to build.  Scobie preferred the term colossality, which he saw as explaining both ceremoniality and the tendency to dramatization.[49]  Miller-Lane has presented a slightly different position emphasizing the existence of limited pluralism, including medieval, neoclassical, primitive-volkish, and even revolutionary-modern styles.  She has even suggested that the regime’s attempts to dictate a common style were less effective than had previously been suggested.[50]  Miller-Lane’s claims about the difficulty in achieving a common style in architecture are borne out by the present examination of the different views on the question of the nature of the ideal visual art.

               The difficulty in producing unity in architecture stemmed from completely different reasons than the difficulties in the visual arts.  Unlike the world of art, which had no significant economic impact, the principle of monumentality in architecture was put into practice, leading to investment in building and the creation of new jobs.  Jaskot has rightly stated that monumentality cannot only be examined in the context of ideology.  Monumentality had a function in Nazi Germany because policy was derived from it, and therefore Jaskot has criticized historians of art for tending to focus on the ideological meaning of monumentality without taking into consideration the praxis of the regime.  “Some of the most powerful officials and institutions used the building process at Nuremberg for the implementation of specific policies distinct from propagandistic concerns. Political and economic goals in particular were pursued through the mobilization of the massive resources required for the building process”.[51]

               An additional type of explanation for a possible connection between German nationalism and methods of aesthetic representation has been suggested by Eksteins;  he used the term “vulgar idealism”.[52]  This sort of idealism assumes that society and the world can only be corrected through an examination of the inner nature of man.  The result of this approach is a withdrawal from politics into what has been identified as an emphasis on order and harmony as a replacement for advanced political thought.[53]

               This explanation fits together with the psychohistorical analysis provided by Hanson according to which Nazism must be examined through the term the “hyperordered world”.[54]  Some scholars have gone even further, as in the case of Shoham, who has claimed that order and harmony in German idealist philosophy became a replacement for a civilizing set of values.[55]  Shoham, like Eksteins, has connected the replacement of Judeo-  Christian morality with values of order, harmony, and cleanliness to the distinction commonly made in Germany between culture and civilization.

               These psychohistorical analyses are naturally careful to avoid the claim that in addition to the German Sonderweg the Germans also had a “unique character” which led them to accept Nazi rule.  The question of a German character hit the headlines with the publication of Hitler’s Willing Executioners.  Goldhagen has emphasized the role of ordinary Germans and thus has demonstrated the theses about the banality of evil.[56]  This important question has clear moral implications;  it is not surprising that the publication of Goldhagen’s book led to pointed arguments.

               Many scholars, writers, and intellectuals have been bothered by the question of the mobilization of ordinary Germans.[57]  Wistrich has emphasized the dissonance he felt when he encountered the testimony of participants in the 1939 “Day of German Art”, just before the opening of the annual Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.  He has examined the participation of random citizens in these pagan rites and has come to conclusions about the voluntary and total mobilization of ordinary citizens. “Their testimonies… offer an interesting insight into everyday experience under National Socialism. They remind us that most ‘normal’ citizens (which in the Third Reich automatically excluded Jews, Communists, homosexuals, Gypsies, the handicapped and mentally defective) could still live in comparative peace under a criminal regime.”[58]

The present book focuses on those who stayed in Germany and does not describe the positions of intellectuals and artists who choose exile or were exiled and therefore were more critical of the Nazi regime.  This focus might create the impression that all “ordinary” Germans voluntarily mobilized themselves to carry out the cultural policy of the German regime;  I see this line of argument as most premature and dangerous.

               In conclusion, the disagreements over the Nazi politics of culture examined in this section stem from different points of view and methodologies.  Even so, there is a certain line connecting scholars such as Mosse and Stern. Expressions such as “the politics of cultural despair”, “the crisis of German ideology”, “metapolitics”, and “the armed bohemians” indicate a focus on different sides of the questions of continuity and the uniqueness of Nazi ideology in German history.

               Considerations of the question of continuity illuminate the complexity of the distinction between art and politics in the Nazi case, not just because of the unique characteristics of German nationalism, the conservative revolution, and the Kulturkampf in the Weimar Republic, but also because the Nazi regime itself worked to create an illusion of continuity and to build an organic society using totalitarian means.  The process of Gleichschaltung in Nazi Germany made the distinction between aesthetics and politics there even more complicated.  A skeptical methodology, such as that suggested by Mosse, is therefore needed, one which claims that it is difficult to distinguish between ideas, aesthetic expressions, politics, and society.  Mosse has translated the term Gleichschaltung into the one used by Hitler:  “the nationalization of the masses”.[59]

               Despite the differences in methodology, Bracher has used a thought structure similar to that of Mosse in order to explain the inability to differentiate between different sectors in Nazi Germany.  Gleichschaltung thus helps both to understand aesthetics and art as propaganda tools which make use of symbolics and as a description of the background on which the Nazi regime acted to create “voluntary Gleichschaltung”.[60]

               The various scholars who are mentioned in this section have emphasized the importance of questions of aesthetics, but they have focused on the development of ideas and less on their development into an ideology with political implications.  This is their lack.  Their works can be distinguished  from those with approaches meant to examine the Nazi politics of culture through the prism of absolute laws covering the relations between aesthetics and politics.  In this the former reject the attempts made by historians of art and political scientists to compare Socialist Realism to Nazi art.  More indirectly the rejection of comparative methodology also includes reservations about the use of terms such as kitsch outside the German context.

               This book will outline the boundaries of the Nazi politics of culture, not by an examination of its origins, but rather by focusing on the views of those who shaped it.  From a methodological point of view I tend, though not exclusively, to accept the approaches described in this section and therefore this book is not comparative;  it focuses instead on textual analysis.  However, even though this methodology seems to me the most useful for examining the Nazi dictatorship and as having the ability to strengthen the arguments about the uniqueness of the German case, it does not do away with the need for a comparative analysis of art and politics in dictatorships.  The comparison is needed not only because of the visual similarities between Socialist Realism  and Nazi art, but also because both regimes used art as a tool for increasing the legitimacy of the regime and demanded complete mobilization of artistic life under government control.  This comparison strengthens the conclusions of the present book;[61]  while Soviet art was a tool for advancing the revolution, and class consciousness and bourgeois art were seen as producing false consciousness, in the Nazi politics of culture the distinction between politics and aesthetics was almost impossible to make.

               The discussion of the writings of Rosenberg, Schultze-Naumburg, and the Nazi art critics indicates that a claim can be made with a significant degree of validity that the intellectual foundation on which the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture based their views was broader than the immediate contexts of Nazi politics, the Weimar Republic, or even early twentieth- century German history.  From this point of view, despite the differences of degree among the various shapers of the politics of culture, they all took part in the discussion of historical continuity.  It is no coincidence that while outlining the boundaries of the ideal past they considered the Neo-Classicism of Winckelmann and the Romantic tradition of Herder, Fichte, and Wagner.  This continuum does not just express the attempt to anchor National Socialism in the ideal volkish spirit and the colossal historical visions, but is connected to the worldview and type of expressions of the people examined here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Interrelations between Politics and Aesthetics in Nazism

 

               The place of Nazi aesthetics in German cultural life has received a great deal of scholarly attention;  it has been examined from Marxist, Neo-Marxist, and other viewpoints and in the light of socio-psychological paradigms as developed by the Frankfurt School.  These works do not see reciprocal relations between art and politics but rather emphasize the subservience of the former to the latter. 

Another approach to the issue, one which is considered here, is found in works that compare aesthetics and culture in Nazi Germany to those in other totalitarian regimes and to other social movements in Europe.  Works on Nazi aesthetics distinguish between politics and art assuming that these are two separate areas.  These works, influenced by the various types of Marxist approach, see aesthetics as dependent on the political context;  it is part of the superstructure and thus influenced by the means of production.  Such works dominate the field;  only a few scholars have claimed that it is impossible to distinguish between aesthetics and politics. Friedländer was one of the first to suggest that Marxist tools were only of limited use in understanding Nazism. “It seems to me that any analysis of Nazism based only on political, economic and social interpretations will not suffice. The inadequacies of the Marxist concept of ‘fascism’, whether historical or contemporary fascism, are obvious.”  Marxist explanations mostly emphasized the anti-Communist side of Fascism.[62]  Friedländer’s criticism of Marxist explanations is aimed, among others, at approaches which saw visual ideology as the thematic and formal representation of a certain social class, as Hadjinicolau[63] has stated in claiming that the history of the production of pictures is the history of the ruling class.[64]

               The main criticism of Marxism as a research tool for understanding aesthetics and politics in Nazi Germany can be demonstrated using the works of the Frankfurt School.  I believe that the criticism is justified not only because of the intellectual limitations they imposed on themselves by accepting a clear distinction between art and politics, but also because their works were generally reduced to the dichotomy, originally posed by Benjamin, between the “aestheticization of politics” and the “politicization of aesthetics”.            The connections between the Frankfurt School and Marxism are complicated and beyond the scope of this book.  The Institute for Social Research established in Frankfurt in 1923 was supposed to be called the Institute for Research on Marxism.  However, some scholars have claimed that according to the methodology, language, and research tools used there the School cannot be called Marxist, but should be seen as having done “scientific work under Marxist influence”, as Lichtheim put it.[65]  The description of the Frankfurt School as homogeneous and as sharing a common platform is also problematic, as the School contained scholars with different views.[66]

The difficulties inherent in the use of the term “Frankfurt School” in the present context stem from the fact that the theories about Nazism produced by the School were varied and did not share basic assumptions about the place of culture relative to economics and politics.  For example, Neumann, Gurland, and Kirchheimer focused on institutional-economic changes as an explanation for Nazism.[67]  Neumann explained in Behemoththat mass culture and social psychology were part of propaganda and government control of free time.[68]

               At the same time, Horkheimer and Adorno presented an alternative focusing on research into culture as explaining why capitalism had not collapsed as a result of alienation.[69]  However, even the section of the Institute which focused on mass culture did not have a single approach, as Jay has explained, and was characterized by a refusal “to fetishize economics or politics” on the one hand, though it was “equally reluctant to treat culture as a realm apart from society” on the other.[70]  Theirs was actually a double opposition:  to Marxism, which saw art as part of the superstructure, and to the German sciences of culture, which saw art as occupying a higher sphere than daily life.

               Even though Walter Benjamin was not formally a member of the Institute, he had great influence on the members of the School in general and especially on Adorno in the area of cultural criticism.[71]  His 1936 “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” featured the dichotomy between the politicization of art and the aestheticization of politics.  This dichotomy became central to discussions of Nazi aesthetics.[72]  A large percentage of the scholars who made use of this division have ignored the fact the example Benjamin provided for the aestheticization of politics was the Futurist movement in Italy, and not Nazi art; “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves… the logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.[73]  Benjamin believed that the answer to the aestheticization of politics was based on false consciousness and could be found in the Communist model of the politicization of art.

               Even though there is no question as to the contribution of Benjamin to this discussion, adapting his theses to the German case definitely raises some questions.  The most important of these is in which category he would have placed Nazi art.  Although it would seem that the aestheticization of politics would better apply to the German case, this is only the opinion of scholars[74] and is not borne out by an examination of his book.  It may be that the lack of consideration of this question is connected to the motivation of the author;  his goal was to express his views on modernist aesthetic production in order to defend exotic forms of contemporary art, especially film.[75]

               Another figure connected to the Frankfurt School who influenced Adorno, Benjamin, and Horkheimer was Georg Lukács.  In his 1924 History and Social Consciousness he attempted to examine the effects of the capitalist production of goods on social consciousness in order to create a model of mobilized Marxist aesthetics resting on realist art.[76]  His vision of mobilized art, which was later called “Socialist Realism”, led him to claim a criterion for evaluating art according to its connection to objective reality.  From a formal point of view art had to rest on the traditional approach of nineteenth-century Realism.[77]  The demand for realism as expressed by Lukács has led scholars to argue that there was stylistic unity between the art produced in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.  These arguments ignore the clear ideological differences between the two dictatorships, emphasizing instead the demand for cultural closure which was an integral element of dictatorships.

               From 1934 to 1938 an argument between Lukács, Brecht, and Bloch over the Expressionist movement in Germany affected the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, intellectuals of the left in general, and especially members of the Frankfurt School. Lukács saw the Expressionist movement as detached in a way that did not fit the criteria of mobilized art.  Some versions of this claim have led leftist critics to claim that Expressionism led to Fascism.[78]  In more recent versions, scholars such as Miller-Lane have noted the closeness between Expressionism and Nazism on issues such as cultural pessimism, especially in literature.[79] 

Bloch defended Expressionism and claimed that the members of the movement were anti-bourgeois and anti-imperialist and even made use of popular traditions in art and design.[80]  Brecht saw the position taken by Lukács as an attack on modernism in general and claimed that the experimental approaches in art in general were a condition for the achievement of revolutionary goals and not decadent subjectivism in an era of decline.[81]  Some of the claims made by members of the Frankfurt School during this argument were echoed in the works of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture and in the debate over Expressionism which occurred in the Nazi Party during the same years.  While the members of the School mostly appreciated Expressionism for its ability to faithfully reflect the new era, the Nazi rejected the movement precisely for its identification with modernism.

               Horkheimer and Adorno’s criticism of the “culture industry” developed through a constant give and take with the works of Benjamin and Lukács.  The approach of the former has made a double contribution to the relations between art and politics and to the analysis of the specific case of Nazi Germany.  The term “culture industry”, which they developed following Benjamin and Löwenthal, reflects the standardization of the creation of cultural products.  The way in which art is produced in the modern age separates the logic of production from the logic of the social system.  Unlike “low” popular art which grew from below and was characteristic of the era before the culture industry, production characteristic of the culture industry is dictated from above by economic or other interests.[82]  The worldview of the masses is passed through the filter of the culture industry and creates a deception according to which the world outside of the creation is nothing more than an evaluation of the same illusion.[83]

               Horkheimer and Adorno, following Kracauer, wrote that the trend toward the creation of illusions eliminated the ability to distinguish between real life and a movie. The strength of industrial society was embedded in people and reproduced by the agents of the culture industry.  This sort of view saw parallels between seemingly completely different regimes such as capitalism and National Socialism because the social logic of control through illusion characterized both.[84]

               The discussion of terms such as the culture industry indicates the great extent to which the Frankfurt School was an institution of the modern age and how much it reflected the age in which it operated.  However, the topics debated there are in the end inappropriate for an analysis of the Nazi politics of culture because the latter was characterized by a desire for reaction.  While the members of the School show the influence of the Communist Revolution in their analyses, and are aware of the roles of art as a cultural avant-garde and as a spreader of modern technology, the Nazis rejected any futuristic role for art.  They completely rejected turning the visual arts into a culture industry, and described them as a front which would help preserve the old order.  It is thus not surprising that those in Nazi Germany who supported Expressionism emphasized that the movement reflected Gothic and Nordic values.

               A more sophisticate Marxist approach to the study of the relations between art and politics has been suggested by Eagleton.  He has added to the discussion the claim that the attempt to separate between ideology and aesthetics is arbitrary.[85]  “The construction of the modern notion of the aesthetic artefact is thus inseparable from the construction of the dominant ideological forms of modern class-society, and indeed from a whole new form of human subjectivity appropriate to that social order.…  Aesthetic, understood in a certain sense, provides an unusually powerful challenge and alternative to these dominant ideological forms, and is in this sense an eminently contradictory phenomenon.”[86]  Eagleton has claimed that in certain historical conditions aesthetics can undermine the existing order and even suggest alternative worldviews or ideologies.  His is a more mild version of the Marxist approach which does away with the rigidity of the latter, and therefore he sees the connections between aesthetics, culture, society, and politics in a more balanced and sober manner.

               Non-Marxist views of the connections between art and politics generally tend to see Nazi art as one of the propaganda tools of the regime.  These approaches, which tend to blur the boundaries between art, aesthetics, and propaganda, are paradoxically similar in structure to the aestheticization of politics because they accept the assumption that politics is the first and most dominant factor in Nazi cultural policy.  For example, Rabinbach has seen art, architecture, aesthetics, the Nazi festival, and production as attempts at “aesthetic symbolization” aimed at legitimizing the regime through the production of a deliberate illusion.[87]  Adam, like Rabinbach, has clearly tended toward an approach seeing art and aesthetics as “a perfect medium for creating and directing desires and dreams”.[88]  He has even doubted, following Roh, if the Nazi artists showed any real artistic talent.[89]

               After the seizure of power Nazi aesthetics had a functional role in the creation of political symbols.  The same is true to a great extent for all types of mass governments, yet it seems that Nazism and Fascism were unique in terms of the amount and intensivity of their use of symbols.  Taylor and van der Will have stated that thought-out forms of symbolic expression created mass psychological responses.[90]  However, from the moment these symbols were accepted a separate dynamics began to operate which was connected to the theatricality of public life;  it turned the Nazi aesthetics into “more than mere expressions of a stage-managed rank-and-file movement or a dictatorial philosophy of mass organization and propaganda,”[91] into something that justifies, in my view, the term politics of culture.  Taylor and van der Will hint at the difficulty in distinguishing between aesthetics and politics in the Nazi regime because of the centrality of the use of symbols.

               Aesthetic brainwashing and the great use of symbols were of course influenced by the era of mass communication.  Selz has correctly claimed that these are central characteristics of the totalitarian state, although a claim can be made that symbols have made a major contribution to democratic states as well.[92]  Totalitarianism, which Friedrich has identified as a modern phenomenon, is characterized by a great awareness of the power of aesthetic ideas and expressions to define the socio-economic order.[93]

               The problematics of this sort of analysis stems from the placement of art and aesthetics in the same category with festivals and production.  While in the Nazi case there is definitely a need for a clear distinction between propaganda measures and aesthetic ones, most studies reduce all of the phenomena to a single description without stating the clear differences.  The Nazis made frequent use of symbols in order to strengthen the legitimacy of the regime, but they were aware of the difference between tools of propaganda such as film and other media, which were seen by most of them as “low” expressions of culture, and the visual arts, which were seen as being on a higher plane.   The shapers of the Nazi politics of culture thus distinguished between different levels of culture;  they were aware of the difference between mobilizing the masses and the deeper process of redesigning the worldview of the German citizens.

               An interdisciplinary approach is needed in order to create a research method which will be sufficiently sensitive to these differences.  Steinweis started such a new research direction when he focused on an interdisciplinary analysis of the economic aspects of Nazi cultural policy.  He tended to accept an approach understanding Nazi aesthetics as a meeting point between a creative and active regime and the German artists who responded to it.[94]  At the same time, he qualified this statement and added that the interaction between a community-building regime and order-following German artists occurred on a suitable ideological and aesthetic background.[95]  Steinweis focused on propaganda and the bureaucratic apparatus as tools for achieving the goals of the regime.  His analysis of the Reich Chamber for Culture displayed it as an institution carrying out policies which influenced the material environment in which the artists worked in the sense of the availability of exhibition and performance spaces and the materials necessary for creation.[96] Steinweis’ study focused on the mechanisms of culture used by the totalitarian regime to implement its policies.  While the contribution of such studies is indisputable, the focus of his book is on the period prior to 1933. 

               In his first book, Petropoulos provided a bridge between Steinweis’ approach and mine when he described the process of Gleichschaltung in the artistic world.  The competition over the control of culture led to the building of the Nazi cultural bureaucracy and even to the organization of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung in 1937.  This pivotal event symbolized the change within Nazi cultural policy from the rejection stage, which Petropoulos has called Aryanization, to a radicalization of cultural policy, especially in 1938 and 1939.[97]  The claim for radicalization is supported in the present work by statements made by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.

               The uniqueness of Petropoulos’ work lies in his emphasis on Nazi leaders as art collectors.[98]  In the spirit of Viereck’s description of the Nazi elite as “armed bohemians”, Petropoulos examined the art collections of Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Speer, and many others, and used them not only to indicate the greed of the Nazi leadership but mostly to show how they used art in an attempt to look cultured.[99]  In his second book, Petropoulos strengthened the claims for the existence of “voluntary Gleichschaltung”.  He examined the contributions of artists, museum directors, gallery directors, journalists covering the art world, and historians of art to the cultural standardization of the Third Reich and emphasized that “those in the learned professions were often among the first to be co-opted, not to mention frequently supportive of the Nazi regime right until the end”.[100]

               Jaskot has also used an interdisciplinary approach;  he has emphasized the problematic nature of an examination of the way the Nazi worldview was put into practice which does not take into account the economic policies of the Third Reich.   “This emphasis on ideological concerns needs to be extended to include an understanding of the developing political economic conditions that are key to analyzing the rise of fascism”.[101]

The uniqueness of his book lies not only in its interdisciplinary method, but mostly in the fact that it is the first to discuss the existing research on Nazi aesthetics and even to criticize leading trends in the history of art.  Jaskot has claimed that the lack of context is one of the main features that has led to the irrelevance of studies done by historians of art. “Art history cannot be in the business of forgetting this past by separating cultural products from the implementation of state and Party policy”.[102]

 

          Another branch of the research on the connections between art and politics in Nazi Germany does not come from the attempts to understand the uniqueness of the Nazi regime but draws on comparative perspectives based on the term totalitarianism.  These works, which appeared during the Cold War, see a resemblance between Socialist and Nazi Realism as seemingly academic, aesthetic, and antimodernist forms of art.  During the period after World War II historians of art tended to dismiss the artistic value of totalitarian art and claimed that totalitarian regimes produced non-art which was “unworthy of being the subject of scientific research”.[103]  Roh’s claims reflect the leading research trends of that time, which were meant to emphasize the similar dimensions of totalitarian regimes.  Research on totalitarianism in general and more specifically Nazi art has advanced since then to a point where his claims seem irrelevant.  In addition, it seems that the relevant questions in the case of volkish art are not its aesthetic value but rather how such art came to be established in Germany for twelve years, which artists represented the school, and whether they managed to offer the citizens of Germany a compensatory worldview.

The differences between the types of mobilized art in the various dictatorships can clearly be seen, another reason why Roh has become irrelevant.  While such regimes do prefer realistic styles, this does not mean that they preferred the same themes;  the differences between regimes must be understood by examining art as a tool in the hands of ideology.[104]  The avant-garde movements active in different countries on the eve of World War I and before the establishment of the dictatorships also had differing effects.  For example, the influence of the artistic avant-garde in the U.S.S.R., which for a number of years was seen as an ally by the Soviet regime, is particularly apparent.  During a certain period there was an overlap between the artistic and political avant-gardes.

               Harold Rosenberg has taken a somewhat unusual position in claiming the existence of a school of totalitarian academism whose goal was to deal with the modern world.[105]  Even though he ignored the different views on the time dimension in the two ideologies, he did indicate the adaptation of totalitarian art to the needs of the regime.  “Educating the masses and inspiring them to more heroic efforts are the stated purposes of the totalitarian art programs, and the pictorial and symbolic idealizations of academic art, are, of course, best suited to this end.”[106]  Rosenberg’s claim saw Stalinism and Nazism as political movements which used aesthetics as a tool in socialization.

This claim is of course correct, yet it seems that, given the importance of race theory, the process of visualization of the ideal life was more meaningful in Nazism.  Calinescu has also described totalitarian ideology as defining political enemies in aesthetic terms.  He has pointed to the dichotomy between Marxist interpretations of bourgeois anti-decadence, following Lukács, and anti-modern degeneration in the interpretations of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.[107]  This dichotomy is borne out by an examination of the Nazi case, but it must be qualified;  Nazism is not only an ideology based on rejection, as the Nazi politics of culture suggested an alternative in the form of volkish art.

               In the spirit of postmodernism, some studies continue to argue for the similarity between different types of mobilized art;  they have even taken this argument to the absurd, claiming that all the art of the 1930s was alike.[108]  This claim has been made, for example, by Groys in his research on Socialist Realism. “The turn toward Socialist Realism was moreover part of the overall evolution of the European avant-garde in those years. It has parallels not only in the art of Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, but also in French neoclassicism, in the painting of American regionalism, in the traditional and politically committed English, American, and French prose of the period, historicism in architecture, the political and commercial poster, the Hollywood film, and so on.”[109]  I see this claim as dangerous. The study of phenomena using only visual tools without a consideration of their context allows all political regimes to be compared, but this comparison is useless.

               The most clearly comparative analysis is that of Golomstock on totalitarian art.  It links art in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Maoist China.  Golomstock has characterized the art of these countries as “totalitarian realism”, which he sees as a natural product of totalitarianism just like the propaganda apparatus, order, and terror.[110]  However, he did not distinguish between the organization of artistic life and artistic products because he saw art as produced for political needs.  Golomstock has described five stages in the creation of official art, among them the recognition of art as an ideological tool, achievement of a monopoly on the control and direction of art as an ideological tool, and the choice of a certain movement as official art;  those who deviate from it are denounced as illegal.[111]

               I believe that the approach taken by Golomstock in his book is reductive and overly limits the phenomena studied.  Claims about the similarities between the different totalitarian regimes which created mobilized art are problematic because they do not consider the development of ideology or trace the different historical paths the ideas have taken in each country.  Golomstock did not take into consideration the different political cultures, and as a result did not distinguish between the different weight given art and aesthetics in the various regimes.

               Golomstock’s claim that art became a tool in the hands of ideology in dictatorships is an obvious one, but the nature of the ideology and the varying importance different ideologies gave to culture and art are not explained.  The claim that the art world in dictatorships is a controlled and closed one is correct, but it is presented as a characteristic of dictatorships in general without any examination of the arguments which took place in some countries or of the lack of agreement characteristic not only of the Nazi politics of culture but also of the discussions of the nature of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union under Stalin.[112]

               Totalitarian regimes did indeed try, and succeeded, to limit artistic pluralism and the freedom of artists, but the process of unification and subjugation of the world of art to the needs of the regime was completely different in each country and was connected to the position taken on avant-garde movements in art.  The rejection of modern art took on different forms in the various dictatorships;  the conditions under which modern artists were persecuted in Nazi Germany were not the same as those in the Soviet Union, thus leading to different artistic outcomes.  The fear from and disgust with the avant-garde in Nazi Germany stemmed from completely different motives and led to much more radical measures.  On the other hand, in the Soviet Union there were many years of overlap;  avant-garde art was used by the regime in different ways, and some avant-garde artists were even appointed to key positions. 

It may be that the explanation for these differences lies in Hitler’s obsession with the world of art as opposed to the opportunistic approach of Stalin, who saw cultural policy as another way to mobilize artists, but they are also the result of different views of the place of culture in political revolutions.  The Nazis saw art as central and as a basis for their worldview without which the revolution could not be completed.  Stalinism saw art as a political tool.  The claim that art had great power for political mobilization is thus true, but it still requires more specific analysis and description.  Claims about the visual similarities of the mobilized arts in the interwar period are also inexact.  Even though there was stylistic similarity, the different themes portrayed were the result of different ideologies.

Golomstock continues a normative tradition in the history of art consecrating the political freedom of the artist to create as a condition for the existence of aesthetics.[113]  In coining the term “totalitarian art”, Golomstock is relying on Haftmann’s book, which rejects the uniqueness of Nazism.  Haftmann has claimed that “what was not so obvious, and it was veiled behind fine political equivocation, was that the attack on modern art was being unleashed at exactly the same time and with very similar arguments in the Soviet Union and by the Communist International, the same international that was proclaiming itself the van of the fight against Fascism”.[114]  Although Haftmann did not acknowledge the differences between the various dictatorships here, in an earlier book he did tend to agree that the Nazi case was the most radical. “The most vicious and ignoble attack on the freedom of the creative man was perpetrated in totalitarian Germany. It was inaugurated by fanatical crackpots drunk on Nordic mythology, who equated the true German spirit with ‘aristocracy of the sword’”.[115]

 

In conclusion, clear Marxist approaches and those resulting from Marxist influence in research into the connections between art and politics in Nazi Germany make only a limited contribution to the topic because they emphasize the technological uniqueness of the industrial era.  Film and the distribution of art were the main topics discussed by the members of the Frankfurt School.  Marxism by its very nature assumes greater autonomy for economics and politics;  according to the Frankfurt School, culture and art are visual expressions located in the superstructure and characterized by complex relationships with politics.  This sort of approach is aimed at a discussion of propaganda and the instrumentalization of art;  it places less emphasis on the expressive dimensions of aesthetics.

Benjamin’s approach distinguishing between the politicization of aesthetics and the aestheticization of politics does not fit together with the term politics of culture, which focuses on the symbiotic relations between aesthetics and politics.  In addition, the exemplification of the politicization of aesthetics in Communism, as opposed to that of the aestheticization of politics in Italian Futurism, does not add to the present discussion.  Marxist tendencies led Benjamin to a definition where aesthetics was differentiated from and external to politics, and therefore he, despite the problems with his definitions, explained Socialist Realism as the politicization of art because Soviet art reflected the distinction between art and politics;  unlike the Nazi case, there was no symbiotic relation between them there.

Comparative approaches dealing with the term totalitarianism look for the explanation for the nature of the connections between art and politics in the instrumental uses of a certain type of regime.  The present work is meant instead to locate the place of Nazi aesthetics and not just its uses.  I accept the contribution of Marxist and comparative approaches to understanding the other sides of the same phenomenon and even see them as the preferred approaches for a functional analysis of aesthetics in building the political power of National Socialism.  However, the claim on which this book is based explains the instrumental use of art as a secondary product of the politics of culture and not as the factor explaining the centrality of aesthetics in Nazi ideology. Unlike studies which have described Nazi art as a tool for mobilization, a method which stresses the subordination of aesthetics to politics, this book claims that in Nazi Germany aesthetics became politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Characteristics of the Modern Era in Dispute:

Degeneration, Alienation and Kitsch

 

The discussion of Nazi aesthetics cannot be disconnected from the term modernism with its aesthetic contexts, nor from the social processes which accompanied it, such as the rise of mass society and technological changes.  In this framework it is necessary to consider the literature on the Nazi politics of culture as a selective reaction to modernism, where the latter is not described as the achievement of progress or even as a chaotic lack of order, but in terms of degeneration and alienation. 

The accepted definitions of the term kitsch see it as describing bad taste;  the original German means to cheapen something.[116]  However, this vague mistake does not help to understand kitsch as one of the key terms in the discussion of culture and modernism as they developed in Germany since the 1920s.[117]  Kitsch entered the present discussion in the context of art criticism during the 1960s, but it only gained its present meaning when modernism began to be considered as a self-aware phenomenon.  It is a vague term which refers to the psychological feeling a work of art creates in the viewer.  The elements of kitsch which focus on the psychological response are often connected to the discussion of the effect of a work of art on the consciousness of time and place of the viewer.  For example, Kracauer has characterized kitsch as pseudo-reality which “betrays that thought emptied of realty which dresses itself in the appearance of the highest sphere”.[118]

Friedländer added to the discussion the juxtaposition between kitschy aesthetics and themes of death. He saw this as the cornerstone of Nazi aesthetics; the juxtaposition of these two contradictory elements represented “the foundation of a certain religious aesthetic, and, in my opinion, the bedrock of Nazi aesthetic as well as the evocation of Nazism”.[119]  He did not see Nazi kitsch merely as “simple pseudo-reality” which may be exposed by displaying it together with reality but saw kitschy art as containing within it a visual experience stemming from the conflict between opposing foundations of harmony and calm versus the loneliness and finalism represented by death.[120]  The solution to the conflict came from placing the hero, who has come to terms with his death, on the background of a premodern landscape into which he blends in the spirit of the Romantic idealism of the nineteenth century.  However, Nazi kitsch often produces an apocalyptic feeling achieved through visual means;  these works suggest approaching destruction.  Nazi kitsch deals in this way with the tensions inherent within Nazism, which stem from the fact that “modern society and the bourgeois order are perceived both as an accomplishment and as an unbearable yoke. Hence this constant coming and going between the need for submission and the reveries of total destruction, between love and harmony and the phantasms of apocalypse, between the enchantment of Good Friday and the twilight of the gods.”[121]  According to Friedländer, the Nazi aesthetic vision explained the indecision of man about modernism through its ability to calm the primeval fear of crossing the borders of knowledge and power.

Friedländer has made a useful distinction between “common kitsch” and “uplifting kitsch” in the Nazi context.[122]  Uplifting kitsch has pseudo- religious characteristics which helped in mobilizing the people; it was rooted in and based on the symbols of a certain group and connected emotionally to the values of that group, and therefore was not seen as cheapening aesthetics.[123]  On the other hand, common kitsch is universal.  The Nazis were evidently aware of the need for this kind of distinction, as can be seen from the “law for the protection of national symbols”, which was meant to prevent overintensive use of the symbols of the Third Reich and their subsequent turning into kitsch.  The organization of an anti-kitsch exhibition in Cologne by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry (1933) also supports the claim made by Friedländer.[124]

Nazi art can therefore be described as uplifting kitsch;  it was meant to express metaphysical yearning, or in more simple terms, the search for the lost Garden of Eden (weltanschauliche Sehnsucht).[125]  Scholars who wrote on this subject before Peter Adam already mentioned trends of continuity which the Nazis glorified in leading back to the Romantic movement.  Some scholars have described Nazi art as characterized by shallow Romantic inspiration, as Neo-Romanticism,[126] or as a sentimental combination of Romanticism and Classicism.[127]  These sorts of claims fit Hitler’s personal taste in art;  he admired many Late Romantic artists and also those of the Biedermeier school, which split off from the former.[128]  The developers of the Nazi politics of culture also made use of Romantic traditions and in this way strengthened their claims for the continuity of ideas.

Broch has well expressed the connections between kitsch and Romanticism when he explained that kitsch was the final product of Romantic logic.[129]  He claimed that if kitsch was the desire to unite the earth with the Garden of Eden in a completely false relationship,[130] then in the modern era this phenomenon was mass produced together with a tendency toward blood and saccharine.[131]  Broch opposed the classical aesthetic ideal, which saw beauty as an unachievable transcendental concept, to Romanticism, which proposed an aesthetic ideal creating the illusion that beauty was immediately obtainable.[132]  This description added the influence of time, or more correctly, processes of modernism, to Nazi art. The combination of the contents of Nazi art and the processes of making such art that enabled its distribution and reproduction and finally transformed it into kitsch and death.  Adorno added a Marxist-psychological aspect which saw the function of kitsch as a way of escaping alienation to the psychology of kitsch.  In an age of industrial reproduction of mass culture, kitsch created the illusion of nostalgic intimacy.[133]

               Macdonald has proposed a class historical explanation different from those of the Frankfurt School.  He explained kitsch as the result of ever increasing possibilities for the production of books, works of art, and furniture.[134]  In this way art dictated from above by the engineers of taste and forced on the masses was created.  This sort of art was different from the popular art which grew from below.[135]  It is thus possible that the Nazis’ choice of the visual arts and their display of them as one of the heights of culture was not accidental and was connected to their view of them as good for all time.  The visual arts were not capable of “express[ing] the times”, because they could not be reproduced. [136]   They relied on ancient methods of production, and therefore ended up serving the reactionary politics of culture in Nazi Germany.  This position is strengthened by the fact that the Nazis were worried about the possible cheapening which could result from the overuse of Nazi symbols;  the latter could then even become kitsch.

               The identification of kitsch with reproduction, or with modernism, was worrisome not only for members of the Frankfurt School.  In a 1939 article Greenberg described kitsch as a modern phenomenon having reciprocal relations with the avant-garde movements.  It was a reaction of the masses to that which could not be understood and showed their preference for immediate gratification.[137]  Greenberg called kitsch the rear-guard and explained that it was an answer to the avant-garde.[138]  He argued that while it would seemingly be possible to explain the acceptance of kitschy art by totalitarian regimes as hostility toward the avant-garde, they actually made use of kitsch as the cheapest and most appropriate medium for creating an integrative mass culture.[139]  He supported this claim with the fact that both the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany were connected to avant-garde movements in their formative years.[140]

Although this claim holds for Italian Futurism and Novecento,[141] the part about the Nazis and the Expressionist movement is only partially supported historically.  However, Greenberg may have written the article under the influence of the argument within the National-Socialist Party between 1933 and 1936 over the inclusion of Expressionism as an acceptable style.  The results of the argument and the fate of the movement lead to the conclusion that Expressionism was never really considered to be a true artistic alternative by the fanatic supporters of the Nazi politics of culture.  The rejection of the artistic avant-garde mostly symbolized the Nazi opposition to modernism, which also explains the total Nazi rejection of any identification with the Futurists even though the latter movement was seemingly identified with their Fascist allies in Italy.  The Nazis, who rejected any futuristic role for art, could not accept the future-oriented Futurist philosophy.

A slightly different approach to the psychological responses produced by Nazi aesthetics focuses on the tension between harmony and alienation.[142]  Hinz has based his work on an analysis of the themes in Nazi art.  The answer to alienation could be found in dealing with a series of themes meant to outline a “false harmony”, as Hinz put it, or an integral social utopia.[143]  The Nazi utopia was not defined in terms of modern social agreements but rather as an organic community leading healthy and organic lives in a framework which was fundamentally aesthetic.[144]  Hinz did not write about the dichotomy between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which is considered in this book, but his work is groundbreaking in that he pointed out the main themes in Nazi art.

One of the main themes meant to express the aesthetic values which also indirectly reflected moral ones was the representation of the body.  Mosse saw the nude as a remedy for alienation and the unfairness of modern life and art, which were associated with uncontrollable urges.[145]  The nude as it appeared in Nazi art was connected to a popular racial tradition worried about degeneration and admiring of the Classical figure Winckelmann tried to achieve.[146]  Mosse thus claimed that the nude in Nazi art and sculpture expressed “a beauty without sensuality” which was appropriate to a fair and desirable public representation.[147] Mosse’s claim is supported by the Nazi art critics, who stated that the representative strategy of the nude in Nazi aesthetics was aimed at showing the racial ideal. 

Harold Rosenberg has described the same lack of sensuality as sublimation or depressed sex which raised the Nazi nude to a level above the erotic and achieved through it “ideological uplifting”.[148]  van der Will has described the nude in the context of the utopian desire to return to integral, basic values, one which also influenced the German left and the German youth movements.  The nude was often displayed by the nudist athletic movements and expressed aesthetic and cultural values crossing party lines.  Instead of man alienated from nature, nudism reflected the “reconciliation of man and nature”.[149]  However, the racial and volkish interpretation of the nude and its positioning in the village context of blood and soil were characteristic of a different organic renewal from that created in other circles which made use of the same symbols.[150]

Despite the approaches which describe the Nazi view of the nude as a type of sublimation, the Nazi nude frequently produces a feeling of being a Peeping Tom, bordering even on pornography.[151]  There are psychologistic approaches to Nazism, such as that of Shoham, which support the latter view and describe the Nazi use of the nude as “pure eroticism”.  This sort of nude was meant to “enchant healthy and strong males”.[152]  Theweleit has expressed similar sorts of views;  he has described the visions and illusions of the men of the Freikorps and focused on the portrayal of the female body.  Theweleit has claimed that Fascism removed women from the public sphere to within the internal boundaries of male society.  This situation reflected the inferiority of women and even released the Fascist man from the tension created by modern society’s view of the place of woman in society.[153]

I believe that the Nazi representation of the nude body was meant to strengthen higher values rather than those of pornography or pure eroticism. Even though there are no clear-cut answers to such questions, it seems that the main goal was to depict the ideal German figure. He or she was to be represented as diametrically opposed to degeneration as expressed in the images of individuals suffering from insanity, madness, or clinical tendencies toward crime stemming from their racial origin, or in the images of collectives such as the masses, the city, society, and modernism in general.

Pick has focused on the idea of degeneration and has shown its development from scientific and medical research through its popularization by Morel, Nordau, and Lombroso, and up to its inclusion in Nazi pseudoscientific sociobiology.[154]  From the end of the nineteenth century these thinkers contributed to the description of degeneration as a double threat, being both hereditary and environmentally triggered by factors such as the city or environments which did not distinguish between “normal” and “perverse”.[155]  It is thus not surprising that the literature describes degeneration as a “generalizing metaphor” or “explanatory myth” which gradually went from idea to a force driving politics.[156]

Gilman has considered the question of madness and its connections to degeneration;  he has presented a theory claiming that scientific research on the topic first dealt with poetry, and only at the end of the nineteenth century was the connection between the visual arts and the inspiration of madness strengthened.[157]  The term madness could then be used to bridge between modern art, which broke down accepted conventions, and degeneration and mental perversions.  However, Gilman also sees madness as connecting the Jews to the avant-garde.  German medicine frequently identified the Jew with the mad, while the avant-garde,[158] which willingly wrapped itself in madness, was also identified with Judaism.[159]

The equation modern art = madness = Judaism was not only seen by the Nazis as a reality with which they had to deal, but as a Jewish conspiracy for the spreading of degeneration.[160]  Kuspit has even gone so far as to describe a direct line between the attempts to destroy modern art, euthanasia, and the extermination of the Jews.[161]  The equation which Kuspit offers is of great importance, as it clearly shows that the Nazis did not use degeneration only for artistic matters but that the term included a variety of factors without which it is impossible to understand the Nazi politics of culture.  Degeneration was a code word for a variety of phenomena which the Nazis saw as abnormal;  it cannot be understood as applying only to the cultural sphere.[162]

Karl has written about the connections between degeneration as it was seen at the beginning of the twentieth century and modernism as representing moral, ethical, and biological deviation in the areas of sex, race, and nation.[163]  He has claimed that the foci of theories of degeneration were the Jew and the woman, and sometimes even the two of them together, as can paradoxically be seen in the works of the Jewish authors Max Nordau and Otto Weininger.[164]  The modern era meant not only distancing from nature but also deviation from nature.[165]  Karl, like Theweleit, has connected degeneration on the psychological level to a fear of sexuality.

The theories of degeneration as part of the conservative revolution are generally connected in various ways to the Jew through the identification of the latter with the avant-garde,[166] the equating of the Jew to the mad, and the use of racial theories.  One version combines the theory of the Jew as expressing modern degeneration with conspiracy theories about the place of the Jew in Communism.

Certain difficulties in the praxis of the Nazi politics of culture were connected to the tension between the application of degeneration to anything connected to modern avant-garde art and the attempt to adopt certain avant-garde aesthetic groups such as Expressionism into the National-Socialist revolution.  In the end those arguing for the definition of Expressionism as degenerate won out over those trying to make Expressionist streams fit into National Socialism.  Hewitt has offered a way to deal with this problematic situation by focusing on the dialectic connection between the avant-garde in its political and aesthetic contexts.[167]

Another explanation for the establishment of Nazi aesthetics as an alternative to modern art and as a representation and reflection of the desired ethics focuses on the alienation produced by the modern era.  The term alienation was borrowed from German philosophy, Marxism, and the Frankfurt School;  Bussmann has connected it to the fear of the unclear in bourgeois society.[168]  This bourgeois fear has been explained as inherent contradictions within modern art which Hitler promised to replace with an art having eternal value and which had no use for avant-garde movements and changing fashions.[169]  Kuspit has explained the alienation from modern art as a result of the way in which modern art had dealt with the internal reality of modern life;  the Nazi approach to it was symptomatic of their approach to the modern era in general.[170]  Wistrich agreed with this claim and added the distinction between culture and civilization.  “There was a kind of mad logic in the hysterical Nazi onslaught against the modernist avant-garde. They were building here on the well-established antithesis between a rooted Germanic Kultur and the alien Western Zivilisation; on völkish myth, the conservative backlash against modernity and the basic philistinism of the German middle class.”[171]

It is therefore not surprising that the alternative Hitler offered saw the volkish artist as rooted in the German race and community and as acting as a unifying force in society and not as an alienating individual.[172]  Sontag has seen this trend as the end of alienation;  she has explained that it included a vision of art as the ideal of life, a cult of beauty and fetishism of strength and bravery.  Her article, which deals with the movies of Leni Riefenstahl, is entitled “Fascinating Fascism”;  the title is meant to indicate the process of fascination in which not only the citizens of the Third Reich, but also those who dealt with the issue later on, were caught.[173]  Fascination with Nazism cannot of course be disconnected from the unusual emphasis given aesthetics there, and which was meant to offer an alternative reality.  Stollmann has expanded on this point;  like Sontag, he has written of the illusion of the beautiful as a solution for alienation and loneliness.[174]  He has claimed that the Fascist illusion created a feeling among the masses that they had been liberated from material socioeconomic conventions.[175]  The illusion of the beautiful was opposed to modern alienation and degeneration. It ran parallel to the attempt to use visual methods to exchange the capitalist Gesellschaft for the illusion of the volkish Gemeinschaft.[176]

The dichotomy between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, which I see as the most fundamental foundation for an understanding of Nazi aesthetics, can be seen as a vulgarization of the idealist tradition of German philosophy, as Steckelberg has correctly argued.[177]  This view stems from the idealist approach giving the spiritual (in the collective context of Geist) a preeminent role over the material.  Consciousness can therefore affect the experience, while materialism, which the idealist tradition on which Nazism drew saw as inferior, explains consciousness as a reflection of the economic and class experience.

Here can be found the most significant difference between the approaches;  the Marxist solution for alienation is fundamentally political and economic in nature and therefore sees aesthetics as derived from politics, while the idealist solution sees aesthetics as a central tool for changing consciousness, without which there could be no solution to alienation, and thus as a central principle in the Nazi politics of culture.  The idealist solution as adopted by the Nazis can be seen as the halo of a spiritual crusade against materialist values.[178]

In conclusion, alienation, degeneration, and kitsch are problematic terms because of their vagueness;  they are used simultaneously as tools for understanding the positions held by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture and as terms the same individuals used in many different ways.  However, the wealth of these terms as research tools, as can be seen in this section and in the rest of the book, explains their necessity and why they require deeper consideration;  These terms allow a connection to be made between the history of ideas and social situations and the reflection of these situations in the consciousness of individuals.

I believe that to a great extent the terms kitsch and alienation allow me to make use of some of the analyses of the Frankfurt School without having to accept the Marxist inspiration of their basic assumptions.  Alienation, in its soft Marxist version, can illuminate the intellectual history of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture without any commitment to a specific instrumental view of art.

The term degeneration and its history, both as it was seen by the Nazis and as it was understood by different schools starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, help outline the starting point of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.  To a great extent the conceptualization of degeneration is an intellectual reflection of alienation and cultural dissatisfaction.  While the term alienation indicates the psychological state of the shapers of the politics of culture, degeneration describes the intellectual Zeitgeist.

An analysis of the Nazi politics of culture as carried out in this book makes explicit use of these terms while distinguishing between different kinds of degeneration, alienation, and madness.  In other cases I make use of these terms indirectly in order to place the developers of the Nazi politics of culture in their intellectual, historical, and terminological contexts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Artist in Politics: The Case of Adolf Hitler

 

          The 1997 book Virtual History deals with questions such as “what would have happened if Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940?” or “what would have happened if Nazi Germany had defeated the Soviet Union?”.[179]  When examining the biography of Adolf Hitler it is impossible not to ask a counterfactual question, what would have happened if Hitler had been accepted to the Academy of Art in Vienna in 1907.  This question is interesting because of the unusual importance of art and culture in the worldview of the young Hitler, but it becomes vital given the view of Kershaw, in his monumental work on Hitler, that every change in the latter’s life was extraordinarily fateful.  “The twelve years of Hitler’s rule permanently changed Germany, Europe and the world.  He is one of the few individuals of whom it can be said with absolute certainty:  Without him, the course of history would have been different.”[180]  This world-changing individual spent the first decades of his life pursuing an artistic career.  Even after 1933 his views and positions on the world of art were so developed and had so much influence on the political culture of the Third Reich that they justify description as an unusual case of an artist in politics.

          The first part of this chapter will focus on the figures who shaped Hitler’s worldview and led to the unusual importance he placed on art and culture in Nazi ideology.  These figures, many of them active in the arts, provided Hitler with views giving art priority over politics.  Many of them claimed that the political salvation of Germany would only be possible because of its cultural superiority.  It does not seem that when Hitler entered politics he left these views behind him;  not only the symbolic and aesthetic dimensions of Nazi politics, but also much more fundamental factors bear this out. 

Thomas Mann was among the first to understand the importance of art in Hitler’s views when he described Hitler as a “fellow artist”.  He “delineates several biographical and psychological similarities between himself, the young decadent littérateur turned Nobel laureate and the ex-Austrian peintre maudit, now the most powerful politician and mass-media magician of Germany”.[181]  Mann pointed to that part of Hitler’s character which connected him to the artistic community and created a significant degree of dissonance in him. “Must we not, even against our will, recognize in this phenomenon an aspect of the artist’s character? We are ashamed to admit it, but the whole pattern is there: the recalcitrance, sluggishness and miserable indefiniteness of his youth; the dimness of purpose, the what-do-you-really-want-to-be, the vegetating like a semi-idiot in the lowest social and psychological bohemianism.… It is a thoroughly embarrassing kinship. Still and all, I would not want to close my eyes to it.”  Farther along in the same work Mann expressed his regret that Hitler was no longer (as of 1938) using pencil and paints in his creation, but that humanity was now his canvas.[182]

          An examination of the worldview of Hitler shows that he placed great emphasis on cultural production in general and particularly the visual arts.  His interest in these areas and his active involvement in artistic questions seem even more unusual when he is compared to other dictators active in the same period.[183]  This interest was not confined to the early years but also characterized his activities after the seizure of power.  His speeches on culture, his architectonic plans, the active role he took in the Nazi art world, his art collection, his desire to establish a museum in his home town, the architectural rounds he established, the search teams he sent out to search for his early art works, and other activities discussed in the next sections all indicate his vast interest in art and culture.  As Fuehrer Hitler did not reduce his role to the praxis of cultural policy, but continued to create, from the design of the Volkswagen[184] to that of the symbol on the Nazi daily Völkischer Beobachter to his architectonic designs together with Speer.

          In addition to all of the activities already mentioned, after 1933 Hitler continued to design the Nazi politics of culture so that it would fit his worldview;  this can be seen in his many and varied statements on art and culture that are divided here into sections on his attitudes toward modern art, the symbiosis he believed existed between art and politics, and the way he portrayed the ideal Nazi art.  As I show below, the main points of his worldview were already established before the seizure of power.  Even so, in his speeches on culture he not only developed previous ideas but expressed a clear tendency toward the radicalization of his positions and the delegitimation of the modern art world.

          The events of his early years left a significant mark on Hitler’s political worldview where culture played a most important role.  A man who listed himself in letters containing his resume as an artist[185] and sincerely hoped that he would manage to establish an artistic career, he never detached himself from the fancies of his youth.  Rosenbaum has correctly claimed that Hitler was an artist not just in his products but also in his personal temperament.[186]  All of these points together provide at least part of the explanation for his personal involvement in the worlds of art and creation after 1933, when he was already the Fuehrer of the German dictatorship.  They also help illuminate his choice to celebrate his birthdays listening to Wagner, his visits to Paris surrounded by architects, his tiring of the Nazi leadership during his endless culture speeches, and most importantly, the great emphasis Nazism placed on symbols.

          If the claim that Hitler was unique among dictators in the way he dealt with art is accepted, the question as to which ideas and ideologies on the subject of culture and art he was exposed to in his youth becomes particularly important.  It is also important to verify to what extent these ideas were central in the development of his worldview.

          Unlike some historians and biographers of Hitler who have claimed that he did not have a systematic worldview, I believe that he did have a developed worldview which in turn directed and was central to the Nazi politics of culture.  The opinion of historians such as Bullock, who has described Hitler as a nihilist opportunist and a leader lacking a worldview, simply cannot be proven.[187]  The same is true for those who have stated that they have doubts about the centrality of Hitler in deciding National-Socialist policy.[188]

          An examination of the collected works of Hitler from 1905 to 1924 and his speeches and writings from 1925 to 1933 clearly indicates that he did have a developed worldview;  all claims to the contrary are lacking in factual basis.  Hitler had clear views on everything connected to the creative and cultural worlds, even though there are contradictions built into these views.  Jäckel’s claim that Hitler had his own well-developed worldview[189] seems to better fit the approach taken in the present book.  In addition, an examination of his views on issues of art and culture makes it clear that these views went beyond a simple rejection of modern art.  He was well acquainted  with the avant-garde movements he rejected as well as with the artistic movements of previous centuries, and therefore went into great detail about the image of the artistic alternative which was to be established in Germany if the Nazis came to power.  Wistrich’s view, that “many of their ideas in this field [‘true’ art] were contradictory and confused, scarcely adding up to a coherent theory of practice of culture”, is not supported here, even though Wistrich agrees that art and culture played a central role in the building of the new Aryan and the new millennium.[190]  Similar claims have been made by Kater, who has argued that “the amorphous structure of the Nazi Weltanschauung as expressed in Mein Kampf could be digested piecemeal by the intermediate lower-middle- class functionary, who, never eager to comprehend the quintessence of an issue, was content to remember and regurgitate snippets of the doctrine to suit his immediate purpose”.[191]         

These descriptions of the Nazi worldview as opportunistic do not explain the unusual importance placed on culture and aesthetics in Nazi Germany.  In the case of Hitler, the importance stemmed from a combination of his professional desires and a well-developed worldview in this area, one which placed culture in the center.  Hitler, an admirer of Wagner, was well aware of the Late Romantic traditions where the artist-genius was to replace the politician.  He, more than others, understood the mission of the leader as the one who would turn politics into a Gesamtkunstwerk.

          The fact that Hitler developed his worldview starting at the beginning of the 1920s justifies the use of the term politics of culture.  This term, which is meant to emphasize the differences between Nazi Germany and other twentieth-century dictatorships, also indicates that in this worldview politics and art were mixed together;  Nazi cultural policy was derived from the mixture.  At the core of the politics of culture was not just the desire to deepen the legitimacy of the regime;  aesthetics was seen as a replacement for the modernist and alienated world.  The politics of culture as developed by Hitler and other Nazi leaders shows that Nazism cannot be reduced to pure opportunism.  Hitler dealt with art and culture in a systematic way while overemphasizing the importance of these areas.  Evidence for this claim can be found in his statement that the National-Socialist revolution could never be completed without a revolution in culture.  In addition, the development of the politics of culture before the seizure of power in 1933 ensured relatively quick implementation of cultural policy and may illuminate the process of intensive and voluntary Gleichschaltung which took place in the German cultural world.

          The argument of Jäckel with those who would downplay the importance of Hitler and his worldview is thus a justified one.  The choice of a simple historical explanation which emphasizes opportunism or claims that Nazi ideology is full of internal contradictions leads those choosing it to push aside this central question without which it is almost impossible to understand the complexity of National Socialism.  The brainwashing of the simple citizen, his bombardment with symbols, and the alternative volkish culture cannot be understood unless those who designed these things are examined seriously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Artist turns into Politician, 1889-1918

 

          When tracing Hitler’s worldview, one of the most fascinating questions is the extent to which he is representative of what Heiden has called “a German condition”.  Given that his views were well established before 1933, it is necessary to examine the ideal, intellectual, and ideological sources on which he drew.  This section therefore deals with the origins of the ideas on which Nazism was built while concentrating on Hitler;  it combines the use of research approaches emphasizing the history of ideas with the acceptance of the idea of the German Sonderweg.

          This methodology makes the difficulty in tracing the worldview of Hitler even clearer;  anyone attempting to find the sources of the ideas young Hitler absorbed has to deal with a serious lack of information;  there is hardly any material available. While Mein Kampf does include a few autobiographical sections dealing with the period, they must be considered skeptically, as historical research has shown that these sections provide an inaccurate and unreal portrayal of his youth.[192]  “The first three decades of Hitler’s life recede once again into a mist of uncertainty….  Everything unearthed by historical research about this period, as far as his intellectual development and not external circumstances of his life are concerned, is based almost exclusively on Hitler’s own statements and thus rests on a very shaky foundation.”[193]  Any attempt to follow the development of Hitler’s worldview before 1920 thus rests on many details which cannot be verified.

          The work of Hamann on the young Hitler and his years in Vienna is in this sense groundbreaking, but even she frequently emphasizes that for at least some events she had to rely on statements by people who had known Hitler;  they were speaking retrospectively, a quite problematic form of historical evidence.[194]  The reality of research on this topic is made even more complicated by the fact that after 1933, Hitler worked systematically to blur all evidence on his background.

          The need to analyze the cultural elements of his worldview makes it necessary, despite the limitations, to examine these poorly-known years;  during this period the young Hitler took great interest in and was quite busy with aesthetics and culture.  In this respect, his education created fertile ground for the absorption of ideas on the politics of culture which were frequently heard during the second half of the nineteenth century. 

To paraphrase the title of Eagleton’s book, Hitler may be seen as a leading representative of the “ideology of aesthetics”.[195]  The emphasis that was placed on culture in German philosophy led him to adopt a comprehensive worldviewin which culture played a central role;  many of its elements were not original and were taken from contemporary sources.  The Nazi politics of culture, or the “ideology of aesthetics”, did not develop randomly, but rather reflected and expressed a selective choice of elements which became part of the Nazi worldview and emphasized historical continuity.

          Locating the cultural, intellectual, and political milieu in which Hitler lived in the years before the creation of the Weimar Republic may help illuminate the claims about historical continuity but also clarify where the components of his worldview came from.  The views which were absorbed by the young Hitler during the years his personality was developing are of critical importance because most biographers agree that the young Hitler was apolitical.[196]  Thus, the exposure of Hitler to antisemitic works while living in Vienna cannot be examined in the limited framework of being active or inactive in party politics, but rather in the light of the contribution of figures from the world of culture to an acceleration of these apolitical views. Hitler’s role in the activities of the Vienna Antisemitic League (Antisemitenbund), to the extent there was one,[197] provides an example of this trend and expresses his self-image as an artist.  The antisemitic beliefs which Hitler adopted during those years were to a great extent expressive and the fact that they were vague in nature actually fits the unusual importance he would place on art, culture, and symbols after 1933.

          Despite his apolitical nature in the years before World War I, Hitler was exposed to influences from the worlds of culture and aesthetics and through them encountered the rightist, nationalist, and antisemitic spirit of the time.  Mosse has noted the fact that Hitler knew the works of Julius Langbehn, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Richard Wagner, and Maurenbrecher, and has claimed that Hitler was greatly influenced by Le Bon.[198]  Maser has also stated that Hitler read Le Bon.[199]   Kershaw has added Lueger and von Schönerer to the list, and Grosshans has discussed the influence of Nietzsche, Ranke, Treitschke, and von Bismarck. [200]  Hitler himself provided direct evidence of having been acquainted with these intellectuals, politicians, and philosophers, and added the names of Herbert Spencer and Oswald Spengler.[201]  Most of the intellectuals who influenced Hitler and shaped his early beliefsshared a rejection of Enlightenment traditions;  many of them attacked liberalism and equality.  Their views, which included a mixture of Social Darwinism, radical-right worldviews, and nationalist, volkish, organic, and even antisemitic approaches, were not unique to Germany, but it does seem that German history created a situation in which they were uniquely accepted.

                Any evaluation of the hidden influences and opposing spirits to which Hitler was exposed in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries is extremely difficult.  Even so, Hitler was thoroughly aware of the theories of the figures mentioned above.  It thus seems reasonable to assume that he was also exposed to figures such as Stefan George, Alfred Schuler, and Hermann Hesse.  While the nature of the influence these intellectuals had on Hitler is not clear, Richard Wagner definitely had a tremendous influence, which Hitler had no problem admitting. Wagner wrote of art as an alternative for the existing bourgeois order and saw art as the purpose of life, as standing at the core of social and political processes.

               These apolitical figures provided Hitler with a basis for his thinking and with principles which would guide his activities in the future.  An analysis of their influence on Hitler again becomes important if the views of Trevor-Roper, Nolte, Mosse, Jäckel, and Fest, who see Hitler as a “fossil”, are accepted.[202]  These historians are using the term fossil to describe a static figure who did not tend to change his basic positions once they had been determined.  A comment by Albert Speer clarifies this claim.  “In the realm of architecture, as in painting and sculpture, Hitler really remained arrested in the world of his youth;  the world of 1880 to 1910, which stamped its imprint on his artistic taste as on his political and ideological conceptions.”[203]  It would thus seem that if Hitler was indeed a static figure, his exposure in his youth to cultural and aesthetic influences may explain the centrality of these questions in his worldview later on.

 

A Failure at the Academy of Arts

 

          Art historians, historians, psychologists, and psychohistorians[204] who have dealt with the years in which Hitler’s personality developed tend to place great weight on his desire to become an artist and on his failure to pass the entrance exams to the Academy of Art in Vienna.  Rosenbaum has stated that “it was a rejection that was to have a shattering and lasting impact on his life.”[205]  Others have taken this rejection as a starting point for the way in which Hitler saw modern art after 1933.[206]  This section examines the primary sources available on Hitler’s early years without entering into psychologistic evaluations of the size of the trauma of rejection or speculations on its effect on the future. 

In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that he had to choose a career early in life after the death of his father.  He noted that his mother wanted to carry out his father’s wish and help him with his studies so that he would become a civil servant, but “I was more than ever determined absolutely not to undertake this career”.[207]  Hitler stated that he was allowed to leave the high school where he studied after a case of lung disease,[208]  and that Dr. Bloch, the family doctor, insisted that he would not be able to spend time in an office and convinced his mother that it would be best to send Hitler to painting school.  He said of the time at which he left school that “these were the happiest days of my life and seemed to me almost a dream”.[209]  His critical, almost hateful view of his school can be seen in an early drawing from March 26, 1900, when he was 11.[210] 

          In October 1907, after arriving in Vienna, Hitler requested permission to take part in the drawing exams at the Academy of Art.  Years later, he described the event.  “I had set out with a pile of drawings, convinced that it would be child’s play to pass the examination.  At the Realschule I had been by far the best in my class at drawing, and since then my ability had developed amazingly.”[211]  However, it would seem that the testers did not see Hitler as having particular talent.   The classification of those tested included the following words.  “The following took the test with insufficient results, or were not admitted…. Adolf Hitler, Braunau a. Inn, 20 April, 1889, German, Catholic, Father civil servant, 4 classes in Realschule.  Few heads, Test drawing unsatisfactory.”[212]

          One hundred and thirteen applicants took the entrance tests, which were divided into two parts.  Hitler successfully passed the first part, where they were asked to draw pictures on given topics, but failed the second stage, where the applicants showed off their previously-prepared works.  “Landscape with Farmhouse” (figure 1) seems to have been one of these works;[213]  it is characterized by a style unlike other works he did during the same period.  This watercolor shows that Hitler had a superficial acquaintance with contemporary styles such as Impressionism, and that he was willing to make opportunistic use of them.  His lack of appreciation for these artistic styles may explain his limited ability to produce works influenced by them.

          Even so, his lack of appreciation for modern styles and preference for the conservative did not hurt him during the judgment process and does not explain his rejection;  the vast majority of the judges were themselves conservatives.  Hamann has emphasized that the claims that Hitler was rejected by the Academy because the judges were Jewish and thus opposed to his antisemitism cannot be established.[214]  The explanation offered by Price may well be the correct one;  he has claimed that Hitler was rejected because of the high standards of the Academy.  Only 28 out of 113 were accepted that year, and therefore “failure was neither uncommon nor proof of inability”.[215]

          Hitler described his rejection as a “bolt from the blue” and a “lightning flash”.[216]  He approached the speaker of the faculty, Sigmund l’Allemand, in order to find out why he had failed.  The answer was that his works showed a lack of talent for painting and that “the Academy’s school for painting was out of the question”.  At the same time, Hitler reported that he was told that “my ability obviously lay in the field of architecture”.[217]  Even though a few days after his rejection Hitler announced that he was to become an architect, he knew that his announcement was not realistic because he needed final grades from the high school in order to enroll in the school of architecture, and he did not have these grades.   It thus seems clear why he felt that “the fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible”.[218]

          Hitler refused to acceptthat he would not be studying at the Academy;  his stay in Vienna lasted until his second attempt to enroll a year later.  His choice of Vienna seems to have stemmed from professional considerations but in a gradual process his attitudes changed.  Mosse has explained that “he loathed the city, and precisely that part of it which was most civilized excited his greatest loathing”.[219]   Hamann agrees and adds that his disgust with the big city symbolized the discomfort he felt in the multicultural Imperial capital.   The cosmopolitan atmosphere of the metropolis threatened him;  he preferred provincial Linz, which he identified with order, cleanliness, and the petit bourgeoisie of his childhood.[220]  This approach to the city would later reappear and be expressed in the emphasis Hitler would place in his speeches on the German homeland as reflected in “the return to the village” and values of “blood and soil”.  His disgust with the big and alienating city was probably connected to the poverty he experienced during those years;  it made an impression on him that was particularly hard to bear.  He later described his stay in Vienna as one of the hardest he went through.  “For me the name of this Phaeacian city [Vienna] represented five years of hardship and misery.  Five years in which I was forced to earn a living, first as a day laborer, then as a small painter; a truly meager living which never sufficed to appease even my daily hunger.”[221]

               This description fits together with evidence that Hitler barely made a living from trying to sell paintings and drawings he made to stores and on the street.  During this period his works were mostly copies of postcards and lithographs depicting the life and views of the city.  He painted small watercolors packed with details, sometimes six or seven paintings a week.  His style remained rooted in the nineteenth century and loyal to that of the artists he admired;  it expressed great conservatism and stasis.  He continued to paint conservative themes using old styles.

          A few works from the Viennese period have survived.[222] (figures 2-6) They show that Hitler had significant interest in architecture at the time.  He designed houses and depicted various public buildings and churches in his paintings.[223]  In addition to the architectural plans and the watercolors Hitler also tried to write plays based on ancient German sagas, an opera showing the influence of Richard Wagner, and even his “theses” on the structure of the ideal German state.

          During his years in Vienna Hitler was not inspired by the modernist cultural activities characteristic of the city.  The artistic and cultural agitation found in Vienna at the time[224] is not reflected in Hitler’s works;  they remained within the limits of older worlds.  The activities of artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele, or of musicians such as Arnold Schoenberg and Gusav Mahler, much of it inspired by the works of Freud, remained foreign to Hitler.  His ignoring of contemporary styles was probably deliberate and therefore supports the claims that he was an extreme conservative.  I am therefore not certain that Grosshans was right when he stated that “it is unlikely that he read any of the important documents on modern art that appeared while he was in Vienna, and his own art illustrates his failure to participate in the modernist experience.”[225]

          Hitler hid his failure to be accepted to the Academy from his mother and from August Kubizek, a childhood friend and the son of an upholstererfrom Linz.  Kubizek addressed the issue in his memoirs and explained that “he [Hitler] was too proud to talk about it…. He did not mention it at all.  I respected his silence and didn’t ask him any questions, because I suspected that something had gone wrong with his plans.”[226]  In October 1908, after taking some art lessons from a Viennese sculptor[227] in order to improve the works he wanted to present, Hitler tried again to be accepted to the painting department of the Academy.  This time he was not allowed even to take the first stage of the tests.  The works he had prepared so diligently were not examined and the 1908 list of candidates is even more unambiguous than that of the previous year.  “24.  Adolf Hitler….  Not admitted to the test.”[228]

          In November 1908 Hitler met Reinhold Hanisch in the rooming house where he was living;  the latter became Hitler’s agent and distributed his works.  Hanisch was responsible for selling Hitler’s paintings to individuals and galleries;  the two divided the money.[229]  Despite the financial difficulties of the period, Hitler later described it as successful, because he was working in the profession he had dreamed of.  “In the years 1909 and 1910, my situation had changed somewhat in so far as I no longer had to earn my daily bread as a common laborer.  By this time I was working independently as a small draftsman and painter of watercolors.  Hard as this was with regard to earnings – it was barely enough to live on – it was good for my chosen profession….  My present work ran parallel to my future profession.”[230]

 

Early Fantasies on the Gesamtkunstwerk

 

          There are many figures who influenced the young Hitler during the years in which his worldview developed, but the most important of these seems to have been Richard Wagner. Köhler has rightfully argued that “Hitler’s private utopia… was entitled ‘Richard Wagner’. It was a utopia that embraced both the magic of Wagner’s music dramas and the philosophy behind his revolutionary writings”.[231] Köhler’s arguments reflect a long tradition of studies on the relations between Wagner and Hitler. In 1937 Roberts already argued that “everything that Hitler does is Wagnerian.… Hitler’s spectacles are nothing more than an enlargement of this Wagnerian drop-scene, with improvements offered by modern science”.[232]    

The earliest evidence for Hitler’s adoration of Wagner dates to his youth in Linz.  Kubizek first met Hitler at the theater in 1905 and then became his closest friend.  The two frequently attended concerts together and even took piano lessons together for a few months.[233]  Their shared love for music led them to attend a performance of Wagner’s Rienzi.[234]  Kubizek later claimed that the sumptuous musicality, the dramatic nature of the opera, and the fate of Cola di Rienza, a rebel from the end of the Middle Ages, stunned Hitler.  At the end of the performance the sixteen-year-old Hitler was one of those in the audience shouting “Heil!”[235]  He was even carried along by the music to different realms.  “In grand, infectious images he outlined to me the future of the German people.”[236]

          In his book, Kubizek presented evidence for several visits to the opera house together with Hitler.  He claimed that Hitler “preferred a mediocre Wagner performance a hundred times to a first-class Verdi” and added that Hitler saw Lohengrin and Der Meistersinger at least ten times each and knew them by heart.[237]  Years later Hitler claimed that he saw Tristan und Isolde thirty or forty times.[238]

          It seems that when Hitler moved to Vienna his adoration of Wagner and the influence of the latter on him only increased.[239]  Despite his later statements Vienna did enchant him at least in that he could hear Wagner frequently;  he also liked the grandiose architecture, which inspired his imagination.  “The whole Ring Boulevard seemed to me like an enchantment out of the Thousand-and-One Nights.”[240]  Hitler described his experiences in the big city in detail in the postcards and letters he sent to his friend Kubizek.  He also spoke about the music of Wagner with Hanisch, who later stated that the music had stirred Hitler’s imagination.[241]

          On May 7, 1906 Kubizek received a postcard from Hitler;  he wrote that he was going to see The Flying Dutchman two days later at the Burgtheater.  Hamann checked the records;  there was indeed a production on the ninth.[242]  Hitler described his visits to the opera as deep spiritual experiences.  “Only when the mighty sound-waves flood through the hall and the whistling of the wind makes way for the mighty roar of the tonal tides  does one feel the nobility….”[243]  Hitler saw many of Wagner’s operas but showed no interest in the works of other equally-famous composers such as Verdi or Mozart.  Jenks has emphasized that during Hitler’s stay in Vienna Wagner was at the height of his popularity;  between 1907 and 1913 his works were played at least 426 times.[244] In addition, there were a large number of theatrical productions of Wagner’s works.  Hitler often cited Wagner and knew his ideas and writings by heart.[245]  His admiration for the composer led him to try to work in other creative areas, as can be seen in his failed attempt to write an opera in the style of Wagner.[246] (figure 7)

          In addition to the attempt at composing, Hitler continued to paint, and in 1908 Hitler dedicated a painting entitled Richard Wagner by Adolf Hitler to Kubizek.  It shows Wagner in profile and facing front and includes twelve lines from a Wagner libretto in Hitler’s handwriting.  The lines describe Hans Sachs, der Meistersinger, reading the poem which won him the competition.  This paragraph includes the line “do not disrespect the great artists and respect their art”.[247]

          Hitler’s identification with Wagner at that time seems to have gone beyond the field of music.  He identified with Wagner’s youth, with the fact that the latter’s genius had not immediately been recognized.  Hitler saw Wagner as the prototype for his own future.  The rejection of the young Wagner provided the basis for Hitler’s belief that his artistic talents would eventually be discovered, as great artists always worked against the spirit of the times.  Wagner also provided the source for Hitler’s romantic longings, which saw art as opposed to the bourgeois world.  Wagner’s views that art was the purpose of life and that the artist-genius was the one to make the critical decisions, together with the belief that life must be made subservient to the dictates of art if politics was to be made perfect influenced Hitler.

          Heiden believes that Hitler was torn during that period between the bourgeois-conservative tendencies absorbed during his education and the revolutionary criteria of bohemian life, and that this was the main reason he saw Wagner as an ideal figure.[248]   Hitler identified in Wagner the lack of respect  toward everything seen as bourgeois;  the artist-genius could never be part of the world of the latter, as it did not put up with the other.  He was enchanted by the struggle in the works of Wagner between the man who followed his own internal laws even though it placed him outside of society and a strict social order ruled by tradition.   Fest has claimed that Hitler identified the actions of the Wagnerian heroes with his rejection by the Academy of Art and his struggles against the world.[249]  The heroes of Wagner’s works continued to occupy Hitler even after he became Fuehrer.  Siegfried, the hero of Wagner’s Ring cycle, was seen as a desired model for emulation. Köhler has therefore argued that it was probably “the Ring cycle that was to leave the deepest marks on the young man from Linz”.[250] 

          The combination of the visual and dramatic power of Wagner’s works and their incredible dimensions, which were meant to express his views on the Gesamtkunstwerk, provided a forerunner of the era of the Nazi masses.  Hitler later stated about the earlier period that “with the exception of Richard Wagner, he had ‘no forerunners’” and that Wagner was the greatest prophet the German people had ever had.[251]  This description was meant to establish his position as Wagner’s twentieth-century counterpart.  Hitler believed that Wagner, more than anyone else, had helped the development of the German man, and therefore Wagner was placed together with Friedrich the Great and Martin Luther.[252]

The Wagnerian view of the development of the German people and the emphasis Wagner placed in his writings on the superiority of German culture as compared to the rest of civilization can also be connected to the crass antisemitism Hitler and Wagner shared.  Windell has emphasized that “he (Wagner) came to see in the biological mixing of races a prime cause of the degeneracy of humanity. Often his ideas on these subjects are expressed in a vocabulary which is not dissimilar to that employed by Hitler, particularly in the vehemence of its emotionalism”.[253]  Even though there is no direct evidence that Hitler read Wagner’s “Judaism in Music”, it certainly seems that he knew the article very well, as he made use of almost identical terminology.[254]

The discussion of Wagner as one of the key figures who influenced Hitler shows that the cultural world and the views on art of the latter did not just appear out of nowhere.  Wagner’s influence on Hitler was evident in the latter’s worldview as well as in the praxis of the totalitarian regime.  I believe that his influence was crucial in the process of shaping Hitler’s politics of culture, as I will show below. Wagner paved the way for radicalism and deepened the spirit, which was centered on the cultural discontent of fin-de-siècle Germany.

 

An admirer of conservative art

 

In May 1913 Hitler left Vienna for Munich.  Although the move was made to avoid having to serve in the Imperial Army, Hitler carefully explained it years later as stemming from other reasons.  In Mein Kampf he noted that his studies required moving to Munich because it was the “metropolis of German art”.  “Not only has one not seen Germany if one does not know Munich – no, above all, one does not know German art is one has not seen Munich.”[255]  This claim is interesting because there is no evidence that he studied in Munich.  Another reason Hitler gave for leaving Vienna was connected to the social rot and decadence he found there.  “Also in the field of culture or artistic affairs, the Austrian state showed all signs of degeneration”. Hitler the reactionary attacked the new architecture which was starting to appear in Vienna, and saw it as the clearest sign of degeneration.  “The new architecture could achieve no special successes in Austria, if for no other reason because since the completion of the Ring its tasks, in Vienna at least, had become insignificant in comparison with the plans arising in Germany.”[256]

In Munich Hitler continued to make a living from selling his watercolors;  he described his work not as a profession but as a mission and pleasure.  “I did not live to be able to paint, but painted only to be able to secure my livelihood or rather to enable myself to go on studying.  I possessed the conviction that I should some day, in spite of all obstacles, achieve a goal I had set myself.”[257]  One of the better-known works from this period is a watercolor he called Königliches Hofbräuhaus (figure 8) copied from a postcard depicting a sumptuous building from the eighteenth century.[258]

Hitler’s choice of Munich and not Berlin may in part be explained by his conservative nature;  the Bavarian capital, which would from the earliest stages be associated with the Nazi Party,[259] lacked the cosmopolitan nature of Berlin.  Hitler, who showed no interest in modern artistic experiments in general and especially not in the new dimensions of the world of painting, did not appreciate artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, or Paul Klee.  He saw Munich as the “metropolis of German art” because the city better fit his conservative taste in art.  The artists who inspired him during this period were Neo-Classicists and Romantics, often with a preference for the saccharinity of the Biedermeier style.[260]  Hitler’s preferred themes were conservative and even reactionary. They were characterized by a focus on nature and landscapes and depictions of the peasant family living in harmony in the village, far away from the alienating urban arena.  He preferred a realist style which completely rejected the tendencies toward abstraction common at that time.  The works of Rudolph von Alt had particular influence on him at that time.  The realist style of von Alt, characterized by the use of great masses of detail, the way in which he mixed the depiction of the details with nature, and the use of delicate watercolors greatly impressed Hitler;  the latter called von Alt “my teacher”.  St. Stephan’s Cathedral, an 1880 work by von Alt, was almost completely copied by Hitler in 1910.[261] (figure 9)

In addition to von Alt, Hitler was exposed in this period to the works of Anselm Feuerbach, Ferdinand Waldmüller, Franz von Stuck, and Karl Rottmann, painters of the middle quarters of the nineteenth century.[262]  The common denominator of most of their works, some Neo-Classicist and others Romantic, was their conservatism, even by thestandards of their own movements.  Most of the painters Hitler appreciated were Romantics;  they depicted the individual as operating under the dictates of nature.  However, Hitler did not like the Romantic painters who were considered the most advanced.  Caspar David Friedrich was an example;  his style was not appreciated by Hitler, who almost never mentioned him as a model for emulation.  This is probably because Friedrich’s works displayed the tension between individualism and collectivism, between conformity and revolution;  Hitler preferred conservative paintings depicting themes from German mythology or overly sweet views of daily life in the village.

The admiration which a few Romantics showed for madness as the origin of creativity was not to Hitler’s taste.  The tendency to describe the artist-genius as under the influence of attacks of madness, instability, and craziness[263] did not fit Hitler’s views;  he preferred stychic depictions of families rooted in nature, such as those of Waldmüller.  Such pictures were characteristic of the Late Romantic, preserved the traditional patriarchal order, and stirred patriotic sentiments while sanctifying the existing social order.[264]

          While in Munich Hitler completely ignored modern art and continued to follow his conservative worldview.  Grosshans has explained that “Hitler’s historical interpretation, like his aesthetic program, was based upon his belief that Europe, as he conceived of it, was threatened with extinction as an important influence on this planet.… Hitler often pointed out to his followers that the European way of life was being sacrificed to financial speculation, banks, stock exchanges, interest, dividends, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, intellectualism, Marxism, Bolshevism, rogues and thieves.”[265]  Hitler’s fear of and alienation from processes of modernization connected him easily enough to the social stratum characterized by and expressing “cultural despair”, as Stern has called it.  This spirit was expressed by authors such as Paul Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, Eugen Duhring, and Hitler’s mentor and friend Friedrich Eckhart, all of whom were known to Hitler.  They were most concerned with glorifying the past, the nobility, beauty, and death, while decrying the “degeneration” of German culture.  Their goal was a renaissance of things German as expressed for instance in imperialism.  The dissatisfaction which united this group created a constant hope for a dramatic change after which a new start would be possible.

          World War I, with its great violence and increased alienation provided a source for the hope that renewal would emerge from destruction.  For many of the figures mentioned above the Futurist slogan “war is the only human hygiene” fit their views perfectly.  It was clear to them that the world of yesterday with all of its implications must be swept away and that only the flames of war would bring about great purity through nothingness, as Ernst Jünger wrote.  The idea of war therefore contained the right balance between the need for self-defense from the new modern era and a romantic and pessimistic inspiration of the spirit.

          Hitler was called to Salzburg to be tested for conscription, but was rejected as too weak and unable to carry arms.[266]  At the start of the war he wrote to the King of Bavaria and asked permission to volunteer for his army.  The appeal was quickly accepted and Hitler entered the 16^th Regiment of the Bavarian infantry reserves;  it was made up mostly of student volunteers.  He took part in forty-seven battles during the war and received two medals for bravery;  the first-degree Iron Cross he received in 1918 was rarely awarded to common soldiers during World War I.

          Approaching thirty, Hitler spent his free time making an unending series of drawings of his fellow soldiers.[267]  Mein Kampfindicates that painting was constantly on his mind; he described the gas attack which wounded him four weeks before the end of the war as an experience which shaped him.  The shock of the idea that he might go blind was described in terms of his professional hopes at the time.  “To be sure, I could no longer hope that I would ever be able to draw again.”[268]

          Hitler joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party) in September 1919, apparently for opportunistic reasons and not out of the historic sense of mission which he would later claim was greatly strengthened by the defeat and humiliation of Germany, the November Revolution, and the establishment of the Weimar Republic.  He quickly made his way up the political ladder and within a short time “Hitler’s star was in ascendance within the party”.[269]

During those early years Hitler was exposed to the influence of Friedrich Eckhart.  The latter was a poet, playwright, and journalist who had arrived in Munich in 1915.  His patriotic stands had a volkish-occult streak to them which connected him to the activities of the Thule Gesellschaft.  His works from the period show clear antisemitic views.  In his “Thoughts on the Chaos of Our Time”, Eckhart attacked materialism and came out against spiritual confusion, distancing from national symbols, and the adoption of “empty cliches” such as “freedom” and “humanity”; some of his words would later appear in speeches Hitler gave in the beer halls of Munich.

          At the end of summer 1919 Eckhart gave his first public lecture at a meeting of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.  He was a central figure in the inner circles of the party and helped to develop an antisemitic dynamics there.  Some scholars, such as Kershaw, have described him as the “philosopher of the [Nazi] Party” in the years before the seizure of power.  However, in addition to ideology he was also aware of tactical considerations and of the importance of a daily party newspaper, as can be seen in the negotiations over the purchase of the Völkischer Beobachter for the Party.[270]

          Hitler and Eckhart worked together on the eve of the founding of the Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei on April 20, 1920.  Mosse and Wistrich have characterized Hitler as “the avid and quickly learning student”[271] who implemented the tactics his teacher taught.  Eckhart consistently claimed that the leader of the party also had to be an artist, an intellectual, a cruel soldier with great authority, and the possessor of a personal dream.  Germany needed all of these if it was to be saved from its enemies and degeneration.  He added that “art was a celebration of German racial and historical aspirations, and it was through art that the German could make that leap from the confusion of everyday life to the security of high culture.”[272]  Eckhart’s views fit well into Hitler’s worldview.  Hitler was significantly influenced by Eckhart at that time and remained close to him until his death in 1923.  Mosse  has noted that “this important figure in the Volkish movement played a key role in crystallizing Hitler’s political attitudes.”[273]

 

               Until recently, insufficient research emphasis was placed on the first three decades of Hitler’s life, to a certain extent because of the lack of primary sources on these years.  On the other hand, the focus has naturally enough been on the years between 1933 and 1945.  An examination of Hitler’s early years, as it appears in this section, clearly shows that his great interest in questions of art played a vital role in his development.  He wanted a career in art for himself, and his interest in culture and aesthetics can be seen in different facets of his life, evidently because it fit certain characteristics in his personality.  The claim repeatedly advanced in the literature that Hitler was an untalented housepainter who accidentally attempted to enter the Academy of Art in Vienna was completely demolished in the 1990s, especially in the works of Kershaw and Hamann.  The fact that Hitler admired nineteenth-century artists placed him in opposition to the avant-garde spirit characteristic of the time, but this does not at all mean that Hitler had no artistic talent at all, or that his works were “non-art”.

          Reservations about describing Hitler as an artist, and especially as a talented artist,[274] are clear enough.  The main danger in this description is connected to the fact that it undermines his description as inhuman and monstrous.  Hitler the artist is too far along the way to being just another “regular German”.  Thus, any description of the Fuehrer of the Third Reich as cultured rightly creates enormous dissonance.  His art cannot be examined “neutrally”, as anyone choosing the works of Hitler as a research topic would at least be subject to heavy criticism, if not accused of acting to forward revisionist approaches to the Holocaust or those trivializing it.  Even so, Nazi Germany cannot be described without taking into account the grandiose desires of the dictator who led it.  This claim is not limited to the early years; after 1933 Hitler would become an unusual case of an artist in politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hitler on Modern Degenerate Art

 

          The discussion of Hitler’s worldview on art rests on an examination of his writings and speeches and is divided into three main parts.  This section examines his views on modern art, the reasons for his rejection of the artistic avant-garde, the ways in which his views on art served to radicalize his political stands, and the explanations he gave for the degeneration of German civilization.[275]  The following sections cover his views on the ways art influenced politics in general and the pragmatic implications stemming from his worldview, and the roles he planned for art in the new regime, especially the artistic alternative (volkish art) he developed.

          Many of Hitler’s speeches, from his early days in the National-Socialist Party through his “cultural speeches” (Kulturreden), include different descriptions of the process of degeneration as seen in art and more generally the degeneration of German civilization.[276]  I willnot present his views chronologically but rather according to the central questions and ideas to which he repeatedly returned in his speeches.  The first of these topics is his opinion on modern art in general, followed by his views on the way in which the political order of the Weimar Republic was affected by cultural Bolshevism (Kulturbolschewismus) and how the latter encouraged and advanced degeneration of Germany.  The next section covers the Jew as the agent of degeneration and finally the Jewish and Marxist conspiracy designed, as Hitler believed, to destroy German culture.

          Hitler paid great attention to the many reasons he saw for the cultural decline of Germany.  These included the incoherence of modern life, the rejection of historical goals and the will of history, overemphasis on the individual, alienation, increased urbanization, rejection of objective time, and a warped view of life.  The Weimar Republic and the cultural Bolshevism which ruled it made these processes more extreme, and the special role of the Jew brought them to a peak.  Hitler described the Jew as a foreign element in the German people who hurt German culture and dictated artistic taste because of his control of capital.  During the Systemzeit[277] the degeneration of modern art reached new heights because of a Jewish-Bolshevik plot to destroy the German people.

          Hitler’s opinions remained fairly stable during the years from 1919 to 1933, but after the seizure of power the terminology he used became more radical.  This radicalization is to a great extent part of a broader process connected to the establishment of the state after the revolutionary period;  it is not found only in the works of Hitler.  This process, which Mosse has described as the “brutalization of politics”, determined the character of the right during the Weimar Republic and even entered into the official political system of the Third Reich.[278]

 

Modernism, Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism, Avant-Garde

 

          A discussion of the views of Hitler on modernism and the liberal era in general is necessary because it illuminates his views on the idea of the avant- garde and on the different avant-garde movements in art.  Hitler believed that the world in which he lived would not necessarily survive,[279] and was therefore ready to fight the liberal world order and all that it implied.  He completely rejected not only the democratic state and its organization as seen in the Weimar Republic, but also liberal, international, and cosmopolitan values as characteristic of the new era.

          The fact that the avant-garde, as a movement, artistic style, or fashion, was characterized by its sudden appearance in a certain time and place did not fit with Hitler’s conservative worldview.  Writing about the avant-garde Nietzsche argued that in Germany it had led to the destruction of the existing order and the rejection of accepted values.[280]  Although similar views were expressed about other avant-gardes, Nietzsche’s statement puts the clash between the avant-garde and Hitler’s static worldview into a clearer perspective.  Hitler was critical of and completely rejected the tendency of the avant-garde to do away with all general criteria which had been accepted in the past.  The tendency of the avant-garde to prefer subjectivist expressions was seen by Hitler as an expression of insanity and was opposed by him.

Modern and avant-garde art, which could not be understood, was taking over from objective judgement.  Hitler preferred instead unifying criteria and standards.  The problem was not just the loss of standards or criteria for judgement;  the danger inherent in a dictatorship of the avant-garde was growing stronger and was expressed in a loss of way threatening the fabric of society and leading Germany down the path to degeneration and decay.[281]

          One of Hitler’s earliest statements against the liberal-democratic order appeared in a speech given in Munich in September 1922.  “Democracy, the majority, world conscience, global solidarity, world peace, the international nature of art, etc. – have led to the destruction of our consciousness of race and have encouraged fear….”[282]  Hitler claimed that one of the central problems of the Weimar Republic was connected to the desire to replace particularist and patriotic values with cosmopolitan ones.  He was categorically opposed to the latter, especially their influence on culture.  In a 1927 speech he emphasized that true art could never be international.  “Do not say that art is international – no.  Tango, shimmy,[283] jazz bands are international, but they are not art.”[284]

          The avant-garde used international movements sharing similar styles in its attempt to plant internationalist themes and content in art.  Hitler’s radical, nationalist approach was totally opposed to this, as was his belief that the art of each nation had its own specific characteristics.  He claimed that “it will never be possible to separate art from people.  The slogan that it [art] is actually international is empty and stupid.”[285]  The main danger in adopting international themes in art stemmed from the fact that it led to the destruction of the direct connection between art and the people.  According to the international approach “there is no art of peoples, or preferably of races, but in each case only the art of the time.”[286]

          An additional criticism of the avant-garde was connected to the latter’s desire to remove and do away with anything old or valuable.  Hitler claimed that this tendency stemmed from the fact that modern movements produced mediocre and limited products, and therefore they hated the past and the masterpieces it had produced.  The tendency of the modernists to belittle the importance of the history of art and its standards for judgment had a purpose;  “by excluding every possibility of comparison they could pass off their own trash as art”.[287]  Every new institution, no matter how “corrupt or dismal”, tended to mask the traces of the past.  Hitler believed that any organization truly wanting to protect humanity must start from a discussion of the great achievements of previous generations.  “It does not have to fear that it will pale before the past.”[288]  However, the modernists were not capable of creating meaningful art and therefore they hated everything which had come before them.

          The analogy between the political and artistic avant-gardes was already well developed in Mein Kampf.  Both types of movement “hate the old ways because [they feel] inferior to them”.[289]  The danger in this situation, which Hitler saw as characteristic of the world of art, was shown through an example taken from politics. Hitler claimed that Friedrich Ebert, the Social Democratic Party leader and first president of the Weimar Republic, understood that if he wanted to survive and not make a spectacle of himself he must first erase all memory of Friedrich the Great.   “Erasing memories” also referred to symbols;  the same tactic was used by Lenin immediately after the Communist Revolution.[290]

          Hitler’s conservative-reactionary worldview led him to state that “if any new idea, a doctrine, a new philosophy, or even political or economic movement tries to deny the entire past, tries to make it bad or worthless, for this reason alone we must be extremely cautious and suspicious.”[291]  The true renaissance of humanity would always continue from the place where it had previously stopped.  Hitler described human culture as a gradual development based on previous knowledge.  Revolutions by their very nature wanted to cure the ills of a given society.  Even so, revolutions whose aim was to destroy all that had come previously must be prevented, otherwise human culture would be reduced to chaos.

               These statements by Hitler show that his views cannot be described as “reactionary modernism”;  even as the leader of a movement at the height of a revolutionary era, he did not abandon his conservative views.  The attack on the avant-garde cannot be examined solely in the narrow context of the discussion of the image of German culture but must be placed in its broader context.  Hitler was convinced that the activities of the avant-garde were leading German society down the path to chaos and that the desire of the avant-garde to destroy all existing frameworks was not only not an accident but was actually a reflection of madness.

          The interpretation of modern art as affected by mental instability was clearly not original to Hitler. The connection between the artist and the genius and references to the artist as a madman can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle.[292]   Toward the end of the nineteenth century, scholars, influenced by the development of sociology and criminology and also by scientifically- inspired works on degeneration and culture, considered the deepening madness of artists.[293]

The synthesis between art and madness plays a particularly important role in Hitler’s worldview;  it became one of the central pillars of his politics of culture.  From the earliest stages of his political career Hitler made frequent use of this analogy.  For example, a 1921 speech given in Munich stated that “artists… create works of art which not only remain not understood by the common man, but even hide from him [the latter] that the artist worked in a studio instead of an insane asylum”.[294] 

The connection between modernism in art and madness appears in many variations in Hitler’s speeches;  it shows that Hitler’s beliefs on the subject were well developed and also a not insignificant degree of obsession.  He stated that a healthy world did not need the “hallucinations of lunatics or criminals”.[295]   In a 1928 speech he came out “against the gall of people who belong in a sanatorium, who are sent as ‘artists’ to humanity”.[296]  In addition to making the connection between art and madness, Hitler detailed how the National-Socialist Party would deal with these artists if the Nazis were even to obtain power.  In a determined tone he explained that “even if the environment expresses its displeasure it does not matter.  We have the role of clearing up this garbage….  When we are asked: ‘What right do you have to do this?’ we answer ‘the right of the healthy.’”[297]  Two years later, after the Nazi success in the regional elections in Thuringia, Hitler could put his need to “clean up the garbage” into action for the first time.

In the years after the seizure of power Hitler’s views were radicalized and he adopted a more militant tone.  Before 1933 he had not explicitly and directly named particular avant-garde movements, but after that date he spelled out exactly which movements were to be purged.  The tone of his statements tended to become more extreme and pointed;  when dealing with modern art he chose terms meant to illustrate the connection between cultural degeneration and abnormal social situations.  His goal was to create antagonism between his audience and modern art.  The repeated use of words such as madness, neurosis, twisted imagination, insane asylum, etc. was meant to connect modern artists to mental illness, and after 1933 Hitler also identified the avant-garde movements with the edges of society.  He described modern artists as criminals polluting society and as deserving prosecution for their schemes.

In a speech at the 1933 congress on culture (Kulturtagung) in Nuremberg Hitler stated that there were two possible explanations for modern works of art.  Either they were the result of a “fundamental internal experience, a situation in which they [the artists] must – as a danger to the healthy feelings of our people – be sent to medical quarantine, or if they [the works] were just speculations – they belong because of their deceits in an appropriate institution.”[298]

The delegitimation and cataloguing of modern artists reached a peak in Hitler’s speech at the opening of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung on July 18, 1937.[299]  This speech is one of the most central, detailed, and sharpest of Hitler’s speeches on modernism, the avant-garde, and art.  Using language reminiscent of Eckhart Hitler mocked modernist terminology as used by the avant-garde. “All those catchwords: ‘inner experience’, ‘strong state of mind’, ‘forceful will’, ‘emotions pregnant with the future’, ‘heroic attitude’, ‘meaningful empathy’, ‘experienced order of things’, ‘original primitivism’, etc. – all these dumb, mendacious excuses, this claptrap or jabbering will no longer be accepted as excuses or even recommendations for worthless, integrally unskilled products.”[300] 

Hitler’s claims about the connection between modernism in art and madness were based on similar positions expressed by Paul Schultze-Naumburg, one of whose books was found in Hitler’s library, and on the research of Hans Prinzhorn.[301]  “And what do they produce?  Deformed cripples and cretins, women who can only cause disgust, men who are closer to animals than to the human, children who if they actually lived would be considered the curse of God!  And the cruel dilettantes of our present scene dare to display this to us as ‘contemporary art’….”[302] 

Hitler suggested distinguishing between two groups of artists, those who really suffered from visual distortions and those who intentionally worked in this way.  His description of the first group clearly echoes the arguments made by Nordau in his work on degeneration. “I have observed among the pictures submitted here, quite a few paintings which make one actually come to the conclusion that the eye shows things differently to certain human beings than the way they really are, that is, that there really are men who see the present population of our nation only as rotten cretins; who, on principle, see meadows blue, skies green, clouds sulphur yellow… here there are only two possibilities: Either those so-called “artists” really see things this way and therefore believe in what they depict; then we would have to examine their eyesight-deformation to see if it is the product of a mechanical failure or of inheritance. In the first case, these unfortunates can only be pitied.”[303]

Hitler hinted here at nystagmus, or trembling of the eyeball, which can also be found in the works of Nordau.  Whether he raised this issue ironically or not, he did not immediately reject it.  The other possibility, however, was that the artists were deforming reality for other reasons;  this was a different sort of problem. “If, on the other hand, they themselves do not believe in the reality of such impressions but try to harass the nation with this humbug for other reasons, then such an attempt falls within the jurisdiction of the penal law.”[304]

The arguments within the National-Socialist Party over Expressionism and its place in the Nazi revolution and over the image of the alternative volkish art may well have led Hitler to express even clearer stands than he had previously taken.  The result was not just a radicalization of style but also the mentioning of specific avant-garde movements. “Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism,[305] Impressionism. etc., have nothing to do with our German people. For these concepts are neither old nor modern, but are only the artifactitious  stammerings of men to whom God has denied the grace of truly artistic talent, and in its place has awarded them the gift of jabbering or deception.”[306]

 

The Weimar Republic as the Herald of Kulturbolshewismus

 

Hitler saw the height of degeneration and the corruption of the German people as occurring during the Weimar Republic.  While he was aware of foreign influences from the end of the nineteenth century onward, he saw the process of rot which led to the destruction of the cultural foundations of German society as strengthening in an unprecedented manner after World War I.  In his severe criticism of the democratic system in the Weimar Republic he indicated that the greatest danger of that government stemmed from “cultural Bolshevism”.[307] 

Eckhart used the term “cultural Bolshevism” during Hitler’s Munich years to describe anything threatening the German people and foreign to Europe, that is, anything created by Communists or Jews. Though he did not invent it, Hitler made great use of this expression to connect between modernism and the political threat of Communism. Grosshans has stated that “cultural Bolshevism did become a cliche and was used to describe anything offensive to personal taste, particularly in the area of aesthetics. It was applied to the impulse prompting anyone to paint a horse blue.…”[308]  Eckhart may have been referring here to Siegfried Wagner, who used the term to describe a Cubist production of The Flying Dutchman.[309]  Fischer-Defoy has emphasized that “this vaguely defined, and therefore all-embracing, slogan was used as a cultural equivalent to the term ‘Marxism’ in the field of politics to denote everything that could be identified with Systemzeit or the Weimar Republic.”[310]

For Hitler the use of cultural Bolshevism indicated an all-out attack on the radical left groups active in the Weimar Republic, or the “November criminals” as he called them, referring to the abortive November 1918 leftist revolution.  Hitler blamed these groups for dragging the German people toward an extreme Marxist ideology whose values were opposed to both German patriotism and German tradition.

Hitler was particularly vitriolic about the great amount of cultural activity these groups were active in.  In this context he attacked the mobilized cultural activities of the artists of the November Group[311] or DADA Berlin, whose political identification was clear;  many of these artists were also members of the German Communist Party.[312]  Hitler clearly showed that the passage from cultural degeneration, which was not yet identified with any political group, to the later political degeneration was accelerating during the Weimar Republic.  He emphasized the process of radicalization in his claim that in the Second Reich degeneration had been expressed as a gradual drop in the level of society.  “Even before the turn of the century an element began to intrude into our art which up to that time could be regarded as entirely foreign and unknown.”[313]  The beginning of the cultural collapse of Germany, which ultimately led to the production of Futurist and Cubist works, could already have been seen sixty years earlier (circa 1865).[314]

For Hitler, the process of spiritual degenerationstarted with the degeneration of art, and the degeneration of culture made political degenerationinevitable.  “The political collapse, which later became more visible, was culturally indicated.”  The establishment of political Bolshevism could not have happened if cultural groups had not paved the way.  “A process of destroying all culture, paving the way for a stultification of healthy artistic feeling:  the spiritual preparation of political Bolshevism.”[315]

The democratic system in the Weimar Republic only speeded up this process and made it more extreme.  “The Republic was founded to be a milk- cow for its founders – for the whole parliamentary gang.  It was never intended to be a state for the German people, but a feeding-ground, as pleasant and as rich a feeding-ground as possible.”[316]  By 1923 Hitler did not accept the distinction between art and politics and claimed unambiguously that “art Bolshevism is the only possible cultural form and spiritual expression of Bolshevism as a whole. Anyone to whom this seems strange need only to subject the art of the happily Bolshevized states to an examination, and, to his horror, he will be confronted by the morbid excrescences of insane and degenerate men, with which, since the turn of the century, we have become familiar under the collective concepts of cubism and dadaism, as the official and recognized art of those states.”[317]  For Hitler, culture was not derived from politics;  to a certain extent it came before social trends and even decided the content of politics.

The nature of Hitler’s attacks on the avant-garde and the distinction made between movements which were culturally degenerate and those also connected to political activity show that he was well aware of the characteristics of the various movements and even of the specific works done by the artists associated with them.  He tended to attack the avant-garde which dividing it into two sections.  Some movements reflected the general cultural degeneration of the age;  here he attacked the cosmopolitan tendencies of avant-garde movements such as Cubism or Futurism.  Other movements, such as Expressionism, had members who were connected to leftist political activity and thus increased the influence of cultural Bolshevism and created what Hitler called “mad subjectivism”.    Hitler emphasized the connection between the democratic order of the Weimar Republic and the increasing strength of cultural Bolshevism.  The sort of decline found in Weimar would not have been allowed sixty years earlier, for then an exhibition including Dadaist “experiments” would have resulted in the organizers being hauled off to an asylum.  The deterioration of the situation had been made possible because such artists were well regarded by artistic organizations and were found at their center.  “This plague could not appear at that time because neither would public opinion have tolerated it nor the state calmly looked on.”[318]

In a subtle attack on the Weimar Republic Hitler hinted that the democratic order which allowed social decay was responsible for the entrance of unwanted elements into society and for the wound created in the heart of the German people.  He stated that the leaders of the Republic had the authority and responsibility to prevent the development of a situation where people reached a state of spiritual madness.  “For on the day when this type of art really corresponded to the general view of things, one of the gravest transformations of humanity would have occurred:  the regressive development of the human mind would have begun and the end would be scarcely conceivable.”[319]  Germany had been in a state of advanced degeneration since the beginning of the twentieth century;  sooner or later, the result would be the destruction of German culture.  “Everywhere we encounter seeds which represent the beginnings of parasitic growths which must sooner or later be the ruin of our culture.”[320]“Our” people were also guilty of the spread of these diseases, as they should have prevented this disgracing of German culture.  They were the victims of the methods of Bolshevik artists;  the latter attacked anyone who came out against them, claiming that the former did not understand their works.  However, as Hitler saw it, there was no shame in not understanding the results of this spiritual rot.[321]

The main points of Hitler’s politics of culture developed prior to 1933.  For example, the term, “November criminals” appears in a speech given in Munich on September 12, 1923 where Hitlerhinted at the fate awaiting his political rivals.  “Never can any of the ‘November criminals’ represent Germany before the world!”[322]  Even so, the more extreme terminology used in the years after 1933 can be seen in references to the mobilized artists of the left as “November criminals”.  In a September 11, 1935 speech, Hitler stated that “we see all the activities of the leaders of the cultural activities [of the Weimar Republic] as criminal.  If we were to enter into a public debate with these people it would end with them being sent to an insane asylum or to jail, because they believed in their delusions as internal delusions or offered their perverse delusions as an existing trend in time.”[323]

 

Wagner’s Legacy: The Jew as Destroyer of Culture

 

Historians do not agree at what stage Hitler developed his antisemitic views, but they do generally agree that he was a product of the “cultural racism” school.[324]  Evans has stated that “Hitler absorbed his antisemitism in Vienna before 1914 and not in Munich after 1918.”[325]  On the other hand, Jäckel has claimed that there is no direct evidence for the development of an antisemitic worldview before the beginning of the 1920s, and that only then “Hitler now made his anti-Semitism the center of both his personal and his political career.”[326]  Kershaw has made a similar claim and does not offer a specific period when Hitler’s antisemitism became an obsession and a mania.[327]

          Hitler himself stated that during his years in Vienna “I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite”.[328]  During his years there he was exposed to The Hand-book on the Jewish Question by the antisemitic propagandist Theodor Fritsch;  he later read August Rohling’s The Jews of the Talmud and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  In addition, his connections with Eckhart and Rosenberg after World War I undoubtedly added to the development of his racist-antisemitic views.[329]

          Hitler gave the Jews a special role in his politics of culture;  he saw them as the main factor hastening the degeneration of the German people.  His writings and speeches show a mixture of antisemitism and racism and are characterized by an unusual degree of radicalization in comparison to the early days of his political activity.  The Jews are presented as an element foreign to the Aryan race;  they are accused of subversion and misleading the German people.  Given the many roles ascribed to the Jews, this section will focus mainly on the way in which Hitler saw the Jews as contributing to the degeneration of German culture.

          Hitler emphasized the existence of “true human communities”, each of which produced its own special culture.  The cultural desires of such communities were expressed in language, religion, ethnic connections, education, and historical memories.  The racial difference between the communities was the basis for the creation of culture, and the various human races could be ranked according to their ability to create culture.  Hitler saw them as divided into three main categories:  “the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture”.[330]  Races such as the Asian or the black, who were not capable of producing culture, were the bearers of culture, though they could do so only for short periods of time.  The Jew was of course the destroyer of culture.  Hitler believed that only the Aryan was truly capable of creating a total culture, and therefore “it shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of the lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people.”[331]

          The Jew as the destroyer of culture was the main contributor to increasing all of the various kinds of degeneration.  His control of world capital and lack of any special cultural criteria made him the natural representative and promoter of internationalist ideas and therefore he pushed forward everything rotten in the modern era.  However, the degeneration of German culture was not solely their responsibility;  the artists also played a role, as did art dealers, exhibition organizers, and the art critics who received a significant amount of space in German newspapers and magazines.  Hitler lumped all of these groups together and emphasized the dominant role Jews played there, even though he had no factual basis for his claim.[332]  He claimed that Jewish control of the cultural elite of the Weimar Republic was not a function of intellectual power but stemmed instead from Jewish control of world capital, which allowed them to dictate to others their subjective tastes.

          Hitler took his extreme antisemitism from many sources, but it seems that the works of Richard Wagner were particularly important here.[333]  Not only did Hitler express ideas similar to those of Wagner, he even used the same words Wagner used in his writings. Köhler has studied this question in detail and has come to the conclusion that Hitler quoted Wagner and followed his ideological, intellectual, and cultural worldview carefully.[334]

          Wagner’s essay “Judaism in Music”, published anonymously in 1850, serves as an example. In 1957 Snyder compared expressions used by Wagner and Hitler and came to the conclusion that there was a great degree of similarity between them.[335]  The influence of the antisemitic works written by Wagner can be seen in almost every speech on culture Hitler gave.

          One of the most virulent antisemitic attacks can be found in an early speech entitled “Why are we antisemites?”, given on August 13, 1920 in one of the beer halls of Munich.  Here for the first time Hitler created the parallel between the Jews and the destruction of German culture.  “The last means he [the Jew] uses is the destruction of general culture….  Here his influence is the hardest to trace, but here he has the most horrible influence.”[336]  Hitler claimed that the Jews had a number of tools which they used in destroying German culture;  the most important was their control of world capital.  The control of capital allowed them to express their opinions in the press and to dictate tastes.  “Today it is no coincidence.  Those who the main papers do not support, and that is of course Jewish and only Jewish, and the capital of the big city which again is Jewish, will never find their way to the masses.”[337]

          Hitler suggested a solution for this problem:  the purification of the press.  Such a process of purification through destruction has been suggested by Wagner. “But bethink ye, that only one thing can redeem you from the burden of your curse: the redemption of Ahasverus: Going under (Der Untergang)!”[338]  In a 1920 speechHitler explained that “we must especially demand to fight against the press.  We must make it clear that a newspaper which appears in the German language will be supported only by German money.  Foreign and Jewish money will not be accepted….  In this way the flood of lies and cheating will disappear.  The press which calls itself ‘the educator of the people’ is twisted and stupid.  It must be liberated from the way it allows itself to misuse art, painting, theater, and film.  A thorough cleaning is needed here.”[339]  The thorough purging of the press was needed because the people were being poisoned by “the complete Judification of German science, art, music, and literature.  Our masses are being stupefied.  They are being disconnected from their moral stands and poisoned.”[340]

          Hitler’s belief that Jewish control of world capital allowed them to dictate taste in cultural activities is another example of the influence of Wagner.  Wagner explicitly stated that “according to the present constitution of this world the Jew in truth is already more than emancipated; he rules, and will rule as long as Money remains power before which all our doings and our dealings lose their force.”[341]  There is no doubt that this opinion appears in the works of many antisemites, and therefore raises questions about the sole influence of Wagner on Hitler.  However, the close fit of the two can also be seen in other statements by Wagner, such as the inability of the Jew to develop an original culture.  Hitler cited Wagner’s arguments almost word for word.  Wagner stated that “The Jew… is innately incapable of enouncing himself to us artistically through either his outward appearance or his speech, and least of all through his singing”.[342]  “The Jews’ sense of beholding has never been of such a kind as to let plastic artists arise among them.”[343] “The Jew has never had an Art of his own.”[344]

          Similar statements appeared repeatedly in Hitler’s speeches from 1920 onward.[345]  For example, Hitler stated that “Niemals hat der Jude eine eigene Kunst besessen”,[346] while Wagner wrote “Der Jude hat nie eine Kunst gehabt”.[347]  Hitler, like Wagner and Herder before him, connected the explanation for the fact that the Jews were incapable of creating culture to the fact that they did not have a living language.  Wagner explained that “the general circumstance that the Jew talks the modern European languages merely as learnt, and not as mother tongues, must necessarily debar him from all capability of therein expressing himself idiomatically, independently, and conformably to his nature.”[348]  As a result “In this Speech, this Art, the Jew can only after-speak and after-patch – not truly make a poem of his words, an artwork of his doings.”[349]  Hitler used similar terms when he stated that “when he speaks French, he thinks Jewish, and while he turns out German verses, in his life only expresses the nature of his nationality.”[350]  He also accused the Jews of stealing and defacing the art of other peoples;  “the thing instantaneously turns into filth and excrement in his hands”.[351]

          The view of the Jew as defacing the Aryan race can also be found in both Wagner and Hitler.  Wagner explained that the Jew functioned as “the demon of a degenerate mankind”[352] and destroyed the body of the German people.  “It was impossible for an element entirely foreign to that living organism to take part in the formative stages of this life.  Only when the body’s inner death is manifest, do outside elements win the power of lodgment in it – yet merely to destroy it. Then indeed that body’s flesh dissolves into a swarming colony of insect-life.”[353]  These organic approaches where later developed by Hitler, who presented a more radical description emphasizing the sexual danger the Jew posed to the Aryan race.  “With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people.  With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate.”[354] (figure 9a)

          The influence of Wagner on Hitler was not limited to the written word;  the previous section showed the great influence Wagner’s music had on the young Hitler.  However, the influence went even beyond these;  Hitler saw Wagner as the high prophet of the German nation,[355] the greatest artist Germany had ever known.  His works were the peak of Aryan culture and should be seen as a model for emulation.[356]

          An examination of the way in which the Wagnerian tradition was absorbed into the Third Reich and the relations between Hitler and the Wagner family in Bayreuth supports these claims.  Hitler seems to have been obsessive about everything having to do with Wagner;  the latter had far more influence on Hitler in matters of culture than any other figure.  From the 1920s on, Hitler found supporters in Bayreuth.  The Bayreuth Circle was at that time going through “a process of political radicalization that left most of its members outspoken champions of the Nazi movement.”[357]  The Bayreuth branch of the National-Socialist Party opened in 1921, and Hitler came close to the Bayreuth Circle through the Wagner family, especially Cosima (the widow of the composer), Winfried (the wife of his son Siegfried), and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (the husband of his daughter Eva).

          The germanophilic Chamberlain[358] met Hitler for the first time on October 6, 1923.  Years later Hitler boasted of the letter he received from Chamberlain after the meeting.  “You are not at all, as people have said, a fanatic.  On the contrary, you are exactly the opposite….You warm the heart, you have goals to achieve and they require violence, and still, even though you are a strong man, you are not a man of destruction.  You distinguish, like Goethe, between different kinds of violence.  There is the violence arising from chaos and leading back to chaos and there is the violence meant to design the cosmos….  This kind of violence which shapes the cosmos comes to my mind when I place you in the category of violent people.”[359]

          Winfried Wagner joined the National-Socialist Party in the early 1920s and was one of the organizers of Hitler’s visit to Bayreuth in 1923.[360]  After the failed putsch she published an open letter of support for Hitler where she explained, among other things, that “for a few years we [Siegfried and Winfried] have been following with the greatest sympathy the constructive work of Adolf Hitler – this German man so filled with patriotism, so prepared  to sacrifice himself for the ideal of an enlightened unified Greater Germany.…”[361]  When Hitler was interned in Landsberg Prison in 1924 Winfried did everything in her power to help him.  Hitler wrote to Siegfried from prison and thanked him for helping the Goerings and for putting them up in a hotel in Venice for a whole year at his expense.  Large has emphasized that during the early 1920s an alliance was established between “politicized art and ‘artistic politics’”, and has explained that those who continued Wagner’s way in Bayreuth focused less on his music and more on his antisemitic writings.[362]

          After 1933 the personality cult of Wagner received even greater support.  As Fuehrer Hitler mentioned Wagner and his works in almost every one of his speeches on culture.[363]  He repeatedly visited the annual festival in Bayreuth, and even invited his childhood friend and fellow Wagner admirer August Kubizek, who later described the visit as “the most blissful hours of my earthly existence”.[364]  Hitler celebrated his birthdays listening to the operas of Wagner.  On his forty-fourth birthday (in 1933) he heard the Ring cycle;  he particularly liked being compared to Siegfried, one of the heroes of Wagner’s mythological opera dealing with the history of Germany.  Albert Speer presented in his memoirs an incident which made Hitler utterly furious;  he attended a festive performance of Die Meistersinger at the Salzburg opera house, but found that the house was almost completely empty.[365]

          The music of Wagner was meant to help with the nationalization of the masses and was not played just for the members of the Party.  Hitler used Wagner’s operas during the “Days of German Art” and starting in 1934 he established “Wagner Day” in memory of the composer.  On Wagner’s 135^th birthday he ordered the establishment of a research institute in Wagner’s name in Bayreuth.[366]  Wagner was the prophet, as Köhler has put it, and therefore even in his bunker at the very end of the war Hitler was not willing to be separated from a collection of manuscript scores by Wagner he had been given for his 39^th birthday.[367]

It seems that Hitler described his feelings for the music of Wagner better than anyone else.  “When I hear Wagner, it seems to me that I hear rhythms of a bygone world.  I imagine to myself that one day science will discover, in the waves set in motion by the Rheingold, secret mutual relations concerned with the order of the world.”[368]

 

Jews and Bolsheviks Conspiring to Destroy German Civilization

 

                In the years before the seizure of power Hitler gave significant attention to the situation of German culture and the reasons for its decline, but he did not usually ascribe conspiracies to the Jews or the representatives of cultural Bolshevism.  Only two of his early speeches contain hints at this sort of conspiracy.  In 1922 he claimed that  “the Jew is only the destroyer of culture (Kulturzerstörer)… he destroys the art of the people in order to destroy the nation.”[369]  In 1928 he developed this argument in a speech entitled “National

Socialism and the Politics of Art”.  Here he claimed that “just as he [the Jew] is destructive on the political level, he operates as the liquidator of art.”[370]

               Apart from these two instances, Hitler did not indicate that the Jews and the cultural Bolshevists were intentionally acting to hurt the German people.  This sort of claim appeared systematically only after 1933, as part of the more extreme terminology Hitler then used.  Hitler added the elite and the bourgeoisie as members of the conspiracy because their reliance on the democratic order of the Weimar Republic had led to the destruction of German culture. 

After 1933 Hitler’s speeches made a clear distinction between several varieties of degeneration.  He distinguished between those who were led to madness and extreme subjectivism by the modern era but whose actions were lacking in willful malice, and the Jews and Bolsheviks who used modern art as a tool in the destruction of the German people.  For example, in a speech given in Nuremberg in 1935 he suggested a distinction between “degenerate” individuals suffering from a twisted imagination and therefore unconsciously destroying art, “they really believed that these creations of a diseased imagination represent their own inner experiences”, and others who degenerated German society as part of a  Jewish-Bolshevist conspiracy in the art world.“Jewish-Bolshevist littérateurs who see in such a ‘cultural activity’ an effective means for producing uncertainty and instability amongst civilized nations and in fact use it for that purpose.”[371]

          The deepening of the different kinds of degeneration and their consequences had not been understood by most people because “Judaism had taken possession of those means and institutions of communication which form, and thus finally rule over public opinion. Judaism was very clever indeed, especially in employing its position in the press with the help of so-called art criticism and succeeding not only in confusing the natural concepts about the nature and scope of art as well as its goals, but above all in the undermining and destroying the general wholesome feeling in this domain.”[372]

          The Jews were accused of turning art into a universal international experience;  they prevented, or, as Hitler put it, “killed all possibility of understanding the integral relations [of art] with each ethnic group”.[373]  This point clearly supports Gilman’s claim that the view of the avant-garde as controlled by Jews was to a certain extent made necessary by the status as foreigners shared by the Jew and the avant-garde artist.[374]

          In the attack on modern art Hitler made use of nationalist and racist arguments;  he completely rejected movements such as DADA, claiming that they aimed at establishing a unified and international artistic language, as could be seen in their Berlin and Zurich branches.  Their artistic internationalism disconnected art from the people and prevented the necessary connection between them.  The quick changes within these movements and their feeling that there was a lack of time led to a situation in which the art of races was exchanged for an art of times.  In this way the general term “modern art” was created;  it was meant to replace German, French, or Chinese art.  “Every year something new.  One day Impressionism, then Futurism, Cubism, maybe even Dadaism, etc.”[375]

          In the framework of this same distinction Hitler explained that the erection of the House of German Art[376] was not meant to serve “any international art of the year 1937, ’40, ’50, or ’60.  For art is not founded on time, but only on peoples (Völker).”[377]  The international language of art was developed by the Jews, who did not make do with injecting the bacteria of cultural degeneration into German society, but were also accused of subordinating German art.  “In Germany the filthy Jews have succeeded in condemning nearly everything that was healthy in art as junk and trash.”[378]  The Jews had belittled and mocked the achievements of great artists such as Makart, whom they had attacked claiming that he was insane.  At the same time, they had advanced the works of true madmen.

          Hitler suggested fighting the attempts of the Jews to describe Nazism as the decline of German culture.  Their control of the international press allowed them to criticize and attack the Third Reich on the cultural plane.  “Here they attempt, by a constant appeal to the sentimentality… of the world-citizens of democracy to bewail the downfall of German culture….  And although the Jewish-democratic press magnates in their effrontery even today seek brazenly to turn these facts upside down, we know that the cultural achievements of Germany will in a few years have won the world’s respect and appreciation….”[379]  The Jewish control of capital also dictated the fate of art collectors, including Hitler himself. “In the years 1890 to 1900, one could still form great collections. After that, it became practically impossible to lay one’s hand on the truly great works. The Jews mounted guard and monopolized the lot. If I’d had money sooner I’d have been able to keep in Germany a number of works that have emigrated.”[380]  The personal tone Hitler used here clearly shows his personal involvement in the subject.

          Hitler accused both the bourgeoisie and the general public, which had shown little interest in art, of abandoning art to the Jews.  This abandonment had allowed them even more control over German culture.  “The Jew was able to say to himself: ‘These Germans, who accept perverse pictures of crucified Christ, are capable of swallowing other horrors, too, if one can persuade them that these horrors are beautiful!’”[381]

          A political-cultural constellation had been created in the Weimar Republic which was influenced by a number of factors;  in the end this decided the fate of German civilization.  The connection between Jewish control, German elites who had not fulfilled their duties, hypocritical art critics, and professors who had sold out led to the introduction of modern art and the destruction of culture.  “It’s striking to observe that in 1910 our artistic level was still extraordinarily high. Since that time, alas! Our decadence has merely become accentuated. In the field of painting, for example, it’s enough to recall the lamentable daubs that people have tried to foist, in the name of art, on the German people. This was quite especially the case during the Weimar Republic, and that clearly demonstrated the disastrous influence of the Jews in the matters of art… with the help of phony art critics, and with one Jew bidding against another, they finally suggested to the people – which naturally believes everything that’s printed – a conception of art according to which the worst rubbish in painting became the expression of the height of artistic accomplishment.”[382]

          The elite were supposed to keep guard, but they had not carried out their duties.  “Despite their pretensions on the intellectual level, [they had] let themselves be diddled, and swallowed all the humbug.”[383]  The art academies came in for similar criticism.  They had “played the game”, and “it’s a pity that the Academy is not up to this task, and that its members played amongst themselves the game of you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll- scratch-yours.”[384]

          The academies of art were a constant target of criticism by Nazi ideologues, but Hitler seems to have gone beyond the “objective” here and perhaps expressed his personal frustrations.  His “Table Talks” from the early 1940s include many such attacks.  In one case he explained that “in a general way, the academies have nothing to tell me that’s worth listening to.  In fact, the professors who are active there are either failures, or else artists of talent (but who cannot devote more than two hours a day to their teaching), or else weary old men who therefore have nothing more to give.”[385]

          These attacks on professors of art must of course be seen in the context of Hitler’s own failures in the field.  The personal angle is clear both from the frequency with which the topic arises and the anger in Hitler’s words.  “Most of the academy professors lack both the insight and the judgment necessary to bring real talent to the fore….  Even in my exhibition in the House of German Art they always try to gain acceptance for the daubs of their own protégés.”[386]

          The professors of art were not alone.  Hitler also attacked the politicians of the Second Reich who had abandoned art.  “The Second Reich was so exclusively concerned with the state and political affairs that its leaders never gained any contact with or personal knowledge of the contemporary artists.”[387]  Hidden within his criticism of the politicians is Hitler’s position on the unique role he saw for himself as a leader familiar with art and therefore capable of expressing clear views on contemporary art.

               The description of the political-cultural constellation of the Weimar Republic provided Hitler with the context for a discussion of principles which, had they been implemented by the Second Reich, would have prevented the decline, rot, and degeneration of German society.  Control of the masses for the good of the Party, together with control of the elite, the academies, and the artists, are only some of the operative conclusions considered in the next section.

 

Art and Politics in a Dictatorship

 

 

          Hitler’s biography raises two questions about issues of art and politics.  The first deals with the place of culture and aesthetics in Hitler’s worldview after 1933.  Did his entrance into politics and his position as leader of the National-Socialist Party lead to changes in the way he looked at different phenomena, or did the ideas on which hispolitics of culture was built, and which he had acquired by the 1920s, remain the guidelines for his political activities?  The second question deals with the image of Hitler as an artist in politics, as he believed that a worthy politics demanded an artistic soul and that worthy art was not detached from the political scene.

          A minority of researchers have emphasized the importance of art in understanding Hitler’s worldview.  Grosshans has claimed that “Hitler was a notable political figure in modern European history. He was influenced by military, strategic, and economic considerations. But he was also, perhaps uniquely in the twentieth century, an artist in politics. He saw art and politics as reflections of one another and was convinced that what he thought of as a healthy and vigorous politics must be accompanied by an equally healthy and vigorous art.”[388]  Craig has made a similar claim resting on an article by Thomas Mann.  “He [Hitler] had always regarded himself as an artist rather than a politician, and Thomas Mann once wrote an essay called ‘Brother Hitler’ in which he argued that he was not mistaken in doing so.”[389]

          I agree with these views;  in this section I will therefore concentrate on Hitler’s views on the relations between art and politics in a dictatorship.  His statements indicate that, following the spirit of the philosophical tradition he had accepted, he did not see any basis for a distinction between art and politics.His views were of course connected to his personal goals, as can clearly be seen in a statement made on the eve of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1942.  This clear and detailed statement shows not only his personal intervention, but mainly the way in which he saw political life and the uniqueness of the world of art.  “It’s against my own inclinations that I devoted myself to politics. I don’t see anything in politics, anyway, but a means to an end. Some people suppose it would  deeply grieve me to give up the activity that occupies me at this moment. They are deeply mistaken, for the finest day of my life will be that on which I leave politics behind me, with its grief and torments. When the war’s over, and I have the sense of having accomplished my duties, I shall retire.… Wars pass by. The only things that exist are the works of human genius. This is the explanation of my love of art. Music and architecture – is it not in these disciplines that we find recorded the path of humanity’s ascent?”[390]

          The roots of the supposedly nostalgic opinion which Hitler expresses here lie years before 1942.  Even if he never said it explicitly, there are many earlier hints that he saw artistic praxis as having priority over the political.  In 1920 at a Party congress in Munich he emphasized the need for the two to exist side by side.  “We know today that there are reciprocal relations between state, people, culture, art, and work and that it is madness to think that one can exist without being dependent on the others.”[391]  Here Hitler added his criticism of the view which saw art as international;  he emphasized instead its connection to national politics.  “It [art] is actually necessarily dependent on the state.  Art flourishes most where great political development has given it the possibility.”[392]  Hitler used the case of Ancient Greece as an example, and explained that the art there “reached the highest stage” when the young Athens defeated the Persian army.  Only then, he claimed, did they start to build the Acropolis.[393]

          Hitler believed that true art necessarily reflected the people to which it was connected, and therefore art could not be international.  In 1923 he stated that “every great thing is national:  Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, as great musicians created German music rooted in the essence of the German spirit (deutscher Geist) and the German way.  They could not do otherwise because they were German and therefore their art was German.  The same is true of German sculptors, painters, and architects.”[394]  Hitler saw art as the force which was best able to reflect the nation.  “One must be happy when the people recognize as least some of the greatest stars in the sky of its art….  The great spirits of a people are the unifying element that connects people….”[395]  He added that the people know and are proud of the fact that all of the products of art are “national property belonging to everyone”.[396]

          In the years after the seizure of power Hitler acted to strengthen the connections between art and politics when he claimed that any political change must be accompanied by a parallel change in culture.  “The rebuilding of our people is the mission of the current period in our lives.  We think not only about a sick economy but also about a culture which throws itself away…. One can imagine the regrowth of the German people only if German culture and particularly German art will rise anew.”[397]

          The use of the term politics of culture is justified in the present case because of Hitler’s belief that political and cultural means could not be separated.  He expressed several versions of this idea in his speeches.  “This country will not have strength without culture nor power without beauty”,[398] and therefore “the role of cultural politics is exactly like that of general politics, the leadership to new achievements, in this case cultural!”[399]

          The connections between changes on the political level and those in art are described in detail in a speech entitled “Art and Politics” given at the seventh National-Socialist Party Congress in Nuremberg.  Hitler tended to choose questions of culture and art for such occasions;  the titles he chose for his speeches reflected their contents.[400]  In the Nuremberg speech he argued with and subtly answered the claims that it was seemingly possible to put off the revolution in art for a number of years.  “There are those who criticize our deeds with the question ‘isn’t art a luxury of the few?…  Why are you dealing now with raising public consciousness of art?’”[401]  His answer to the questions combined two levels of consideration characteristic of his worldview on issues of culture and art.  On the one hand, he clearly saw his ideas as reflected in art;  he rejected claims minimizing the roles of art and describing it only as a tool for increasing the legitimacy of the regime.  On the other hand, as the continuation of the speech shows, he did not mean to give up on the potential found in the mobilization of art.  He completely rejected the criticisms pointed at him and explained that “if the cultural activities of a people are put off for a certain period the necessary result is general withdrawal in the entire cultural field and this sort of process will end in a general rot….  No era can put off the encouragement of art.”[402]

          Hitler saw art as the most efficient tool in the hands of the new regime for two reasons. “It [art] can achieve clear, great, and unnoticed influence on the masses of people”[403] and therefore “art is the most effective tool compared to any other means which can be implemented for the purpose of bringing to the consciousness of people the truth that their political and individual suffering is only temporary, while the creative forces and the greatness of the people are immortal.”[404]  For Hitler art and culture supplied an indication of the level of society, yet beyond this they were also to serve as tools for its rebuilding.

          Hitler’s politics of culture can therefore be characterized as a blurring  between the tools of art and those of politics.  People would not feel that their situation in other areas had been corrected if culture and aesthetics were not corrected at the same time;  in this case, degeneration could even rear its ugly head again. As an artist in politics his views on this topic were sophisticated and well developed in comparison to other Nazi leaders.

          The Nazi aesthetic program was already prepared in detail several years before 1933.  In this sense art can serve as an example of the degree of planning the Nazis had achieved even before the seizure of power.  Various discussions, such as those on the question of the image of art in a National-Socialist nation, show that the Nazi ideology of culture was even starting to take on form at the end of the 1920s.

          A discussion of the works of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, and especially those of Hitler, shows that their idealist view of art led to the development of a detailed plan of action indicating the likely fate of modern art if the Nazis were ever to seize power.  In this sense the discussion of art is a clear example of the existence of an alternative worldview;  it has led me to reject the positions of historians claiming that the Nazis acted mostly out of rejection of the existing order.  These views emphasize that “the Nazis probably never achieved a fully rounded and developed ideology at all”, and that Hitler was probably the only Nazi with a worldview;[405]  they tend to describe Nazi policy as opportunism and a function of political considerations.

          The main claim of this section is that Hitler, who before 1933 was aware of the limitations on National Socialism stemming from its position in the opposition, diligently developed a worldview for the Party; culture and art as an alternative to the existing order and an expression of race theory are found at the center of this worldview.  It is important here to distinguish between the ideologue and the politician.  “The theoretician of a movement must lay down its goal, the politician strive for its fulfillment. The thinking of the one, therefore, will be determined by eternal truth, the actions of the other more by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the absolute abstract soundness of his idea, that of the other in his correct attitude toward the given facts and their advantageous application….”[406]

          The almost ideal symbiosis which Hitler described could not be put into action until the Nazis had seized power, but even then Hitler emphasized that although the missions of the ideologue and the statesman were completely different, there were rare instances in which the two appeared as the same person.  The Fuehrer, the one who would combine the political ployand the principle, was the ideal figure to achieve the desired politics of culture because his worldview ensured that he would not turn into a resident of far realms of thought or a politician for whom political tricks had gone from means to ends.  Hitler’s speeches from the beginning of the 1920s onward show that he was aware that he was the one dictating the Party line.

          Hitler preached for a dictatorial approach to art characterized by complete control and closure.  In a speech at a Party meeting Hitler detailed the obligations of the Nazi Party to its voters if ever elected to govern.  Among other points, he stated that “in our state the press, art, and literature will not be free but servants of the state [and will help] educate the people to honesty and sincerity”.[407]  Two months later Hitler repeated this demand.[408]

          In 1923 Hitler promised “reform in the sphere of art”,[409] but five years later he was more extreme;  he then promised purification.  “Our future role is the cleansing (Säuberung) of all of art from these tyrannical influences of criticism which have no connection at all to art.”[410]  If this part of the speech suggested that Hitler meant a limited purging of the art critics, he immediately stated that “art is the most national of issues.  We are therefore cleansing it of all influences which try to push it into an international course.”[411]  He added that “we will make sure that when fate gives us power in our fists we will use it not only for the technical-mechanical-external design of our lives but also for the internal education of man….  The time will then come to overcome the misery of today and the German people will again receive German art.”[412]

          For Hitler, one of the most bothersome phenomena apparent in Germany after 1933 was the opportunism of artists who had previously been identified with the liberal-democratic order of the Weimar Republic and then asked to take part in the development of mobilized art in the Third Reich.  Hitler warned against this phenomenon.  “The National-Socialist movement and the leadership of the state will not suffer, in the area of art, the talentless and magicians who have exchanged their flag and entered as if nothing happened into the new state in order once again to set the tone in the area of art and politics of culture.”[413]

Hitler stated that the priorities of the new regime were different from those of the previous government.  “This new nation will give completely different attention to the advancement of culture than did the old one.”[414]  One way in which the change in priorities was expressed was that the political leadership would always provide “the material and actual conditions for artistic activity”.[415]

After 1937, the year in which there was a fundamental change in the approach of the Nazi regime to modern art, Hitler mentioned the criticism which had been pointed at the regime.  “The limitation of the freedom of the artist which, just as in the political sphere, followed the National Socialist victory, was resented by many, was even felt to be a proof of the hostility to art of the new régime.”[416]However, Hitler quickly added that“in periods of rapid revolutionary development such assimilation needs to be ordered and guided from above. Those who are responsible for the shaping of peoples in the sphere of politics or Weltanschauung must endeavour to direct the people’s artistic forces….”[417]  The roles of the state in controlling art were clear;  they included the provision of the artistic framework and direction and the creation of the conditions in which the desired German art could flourish.  The next section focuses on the question of the image of the immortal art Hitler desired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to paint a Dictatorship? Hitler’s Volkish Alternative

 

 

          A general examination combining the writings and speeches of Hitler with the praxis of the Nazi regime provides a picture of what Herf has called “reactionary modernism”.  Herf has shown that Nazism included a mixture of modernist technological tools and a reactionary ideological basis.[418]  He has stated that the same mixture may be found in the case of Hitler himself, who was “the most important practitioner of the reactionary modernist tradition, the one who built the highways and then started the war that was to unify technology and the German soul.”[419]  However, I believe that Hitler had a more selective approach to modernism which can be defined as dependent on the conditions or as serving pragmatic needs;  it was not a main point in his worldview.

          Conrad thus seems to have proposed a more appropriate approach;  he has claimed that the use of technology did not indicate an acceptance, not even a selective one, of the values of modernism.  At the same time, the German dictatorship was characterized by a reactionary side desirous of the primitivization of German society. “Hitler retribalized Germany, turning it back into a primitive society of peasants and warriors. To achieve this regressive aim, however, he used the methods of modern engineering. The state he created, with his autobahns to expedite troop movements and its abattoirs and gas ovens, was ferociously efficient; but while carrying through his enforced modernization, he denounced and persecuted the infidel spirit of modernity.”[420]

          The question what image art would have in the new Reich was of great importance to Hitler.  His worldview combined the general and the specific, and the connections between past, present, and future;  his goal was to display the optimal amount which should be adopted in order to achieve the aesthetic ideal.  Hitler’s views on art do not fit with claims about reactionary modernism and a Nazi politics of culture characterized by reaction more than anything else.  The tradition of a conservative revolutionary spirit may have allowed Hitler to define modern techniques as those which did not need to clash with the desired aesthetics and culture.

          In a September 1,1933 speech Hitler displayed his complicated relations with modernism and revealed another part of this question.  “Modern techniques force man to look for his own ways.”[421]  This could be seen in the fact that man used new materials (the context here is architecture) such as steel, iron, glass, and concrete.  However, even though art took this dictate on itself, it did not justify the abandonment of the old values.  “Those who are only looking for the new for its own sake, it is easy to get tangled up in scribbles….”[422]  Hitler, who was aware of the conservatism of his views, also addressed the question whether an art of the new era could be created.  The vague answer appearing in a speech entitled “National Socialism and the Politics of Art” reflects the tension between old and new.  “We are not supposed to choke on an imitation of the old times, but we are supposed to give birth to something new.  However, the heads which can produce something new are extremely rare, only a few in the world know how to make  their people happy by doing new things in the field of art.”[423]

          These general statements emphasize the fact that Hitler was aware of possible criticism of the reactionary nature of the optimal culture he desired.  It would seem that technology fascinated Hitler only so far as it served his political needs.[424]  In all matters of culture Hitler was a conservative and believed that only a chosen few could make use of technology to create something new.  He thought that all of those who wanted to put aside the past without having succeeded in creating “something new” were endangering society. 

Friedländer has claimed that by definition Nazism looked backward “to an archaic lost world from before the Flood…. In the eyes of the Nazis the perfect future society was but a reflection of the past.”[425]  In the case of Hitler reactionary stands demanding full preservation of past order are quite evident.  “It is not surprising that every political-historical era looks to its art for a bridge to a no less heroic past….  It is childish to avoid the classical forms invented by our ancestors and to avoid the artistic creative power, just as it is foolish to reject conclusions and experiences in life just because previous generation already found these truths.”[426]

          It is thus clear why Hitler claimed that the study of history was quite important and saw it as a way of providing appropriate training for political action.  In his Second Book he even warned against the result of the tendency of peoples to ignore their history.  “It is sometimes terrible to see how little man learns from history, how, in idiotic indifference, he rejects the experience [of his people]….  He sins and does not think how sins such as his led many peoples and nations to extinction from this earth.”[427]  Hitler claimed that anyone who could not learn lessons for the present from history “must not conceive of himself as a political leader.”[428]

          Hitler listed the political advantages in using examples from the past. “Not only artistic considerations but also political ones must force us to turn our eyes to the great examples of the past and to take from them inspiration and direction for our efforts to design an artistic example which will significantly express the spirit of the Third Reich.”[429]  The question thus becomes what Hitler saw as “great examples of the past”.  Part of the answer can be found in Hitler’s discussions of part art, where he referred to two particular periods:  the classic art of Ancient Greece and German Romanticism.

 

Classicism: The Optimal Past

 

          The superiority of ancient Greek culture and the fact that it was to provide a model for emulation in the Third Reich are mentioned a number of times in Hitler’s speeches.  “When we are asked about our origins, we must always point to the ancient Greeks.”[430]  Hitler thus saw ancient Greece, which he believed to have been racially Nordic, as one source of the founding races of the Germans. Sparta in particular was admired by Hitler because he saw it as the clearest historical example of a racially-based state.  He stated that “the rule of 6000 Spartans over 350,000 Hellenes was only possible because of the high racial values of the Spartans.  It was the result of the systematic preservation of the race, and therefore Sparta must be seen as the first volkish state.”[431]

          The admiration of Sparta and its government was connected to an admiration of classic Greek art so great that it sometimes almost reached the point of dismissing German art.  In a conversation with Otto Strasser Hitler stated that “there is only one eternal art – the Greek-Nordic art, and all such terms as ‘Dutch Art’, ‘Italian Art, ‘German Art’ are merely misleading and just as foolish as it is to treat Gothic as an individual form of art – all that is simply Nordic-Greek art and anything which deserves the name of art can always only be Nordic-Greek….”[432]

          Neo-Classicism also fit Hitler’s view of history, as he saw the Dorians as the fathers of the Aryan race.  Speer later emphasized that Hitler appreciated the permanent qualities of the classical style all the more because he thought he had found certain points of relationship between the Dorians and his own Germanic world.[433]  The Neo-Classicist architecture of Troost, Hitler’s first architect, was quite favored by the Fuehrer for this reason, and for the same reason Hitler picked Speer to replace Troost after the latter’s death.[434]

Even though there is no direct evidence that Hitler was familiar with the writings of the Neo-Classicist Winckelmann,[435] Grosshans has stated that “as Johann Winckelmann in his 1763 History of Ancient Art…. So Hitler was convinced that the classical era had shown image and thought could be united, how material and spirit could be made one.”[436]  Hitler saw ancient Greece as a model for emulation because its culture had brought human cultural production to new heights.  He also admired the classical view of the citizen which demanded from him good physical condition and a readiness for physical activity.  On this point Hitler admitted to the influence of Ludwig  Jahn, who has been called “the father of the gymnasts”.  Jahn had explained the connection between good physical shape and the ability of a people to survive.  “To walk, to run, to jump, to throw, to carry are exercises which do not cost money.  They can be done anywhere, they are as free as air.  The state can demand them from everyone because they are needed by everyone.”[437]  Jahn claimed that the Greeks and Romans preserved their superior positions as leaders for so many years due to constant physical activity of this type.[438]

The organization which Jahn founded in Berlin in 1811 led Viereck to call him “the first stormtrooper”;  Jahn turned physical exercise into an ideology with military and patriotic goals.[439]  It was meant to prepare young Germans for war when it would break out. The organizations of patriotic students he organized in Vienna in 1815 followed his dictum that “the purer the people the better they are and the more they are racially mixed the more they are similar to groups of wandering dogs.”[440]   The student groups thus accepted members from different social classes, but not Jews or non-Germans.[441]

The influence of the cultural racism of Jahn can be seen in Mein Kampf. “The volkish state must proceed from the assumption that a man of little scientific education but physically healthy, with a good, firm character, imbued with the joy of determination and will-power, is more valuable for the national community than a clever weakling.”[442]  The rejection of Enlightenment values can be seen in Hitler’s emphasis that “a decayed body is not made the least more aesthetic by a brilliant mind”.  Greek culture should be emulated as an era in which genius and physical willingness were combined.  “What makes the Greek ideal of beauty a model is the wonderful combination of the most magnificent physical beauty with brilliant mind and noblest soul.”[443]

Jahn is mentioned in Hitler’s writings and speeches as a source of inspiration.  For example, in 1925 Hitler included him in a list of those who had understood “the need for an internal change in our people more than one hundred years ago”.[444]  Even though after 1933 Hitler carefully blurred the details of his biography and rarely mentioned the sources which had influenced him, the images taken from Jahn continued to surface, as in the speech at the opening of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.  “Humanity has never been closer to ancient times in its appearance and feelings than today.  Sports games, competition, and fighting harden (stählen) millions of youthful bodies and present them to us in an intense way that has not been seen for a thousand years.”[445]  Hitler emphasized that this ideal type must be placed at the focus of the new volkish aesthetics, and explicitly stated that a “type of beautiful and glamorous man” was being developed.[446]

 

 

 

Early Romanticism versus Late Romanticism

 

Hitler saw most of the members of the German Romantic movement as worthy models for emulation.  In his speeches he mentioned Fichte, Lagarde, and of course Wagner[447] as those who rightly felt the need of the German people for change.  He saw them as acting, through their ideas, to encourage German national sentiments.  “Our German Romantics of earlier times never thought at all about being old or modern…. They felt German and of course therefore always took into consideration the constant appraisal of their works according to the lifespan of the German people.”[448]

Hitler described the German Romantics as a movement stemming from the essence of the German people.  Mosse has emphasized this point, claiming that “Hitler builds upon the romantic tradition.  Through Nazi culture the parallel between man and nature will be drawn in this manner.  The masses of Aryans are as ‘genuine’ in their basic emotions as Nature herself.”[449]  The parallel between man and nature comes from the Romantic tradition, but became more extreme in Nazi ideology;  it became the nationalism of blood and soil.  “’Our Romanticism’, says Hitler, ‘has its origins in the intense appreciation of nature that is inherent in us Germans’.”[450]

The influence of the Romantic movement on Nazism is a complex issue reflecting scholars’ positions on the question of the German Sonderweg. Studying the attitudes of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, especially Hitler, on the Romantic movement leads to the conclusion that they were selective and chose components that seemed to strengthen their worldview. One such component was the Romantic craving “to find the same universal truth, but to experience reality in a way wholly his own. This was to be done not by reasoning but through feeling, sentiment, imagination, instinct, passion, dream and recollection”.[451]  Some Romantic ideas fascinated Hitler, such as their view of the relations between man and nature and the idea of the leader as an artist-genius.  The lack of consideration for the practical dimensions of political leadership and their replacement by a cultural vision sprang from the same tradition and suited Nazi needs.

The selective acceptance of parts of the Romantic tradition was reflected in Hitler’s tendency to overlook some Romantic painters. He was particularly attached to the artists of the Late Romantic, as opposed to earlier Romantic artists who had portrayed the dualism between flesh and spirit, instinct and reason and nature and ethics.[452] The revolutionary enthusiasm in the works of the latter, their yearning for distant lands, and their infinite longing were considered to be threats.  Romantic painters who chose to concentrate on the individual were not on Hitler’s list.  Thus, Caspar David Friedrich, probably the leading Early Romantic painter, is hardly ever  mentioned by Hitler as a model for emulation, perhaps because of his ambiguous view of the French Revolution;  though he rejected the political tradition of the revolution, some of its revolutionary enthusiasm can be felt in his works.  These sorts of depictions did not fit the Fuehrer’s worldview.

  Craig has correctly argued that Hitler admired Romantic escapism and the longings (Sehnsucht) the Romantics preached.[453] It is thus no coincidence that Ludwig Richter,[454] a Romantic painter, was held up by Hitler as an example of an artist whose works could only be understood by the people, someone who knew the German legends and folktales, and someone who knew the German landscape, especially the “Franconian mountains”.[455]

The saccharine themes painted by artists such as Richter, (figure 10) which has often served as illustrations for collections of folktales, depict family harmony in nature.  The parochial life of the German village as depicted by Richter was adopted by Hitler as a model that volkish German art should imitate.  Emmerich has argued that such themes helped strengthen the myth of German continuity.  “Folk art (read: peasant art) was held up as the ultimate image of blood and ancestral inheritance: it was transformed into a prophetess of imagined national and racial virtues. This process is clearly discernible, especially in the reevaluation of folk Märchen as the expression of our ancestors’ ‘world-view’, as an eternally valid racial-moral image”.[456] (figure 11)

Hitler’s politics of culture can thus be seen as a development of his admiration for these artists, an admiration which was reflected in his own art years before he became a political leader.  The Romantic painters were chosen for emulation because the themes portrayed in their works fit Hitler’s worldview.  Their interest in mythology, the community, and the family, the return to nature, and the values of blood and soil, together with their portrayals of life in the villages, provided the main points of his politics of culture.  The admiration which the Romantic painters had for the family, villagers, small craftsmen, peasant women, and the middle classes resulted in

these elements repeatedly appearing in Romantic art in a sentimental form often bordering on kitsch.  Mosse has called this style “sentimental realism”.[457]

Richter was not the only Romantic painter mentioned by Hitler;  others are also mentioned as examples of great German artists who worked for years to raise the status of German painting.  The earliest such reference is from a 1920 speech in Salzburg.  The painter is Moritz von Schwind,[458] who is mentioned together with Richter as a painter who painted what he felt;  unlike modern artists, the results were excellent.[459]  In Mein Kampf Hitler mentioned von Schwind and Böcklin[460] as “artists graced by God”.[461]  Böcklin’s works, mostly dating to the second half of the nineteenth century, reflect a subconscious world full of demons and monsters.  He combined German mythology and the provincial repertoire of the village, and depicted skulls, death, and burial.  Islands of death were added to the Romantic depiction of ruins.  The question of death worried Böcklin;  in Self-Portrait with Death the Fiddler (1872, figure 13) he pointed to death as his muse. The theme of the artist and death, which frequently appeared in Romanticism, had an appeal to Hitler.

Hitler’s great debt to the artists of the nineteenth century, as can be seen in his works of art and his worldview, continued to be expressed after 1933.  For example, in the speech at the opening of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung he explained that “when on the fateful 6^th June in 1931 the old Glaspalast burnt down in that horrible fire, an immortal treasure of such true German art went up in flames. They were called the Romantics, but in essence they were the most glorious representatives of those noble Germans in search of the true intrinsic virtue of our people.…”[462]

Another expression of Hitler’s debt to the Romantic movement was his plans to build art museums throughout the Reich;  their collections would be based on German art, especially Romantic and realistic works.  His plans for museums are fascinating because they can be used to follow his taste.  Hitler spent a great deal of time planning a museum for his hometown of Linz, and put a lot of effort into the plans of the building[463] and determining the contents of its exhibitions.  The museum was to include rooms for artists such as Böcklin, Trubner, Leibl, Feuerbach, Menzel, Makart, Grutzner, Defregger, von Schwind, Spitzweg, von Alt, and Waldmüller.[464]  Hitler gave explicit orders to provide unusually generous funding for the proposed museum.  Goebbels complained in his diary that “Linz costs us a lot of money.  But it means so much to the Fuehrer.”[465]

Petropoulos has described the systematic looting of the art world carried out by the Nazi leadership;[466]  it makes Hitler’s sudden “awareness” of the rules of good government more than a bit surprising.  Even so, Hitler repeatedly expressed his clear reservations that the works of art were not bought for his own private collection but for museums.  “I collected the paintings in the collections I have bought over the years, never for private purposes, but always exclusively for enlarging a gallery in my hometown of Linz on the Danube. It would be my most fervent wish for this legacy to be realized.”[467]  Hitler’s words indicate the obsession for collecting which drove him. Speer stated that Hitler’s collection in Obersalzburg included, among others, works by Spitzweg, Feuerbach, Panini, Titian, and Breker.[468]Grosshans has estimated that the sum spent on Hitler’s private collection was about 65 million dollars;  it was valued at about 400 million dollars at the end of the war.[469]  In his will Hitler left the entire collection to the National-Socialist Party, and if it no longer existed, to the state.[470]

The main source detailing Hitler’s views on specific Romantic artists can be found in the Table Talks from the early 1940s.  He devoted a great deal of these talks to discussions of painters;  among those mentioned are Makart, Leibl, Spitzweg, Defregger, Trubner,[471] Franz Hals,[472] Menzel,[473] and Richter.[474]  During a talk dated September 3, 1942, Hitler boasted that “I have the best collection of the works of Spitzweg in the world, and they are worth anything from sixty to eighty thousand marks each. I have also paid eighty thousand marks for a Defregger. From one point of view, that is a lot of money, but when one remembers that they were the sole pictures of an epoch which would otherwise have never been perpetuated pictorially, it is nothing.”[475] (figure 15)

The painter Hans Makart, designer of Wahnfried, Wagner’s home, was given as an example of a highly-talented artist whose tradition should be preserved. “I keenly regret that Makarat’s studio hasn’t been kept as it was in the artist’s lifetime. Respect for the venerable things that come to us from the past will one day benefit those who to-day are young. Nobody can imagine what Makart’s vogue was like.”[476] 

The artists of the Late Romantic influenced not only the contents, but also the style of Nazi art.  Volkish art did have different emphases, but Hitler himself indicated the themes he preferred and the specific artists he admired.  In this way he provided the artists of the Third Reich with a detailed program and models that they could imitate.

 

The Contents of Art and Leading Artists in the Third Reich

 

In addition to the discussion of the Nazi politics of culture, this section also considers the extent to which Hitler was aware of the gaps between the totalitarian ideal he was developing and the praxis of the regime, and the extent to which he was personally involved in implementing cultural policy in Nazi Germany.  General statements about preferred periods in history were not enough for Hitler;  his writings and speeches provided a detailed program for the roles of art and artists in the Third Reich.

The artistic program Hitler prepared provided a detailed explanation, a guide for the new artists who gradually appeared after the removal of the artists and artistic products of modern art.  The classification of modern art as degenerate created a vacuum, an anomaly which Hitler dealt with beyond the level of ideological terminology.  His detailed program was meant to answer the question of the image of Nazi art in the service of the regime, and Hitler therefore indicated the subjects and themes to be portrayed, the techniques to be used, and the ideological and ideal sources from which inspiration should be drawn.  The placement of his personal taste as the compulsory model did not end with the identification of optimal elements to be copied in Nazi art, but continued to the provision of detailed instructions, as the leader principle dictated.  In order to increase the validity of his claims Hitler added examples from his personal experiences as an artist and emphasized his own experience on every possible occasion.[477]

Given the enormous importance of race in the Nazi worldview, the most important mission for the Nazi artist was to provide visual descriptions of the Aryan race and its values.  This visualization of ideology characteristic of Nazism thus stemmed not only from Hitler’s awareness of the potential of the visual dimension to help establish ideology but mostly from the fact that his politics of culture echoed an idealist view stating that aesthetic representations could dictate the racial experience. 

Painting included all of these virtues, and Hitler emphasized in various speeches the necessity to represent the pure race in art.  For the same reason he added that the art would only be pure if the artists themselves remained pure.  The Aryan artist had to be particularly careful about racial mixing, as “every human society, all the products of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, they are almost all the products of the creativity of the Aryan.”[478]  The artist thus had a mission to fulfill;  he must enlist in expressing the sublime cultural values of his race and establishing its ideal standards.

Racial mixing damaged the creative capabilities of the Aryan race;  if the Aryan mixed with inferior races “gradually, more and more, he lost his cultural abilities.”[479]  This decline would lead art to deal with fields which were not in its realm.  “It is not the function of art to wallow in dirt for dirt’s sake, never its task to paint men only in a state of decomposition, to draw cretins as the symbol of motherhood, to picture hunch-backed idiots as representatives of manly strength.”[480]  Art must reflect race because “art cannot be separated from blood;  it is the expression of the mental feelings of the people.”[481]

In a speech in the Reichstag on March 23, 1933, Hitler detailed the subjects which were to inspire art.  “Heroism rises in desire as a designer of the future and a leader of political fate.  The goal of art is to express the power which defines an era.  Blood and race will again become the source of artistic inspiration.”[482]

The Aryan race and heroism were two main themes in Nazi art, but they were not the only ones the Nazi artist was to depict.  In tens of speeches Hitler also mentioned the family, the youth, the return to nature, the village, and a whole series of themes making up the Nazi worldview.  The program Hitler put together for the art of the people emphasized these themes in order to ensure the production of an eternal art, as opposed to contemporary art.  He did not believe that art could be the result of fashion.  The large number of modern art movements indicated their low level.  “Because true art is and will be eternal in its achievements, it does not operate under the authority of the laws of seasonal appreciation of its achievements like a tailor’s shop.  Its values are taken from eternal revelation stemming from the deepest essence of the people.”[483]

The international influences characteristic of modern art must be replaced by a nationalist tone.  “National-Socialist Germany, however, wants again a ‘German Art’ and this art shall and will be of eternal value, as are all truly creative values of a people.”[484]  German art therefore had to focus on depictions of the people.  “When I speak of German art…. I wish to see the German people, their essence, their lives, their sensations, their feelings as the criteria….”[485]  Hitler did not just specify that German artists must focus on depictions of the German people;  he even explained that “our men, our youths, our young ladies, our young girls, and our wives” must be depicted by the artist, “healthier and healthier and even so powerful and beautiful.”[486]

In addition to dictating the subjects German art was to focus on, Hitler also discussed the techniques which would ensure the optimal presentation.  This optimal presentation would be achieved if Germany would adopt “monumental artistic expression”.[487]  Speer later emphasized several times that Hitler preferred the monumental,[488]  and supported his claim by citing from a speech Hitler gave before construction workers at the beginning of 1939.  In this speech Hitler explained to his audience why the new Reich needed monumental architecture.  “Why always the biggest?  I do this to restore to each individual German his self-respect.  In a hundred areas I want to say to the individual:  We are not inferior, on the contrary, we are complete equals to every other nation.”[489]

Hitler opposed the tendency of modern art to destroy form and composition.  “We want to burn the phenomenon of deconstruction in literature, theater, and the press as expressed in all of our culture”.[490]  The replacement for the deconstruction and dismembering characteristic of modern art was to be stylistic unity, basically a return to realism.  He addressed the issue directly at the opening of the first Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.  “The most beautiful law which I can envisage for my people as the task set for its life in this world, a great German has already long ago put into words: ‘To be German is to be clear (Klar).’ This, moreover, implies that to be German means to be logical and also, above all, to be true.”[491]

This well-known statement by Hitler has been quoted incorrectly by historians as the only explicit instruction he ever gave about the style and contents of Nazi art.[492]  However, I have shown here that Hitler’s worldview onthe arts was far more developed and actually quite precise.  His desire that volkish art would have a realist style reflected his personal taste in art and cannot be reduced to claims that it was only needed in order to strengthen mobilization.  Price has stated that “Hitler’s fascination with the preference to realism of the 19^th century remained unshakable.  His typical landscapes, city scenes, and still lifes all clearly indicate how completely he was captivated by conventional forms of expressionism.”[493]

Toward the end of the 1930s Hitler was bothered by the slow rate at which volkish art was developing;  he saw the artist as one who must be mobilized to express the contents of ideology.  Hitler completely despised the autonomy of modern art and hoped to achieve a stylistic unity which would ensure the smallest possible range of interpretation for works of Nazi art.  The artist had a role to play and he was to be tested according to his ability to depict the details of life in the most realistic style possible.

In addition to Hitler’s involvement in detailing the content and style of volkish art, an involvement indicating the detailed nature of his politics of culture,  he was also personally and directly involved in the determination of artistic policy.  This interest can be seen in many ways and on many levels, and again shows the great importance which Hitler saw aesthetics as having in the Third Reich.  In his speech at the opening of the first Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung Hitler described his involvement in general terms. “National Socialism has made it its primary task to rid the German Reich, and thus, the German people and its life of all those influences which are fatal and ruinous to its existence. And although this purge cannot be accomplished in one day, I do not want to leave the shadow of the doubt as to the fact that sooner or later the hour of liquidation will strike those phenomena which have participated in this corruption.… From now on we will wage an unrelenting war of purification against the last elements of putrefaction in our culture….  I have always been determined – when fate will give me the power – we will not discuss these issues with anyone but will also make the decisions.”[494]

Hitler was also involved in various instances where Nazi art was judged;  he repeatedly checked whether his criteria were being fulfilled.  He was personally involved in the confiscation of works for the “Degenerate” Art exhibition of 1937 and even signed, together with Goebbels, a law retroactively legalizing these confiscations.[495]  He also ordered his personal photographer, Hoffmann, to conduct a first sorting of the pictures sent annually for inclusion in the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen.  Speer later stated that after this first sorting Hitler himself decided which pictures would be included;  he refused to accept any criticism of his unilateral choices.[496]

Hitler rejected pictures which did not fit his criteria.  “In ’37 I was already prepared to reach a clear decision in this area [even though it] could only happen after a great deal of intervention.”[497]  In an apologetic tone Hitler explained why a unique artistic style had not yet been created.  “The fact that the first years of the new Reich were not sufficient stems from the inability to give great historical activities their own great cultural expression.”[498]  For this reason, he was forced, together with the other judges of the exhibition, to reject some of the submitted works.  “We were forced to reject works which tried to place themselves in this service [of the state] because the power of design was unfortunately insufficient to portray the desired in a way which could stand the test of comparison to works of the past produced in the same spirit….”[499]  There were “a few works, some of them excellent”,[500] but most of the artists had not managed “to find the power which would fit the honor of such a great age.”[501]

In his speech at the opening of the third Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung in 1939 Hitler explained the background for his personal intervention.  The enormous number of works presented for judging indicated the serious way in which Nazi artists approached the dictates of the Reich, but still it seemed that there would be no choice but to make use of “stricter criteria”[502] before the next exhibitions.  In concluding Hitler stated that he hoped that “in the future a few truly talented artists would turn to the experiences, events, and the bases of the thought of the time which would supply them, from a material point of view, with the conditions for their work.”[503]

In various speeches Hitler mentioned the same “chosen ones” who succeeded, from the first years of the Reich, in creating art which truly reflected the goals of National Socialism.  Some artists were mentioned by name.  I will provide a few examples to indicate the depth of Hitler’s knowledge of the Nazi artists, and to show how the political leadership (especially Hitler) designed the main points and characteristics of Nazi art.

Hitler first met the architect Paul Troost in Munich in 1926, and a deep personal relationship developed between the two.  Heiden has stated that Hitler asked Troost to design “the brown house”, his eight-room Munich apartment, and even bought furniture Troost had personally designed for the apartment.[504]  Hitler later claimed that “through Troost, I first discovered what architecture is”.[505]  During the years the two worked on a number of projects and together designed most of the main buildings of the Party (including the House of German Art).  After Troost’s death in 1934 Hitler remained in touch with his widow.[506]  Hitler also placed a bouquet of flowers on the grave of Troost, the Nazi architect,[507] on each of the Days of German Art, held between 1937 and 1939, and mentioned the contribution of this “great artist” to the Third Reich.[508]  Speer later wrote about Hitler’s special relations with Troost and about the fact that after his death his neo-classical style became the characteristic style of Nazi architecture.[509]

After the death of Troost Speer received special attention from Hitler.[510]  Their closest connection was in January 1937 when Speer was appointed by Hitler to the position of “head master builder of the city of Berlin”.[511]  Speer, then 32 years old, was prepared to give up his professional independence and showed Hitler all his plans.  For the latter, who had an unending interest in the buildings built in Germany, these connections were a compensation for the past and an opportunity to rule on the aesthetic questions which so occupied him.  Speer described how, after the decision was made to build the new Chancellery in Berlin, (figure 16) he was given an open budget, but was asked to make a massive display of building and to finish as fast as possible.[512]  Finishing an enormous architectural project like the Chancellery was no small matter, and in order to stay on schedule he had to keep strict control over 4500 workers working two shifts a day.  The project did not just keep these men busy;  thousands of other workers throughout Germany were busy producing the various materials and elements used in the building.

Hitler emphasized that he was aware of the enormous difficulties Speer faced in designing a project the size of the new Chancellery, and always stated that he did so based on his personal experience.[513]  When Hitler realized that Speer would meet the deadline he expressed his appreciation of the architect, and at the opening of the Chancellery on January 9, 1939 Hitler described Speer’s activities as a “sublime achievement” in art; he explained that Speer was a “prodigy and great artist in building”.[514]

Speer became one of the few members of Hitler’s inner circle and one of those who could influence his personal taste.  He noted that after dinner in the Chancellery Hitler would push his guests to join him for a tour of the new building.  In his memoirs he cited Hitler at length.  “I stand here as the representative of the German people and when I receive someone in the Chancellery it is not the individual Adolf Hitler who receives him, but the leader of the German people.  Therefore, I do not receive him but German through me.  For this reason I want these rooms to fulfill their high mission….  This is the first architectonic creation of the great new German Reich.”[515]

The dominant architectural language of the Chancellery is neo- classical, but the materials used hint instead at modernism.  This duality did not reflect the views of Speer, who repeatedly stated that “technology is always opposed to mythology”.[516]  Even so, the Chancellery does indicate the limited extent to which the term reactionary modernism does apply to cultural creation in the Third Reich.  The tension between old and new was expressed to a greater extent in Nazi architecture than in any other area because of the need to adopt modern technologies in order to carry out the grandiose and monumental projects characteristic of Nazi Germany.

The sculptor Arno Breker was appointed “official State sculptor” by Hitler on the latter’s birthday in 1937;  he was also presented with an enormous studio as a mark of Hitler’s esteem.  Hitler also spent considerable sums on the restoration of Breker’s private castle and placed a statue of Wagner by Breker in the Berghof. [517]  In his speech at the opening of the second exhibition of German architecture Hitler discussed Breker’s statues, which had been placed at the entrance to the new Chancellery in Berlin.[518] (figure 17) Hitler claimed that the statues “represent the Party and the Wehrmacht, and seem to belong to the most beautiful ever created in Germany.”[519]  On the other hand, Hitler was often critical of other sculptors identified with the Third Reich, including Kolbe.  In 1942 he claimed that the latter “tends to deteriorate as he grows older”.[520]

Breker’s idealist approach to art, his great talent, and his placement in a position of such great power in Nazi Germany led Petropoulos to choose  him as a test case and to describe him as one of the artists of the Third Reich who expressed “the Faustian bargain”.[521]  He examined the complicated relations between Breker and Hitler and characterized the nature of his unique career in Nazi Germany.  Breker’s behavior after 1945 and his connections with the Vichy regime, like his acquaintance with former Nazis, made it difficult for him to start a new artistic career, yet despite his life history his artistic talent was still appreciated.  Like Riefensthal Breker wanted complete rehabilitation, but his activities during the Nazi regime haunted him and he did not receive full recognition.[522]  In 1970illus

 Breker published a book detailing his memories of a shared visit to Paris with Hitler.[523]

When examining the relations between Hitler and his artists it is hard not to be impressed by the unusual importance they had in his world.  His birthdays did not just include listening to Wagner;  he made sure that delegations of artists would come with birthday wishes.  For example, on his birthday in 1939 he was visited by Speer, Breker,[524] Giesler, Kreis, Thorak, Ziegler, and others.  It would seem that Goebbels, the propaganda artist, best understood the combination found in Hitler between an idealist view of art and his admiration of an artistic community he never ceased wanting to be part of.  Rosenberg summed this up best in his memoirs.  “Goebbels brought the Fuehrer beautiful and talented artists, he told him stories about the lives of artists, he fed the theatrical basis in his character….”[525]

 

 

 

A Zealot of Nazi Aesthetics: Alfred Rosenberg

 

 

          In examining the literature on the thought of Alfred Rosenberg as opposed to that on Nazi propaganda and Joseph Goebbels, it is hard not to notice that the study of the ideology of Nazi aesthetics has remained a relatively neglected part of the vast literature on Nazi Germany.  Goebbels as Propaganda Minister has received vastly more attention because of the emphasis which political and historical research have placed on propaganda policy and the manipulation of the masses in the Third Reich.

          This chapter attempts to isolate the main points of Rosenberg’s worldview while focusing on the bases of the radical politics of culture he developed.  This focus is required due to the assumption made in this book that Nazi art cannot be seen solely as a tool in the hands of the propagandists.  Art was not just used to strengthen the legitimacy of the regime, and even though Nazi art was characterized by the use of symbols, they did not appear there just to help mobilize the masses.  I suggest instead seeing Nazi art as a central part of the Nazi worldview;  Rosenberg’s contribution here cannot be doubted.  Like Hitler and Schultze-Naumburg, he was among the first to suggest a theoretical framework for the relations between politics, race, and aesthetics.

          In addition to theories about the relations between art and politics Rosenberg developed fundamental terms which were of immense importance in the design of National-Socialist ideology in general and more specifically the Nazi politics of culture.  Three of these terms are Weltanschaaung (worldview), Gleichschaltung (forced unity), and Volksgemeinschaft (community of the people).  These terms did not originate with Rosenberg, but he was responsible for their development along the lines laid down by German thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century and by Hitler and Schultze-Naumburg.  However, the unique contribution of Rosenberg was the way he worked them into Nazi ideology and adapted them to the cultural reality of Nazi Germany.

          The next sections discuss the ways in which Rosenberg developed these terms, introduced them into the Nazi agenda, and popularized them.  I will place special emphasis on the aesthetic-cultural contexts of these terms, as this is what made Rosenberg’s works unique.  The centrality of these terms in Nazi ideology, as I will show in the following sections, was the result of Rosenberg’s repeated efforts to place them there.

          The portrayal of Rosenberg as one of the central figures of the Nazi politics of culture has not necessarily been accepted by political scientists and historians who have studied Nazi Germany;  they are divided on the question of his status as the leading ideologue of the Nazi movement.  Fest expressed a relatively extreme opinion when he called Rosenberg “the Forgotten Disciple”, the one who was “despised, tricked and ridiculed”, and was seen as a prop from the party’s recruiting phase.[526]  On the other hand, Brecher has argued that Rosenberg was undoubtedly a central figure as an ideologue, but that he was passed over when the political rewards were handed out.  He has stated that “not only did he guard and stoke the terror against freedom of opinion in the Third Reich, but also in the battle against the churches;  and he plated an active and leading role in the art and cultural policies of the regime.”[527]

          The argument over the position of Rosenberg in the Party is not the focus here, but it does reflect a bias existing in the literature, certainly until the end of the 1960s, to minimize the importance of ideology in the development of the National-Socialist movement.  Ideology was displayed, as Lukács did, as “an empty weapon which can be arbitrarily manipulated against ‘objective truth’”.[528]  Since the 1970s there has been an increase in the number of works whose approach is opposed to that of Lukács.  For example, Nova has claimed that the tendency to minimize the importance of “theoretical (ideological) aspects of National Socialism” is a mistake.[529] Jäckel has made similar arguments, as has been shown in the section on Hitler.[530]

          The need to focus on the image of Rosenberg stems from the fact that he has remained relatively neglected even after political scientists and historians began to accept the centrality of ideology in Nazism.  One of the explanations for this neglect may be found in the relatively little influence Rosenberg had on Nazi praxis, yet whatever the reason, it becomes irrelevant given his centrality in the design of positions on issues of art, aesthetics, and culture.  On these questions, which are the focus of this book, Rosenberg was of utmost importance;  those who have seen him as lacking in importance have missed the point.

          From the end of the 1920s Rosenberg’s books and speeches dealt with culture and aesthetics;  he saw them as having great importance in the Nazi revolution. In his memoirs Rosenberg referred to the end of the 1920s and emphasized the priority he had then placed on creative fields.  He explained “that’s how I got to the Reich.  I was originally completely devoted to art, philosophy, and history, I never meant to become involved in politics.”[531]  Like Hitler, Rosenberg continued to deal with these issues even after 1933.  During the second half of the 1930s he was at the center of the argument over Expressionism;  this argument developed into a fundamental discussion of the image of art in the Nazi regime, to a great extent because of Rosenberg’s activities.  This argument showed not only the main points of the Nazi politics of culture, but more significantly the degree to which members of the Nazi Party felt obligated to Nazi ideology.

          The power struggles between Rosenberg and Goebbels are most important for understanding the development of the Nazi politics of culture and demonstrate the difficulties the Nazi regime had in achieving Gleichschaltung, at least until 1937.  These struggles were much more than the personal enmity found in the literature;  they reflected significant differences between two competing worldviews within the Nazi Party.  Rosenberg believed in a closed and controlled culture and was not willing to accept any compromise on the nature of volkish art;  Goebbels expressed opportunistic stands and was willing to accept limited pluralism, but only if it helped improve the image of Nazi Germany in the Western world.  The differences between these two worldviews regarding the Nazi politics of culture were more than a matter of power struggles;  they indicated much more significant gaps.  The argument over Expressionism was not just a matter of accepting or rejecting an avant-garde artistic movement.  It touched on the main points of the Nazi worldview as the fanatic reactionaries saw it, as opposed to those who hoped to give Nazism a more “open” image in order to make Nazi ideology more appealing to the West.

Rosenberg, a zealot of Nazi aesthetics and an uncompromising ideologue, and also one of the main leaders of the volkish movement, was completely unwilling to moderate his radical opinions and ignored pragmatic motives.  He saw institutionalization without a continuation of the mortal battle against modern art as the most worrisome thing of all.  The seizure of power symbolized for Rosenberg the establishment of a Nazi minimum and only indicated a partial fulfillment of his goals.

          The fact that after 1933 Goebbels made enormous efforts to distance Rosenberg from the centers of political power does not reduce the importance of the latter in the development of the Nazi politics of culture.  The political projects which Hitler ordered Goebbels to complete in the years before 1939 did not just reflect Hitler’s policy of divide and conquer, but especially expressed his dissatisfaction with the translation of his worldview into aesthetic policy.  Petropoulos has correctly noted that “Goebbels, despite his lip service to the völkish camp, promoted a Kunstpolitik that Hitler found too liberal.”[532]  Rosenberg’s opinions on culture and his emphasis on cultural foundations in the Nazi worldview were considerably closer to those of Hitler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the study of architecture to the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

 

               Alfred Rosenberg began to study architecture in the Technische Hochschule in Riga.  In 1917, during his studies, he wrote a draft of an article entitled “The Philosophy of German Art”.  Among the topics he discussed were The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Ring of the Nibelungen, the Renaissance, and Rembrandt.  Using the terminology of the time he explained that there were a number of ways to analyze a work of art:  “observation in the context of time, observation not connected to time, development and rhythm, surroundings, race, nationality, individual – the I”.[533]  Race and nationality are mentioned as helpful in understanding works of art, but at this stage there is nothing hinting at the nationalist and antisemitic trends which would appear within a short time.

In January 1918 Rosenberg went to Moscow to finish the final exams for his degree.  His final project was a model of a crematory;  it so excited his advisor that he offered Rosenberg an assistantship.[534]  During his stay in Moscow Rosenberg witnessed some of the events of the October Revolution, which it would appear had a distinct effect on his worldview.  When he returned to his hometown of Reval in Latvia, which had been conquered by the Germans, he began to give lectures on Marxism and Judaism.  Among his claims in these lectures was that he had in his possession a “document” proving that the October Revolution was part of a worldwide Jewish plot to take over the world.  Rosenberg was one of those who organized a German version of this fake “document”, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and World Jewish Politics.[535]

The neutral style of the 1917 draft had disappeared, and was replaced by more extreme language.  In his 1918 “The Form and Design of a Work of Art” Rosenberg emphasized the centrality of nature in works of art.  He praised the German Romantics and attacked the Neo-Classicists, claiming that their style characterized many works which were “lacking energy and power”.[536]  Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art was not the only topic of interest to Rosenberg at that time.  He was well aware of contemporary art, and his opinions were certainly different from what would come later.  For example, Impressionism was perhaps “a one-sided school of painters, but they did manage to make us live again and to once again make painting young and fresh.”[537]  This favorable view of Impressionism did not, however, carry over to other avant-garde movements, as can be seen from a description of Futurist works as a “glaring contrast” and of the Futurists themselves as “desirous of sensation”.[538]  He explained that the latter movement managed to establish itself because it reflected the era in which it was created.  “Our time, which is so economically and technically advanced and so artistically-politically vulgar….”[539]

In a 1919 article entitled “Thoughts on Art” Rosenberg gave the reasons why he saw contemporary times as “problematic”.  “This is the time of a subjectivism that knows no bounds and simultaneously a period in which a narrow-horizoned Communism desires control of vulgar, anonymous masses with no spiritual ability.”  Futurism accurately depicted the new era not only because it originated in fashion and “madness”, but mostly because it had become an ally of “its extreme Bolshevik brothers”.  Rosenberg rejected both the political and artistic movements for their extreme collectivist tendencies;  these led the movements to a “denial of personality”.[540]

For Rosenberg the Communist Revolution seems to have been a real turning point.  Herzstein has claimed that Rosenberg saw it as the end of a stable world order;  as a result if the revolution, he began to develop “a hatred for Bolshevism, second only to his loathing of the Jews, whom he blamed for Communism”.[541]  An examination of Rosenberg’s early works substantiates this description of the Communist Revolution as a turning point leading to a substantially more radical approach. 

Immediately after immigrating to Germany in 1918 Rosenberg took part in the activities of the Thule Gesellschaft.[542]  Fest has described this organization as “a nationalistic secret society with an occult tinge that practiced a sectarian Aryan and Germanic cult – chiefly against a background of sinister horror stories and shabby ‘revelations’ about Jews, Freemasons, and Bolsheviks….”[543]  One of the most important figures Rosenberg met during this period, and one connected to the activities of the Thule Gesellschaft, was Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff.[544]  Goodrick-Clarke has cited one of the latter’s speeches, given at the very end of World War I;  it gives some idea of the goals of the organization.“Our Order is Germanic Order, loyalty is also Germanic. Our god is Walvater, his rune is the Ar-rune. And the trinity: Wotan, Wili, We is the unity of the trinity. The Ar-rune signifies Aryan, primal fire, the sun and the eagle. And the eagle is the symbol of the Artans. In order to depict the eagle’s capacity for self-immolation by fire, it is colored red. From today on our symbol is the red eagle, which warns us that we must die in order to live.”[545]

The members of the Thule Gesellschaft included a wide variety of professionals, including lawyers, judges, industrialists, businessmen, professors, doctors, and scientists;  their goal was to offer an alternative to the democratic political order of the Weimar Republic established after the failed November 1918 revolution and which they saw as having brought disaster on the German people.  Among their activities were speeches by intellectuals who later became leading ideologues of the National-Socialist Party, including Gottfried Benn, Friedrich Eckhart, Rudolf Hess, and Rosenberg himself.[546]  The organization later helped mobilize its members for the National-Socialist Party, as von Sebottendorff noted.  He rightly said that “Thule members were the people to whom Hitler first turned, and who first allied themselves with Hitler.”[547]

von Sebottendorff indicated the support which the Münchner Beobachter had given the Nazi Party at its beginning.  He bought the paper in 1918 for 500 Reichsmark and at the beginning its editorial offices were located in those of the Thule Gesellschaft.  Hitler was among the first to realize the use and potential for the mobilization of people that a newspaper could provide, and therefore in 1921 he had all of the stock in the paper transferred to his control, ensured that he would have sole control of the paper, and even changed its name to the Völkischer Beobachter. (figure 18)  He appointed Rosenberg, together with Eckhart, editors of the paper in 1921;  in the former case it was as a mark of his appreciation for Rosenberg’s work in developing Nazi ideology. 

After his appointment as editor, Rosenberg used the paper to publish enormous numbers of his articles in which he expressed his opinion on a large number of subjects.  These articles show that his worldview was already well organized and detailed by the beginning of the 1920s.  For example, in “1789”, an article from 1921, Rosenberg described the first year of the French Revolution as “the birth year of the spirits of the desert in European culture”.  He added that despite “the warnings of our fathers (Goethe, Fichte, Herder)” that was also the year “the Jews were freed”.[548]  In “Antisemitism”, from the same year, Rosenberg described Goethe, Fichte, and Herder as the fathers of antisemitism and their thought as foretelling the National-Socialist era.  Richard Wagner was cited as contributing to the display of the Jews as the “plastic demon of human decline”.[549]  In addition to the development of clearly antisemitic ideas Rosenberg also wrote about the development of a detailed aesthetic worldview and the contents of volkish art.

  In 1923 Rosenberg became the sole editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, but he was also active in other parts of the media.  In 1924 he founded a journal, Der Weltkampf:  Monatsschrift für Weltpolitik, völkische Kultur, und die Judenfrage aller Länder.  The discussions of nationalism, patriotism, and antisemitism in this journal shared an emphasis on the desire of the Jews to achieve world domination.  Weinreich has stated that that the articles published there made no attempt to remain loyal to the facts.[550]  Der Weltkampf was used by Rosenberg as an additional forum for publishing his views, as can be seen from the titles of his articles.  “Basic principles of the work of volkish culture” (November 1925) and “On the fateful war for German culture” (May 1928) are just two of the topics he covered.[551]

After the unsuccessful putsch in 1923, on the eve of his imprisonment in Landsberg Prison, Hitler requested that Rosenberg temporarily fill his place.  The Nazi Party was declared illegal, and its mouthpiece the Völkischer Beobachter was shut down, but for Rosenberg these were the only months during which he could translate his ideology into real political power.  His desires along these lines were not fulfilled;  as Brecher has put it “Hitler’s deputy, Rosenberg, had proved to be a hesitant theoretician, unequal to the practical demands of political life”.[552]  Kater has made a similar argument that other leaders of the Party did not trust Rosenberg, perhaps because he lacked the charisma of Hitler.[553]

 

 

 

 

 

Weltanschauung and Art

 

          One of the basic terms used by Rosenberg is Weltanschauung.  Barker was one of the first to suggest a meaning for this term in the early 1940s.  “A general set of social and political ideas which covers and colours the whole of life, and in that sense is total, but is yet, and at the same time, exclusive and particular to itself.”[554]  Jäckel was among the first to understand the meaning of the term in Nazi thought.  He has emphasized the unique use the Nazis made of it and has stated that “the term Weltanschauung, which was once a fine term in the German language, became a worn-out slogan in National Socialism.”[555]  Unlike Jäckel, who has studied the Nazi worldview seriously, other scholars have not seen the term as important and have even stated that it only provided cover and ambiguity.  After Hitler and Rosenberg began to use Weltanschauung, other Nazi leaders also used it in their writings and speeches, often as a replacement for the word ideology.  Nova has stated that “both Hitler and Rosenberg could have used the German Ideologie, but preferred the less precise hardly translatable tern Weltanschauung, perhaps because of its totalitarian all-inclusive connection.”[556]  Both Hitler and Rosenberg started to use the term relatively early .  In Mein Kampf Hitler explained that “Weltanschauung is intolerant; it cannot content itself with the role of one ‘party beside others’, but imperiously demands, not only its own exclusive and unlimited recognition, but the complete transformation of all public life in accordance with its views.”[557]  In 1925 Rosenberg emphasized in a similar way that the political struggle could not be won without a developed worldview.  “It is only possible to systematically struggle for power in a nation when there is a will behind the struggle born out of a worldview….”[558]          In 1934 Rosenberg developed this statement from the mid-1920s.  “Only if we succeed in holding whole peoples in place through a worldview and design these peoples as carriers-fighters for this same worldview will it be ensured that the political idea of the age will not vanish with its founders but will be carried as a designer in the future.”[559]

          The emphasis Hitler and Rosenberg placed on the need for a general and closed value system may explain why the term Ideologie did not fit the situation.  It may well be that the common use of the term between the two World Wars and its association with Marxist and universalist political theories led the two to prefer Weltanschauung, which had fewer connotations and was more German.  They saw a worldview as a comprehensive yet particularist set of values appropriate to a given society.  Weltanschauung fit together with the Nazi politics of culture;  the development of its meaning required the creation of ideas bridging and dismantling the commonly-accepted barriers between politics, aesthetics, economics, race, and society.

          The particularist and subjective dimensions of this worldview were suited to the beliefs of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, unlike the universalist emphases associated with the term ideology.  The difference can be seen in the internationalism central to Marxist ideology as opposed to the Nazi worldview, which its shapers saw as an organic element expressing the nation and the people.  For the latter worldview was not only connected to belonging to a certain nation which had been shaped by common experiences, language, and culture, but also to the organic philosophy of blood and soil which was so important in Nazism.  The sense of belonging and the organic philosophy were seen as an appropriate replacement for material interests and those of the different social classes on which the leading ideologies of the time were based.

          Rosenberg’s contribution to the development of the Nazi worldview is not questioned even by those who minimize his importance.  Bracher has noted that even before the publication of Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts “Rosenberg was the only leading National Socialist who, from the very beginning, sought to systematize the National Socialist Weltanschauung.”[560]  Rosenberg saw the advantage of a worldview as lying in its ability to supply a screen of ideas which were not limited to certain areas.  The worldview had to cover a wide range of varied areas and to be as comprehensive and detailed as possible.

          Like Schultze-Naumburg and Hitler, Rosenberg believed that the Nazi revolution could not be limited to the political and that in order to ensure its success it must be accompanied by a comprehensive worldview.  In a 1934 speech Rosenberg explained that if the Nazi movement were to make do only with the seizure of power it would miss its goals.  “This attack is not based on politics and society but first and foremost on a worldview.  Political victory alone would not bring our movement to the real achievements we desire.  If today we were to content ourselves with pure state power alone the National-Socialist movement would not fulfill its mission.”[561]  The worldview was also seen as necessary by Rosenberg because it helped to blur the distinctions between the political and the aesthetic.  In addition, its implementation in the aesthetic field was necessary and would indicate the achievement of an advanced stage of the Nazi revolution.

          The view which saw the seizure of power as a Nazi minimum was expressed in an early 1934 editorial.  Rosenberg detailed there the extent and system of roles of the new regime.  “What happened in 1933 was not the total erection of the nation but the total erection of the National-Socialist movement.  The state is no longer a unit defined by the people and the movement;  it cannot be seen as a mechanical apparatus or a machine of government;  the state does the work of the National-Socialist philosophy of life.”[562]

          Rosenberg believed that the political revolution had to be accompanied by an artistic revolution.  This opinion first appeared in the 1920s when he suggested using the tactics of a Kulturkampf.  During the period when the Nazis were in the political opposition Rosenberg wrote an article describing the place of politics in his worldview.  “Political power struggles are only superficial phenomena, behind them is a rebirth, an outburst of a feeling of new life”.[563]  This approach emphasized that artistic production was not just something to be mobilized;  it could not be described in purely functional terms.  The Nazi politics of culture would draw its main points from art, and according to these the volkish worldview would be described as “instinctively and consciously removing the foreign and that which is hostile to race.  It even carries within it the old-new ideal of beauty.”[564]

          Even after the seizure of power Rosenberg continued to see politics as a secondary accompaniment to the cultural worldview he was developing.  In 1934 he complained about the fact that even though he had been warning about the need for a struggle in art since the 1920s, National Socialism had no achievements to show in this area.  “A fourteen-year-old war over the political fate of Germany created a chosen group of men who from now on are ready and able to lead the fate of the state.  In the artistic-cultural field, on the other hand, we did not fight in the same way during the last fourteen years and we could not fight….  Therefore more than a whole generation has been removed from the artistic and cultural development.  It will take many years until the generation will slowly develop, and will also be able to shape this side of a united people in a National-Socialist way.”[565]

          The most important mission volkish culture had to fulfill was thus to work to unite the German people using organic means.  In 1938 Rosenberg indicated the way in which factors from all parts of life melded together to create a comprehensive worldview.  “The unity of art, science, and spiritual-mental loyalty is what we call the Weltanschauung of our time.  To serve the rising age is the greatest cultural mission the National-Socialist movement can set itself….”[566]

          In addition to the development of the Nazi worldview and its politics of culture Rosenberg was aware of the advantages the tools of a dictatorship were starting to provide in the years after 1933.  He agreed with the steps being taken by the Nazis in their fight against modernism and for volkish aesthetics, and saw no problem with the fact that personal freedom was sacrificed for the sake of the struggle, as long as the individual was part of an organic partnership.  In 1935 he explained that “the term freedom we understand not as an individual’s lack of inhibitions but as a creative achievement of the single creator, as the presentation of his internal powers but at the same time a presentation of the character which is a condition of that personality….  The single creator is not a separate phenomenon but a flower of the healthy essence of the people’s nature in general.”[567]  Three years later, when the Party began to implement its cultural policy, Rosenberg specified the contribution of the totalitarian measures the Party was using.  “The National-Socialist movement has made its way into more and more areas of life, entered into smaller and smaller branches of our existence… in order to respond to all the problems which have come up.”[568]

          The question may be asked why Rosenberg saw the need for developing an aesthetic worldview as equally important to developing the political worldview or as an inherent and crucial component of it.  One possible explanation is connected to his racist views and to his view of the modern era as a struggle between races.  Like Nazi race researchers such as Günther and Clauß,[569] Rosenberg placed the Nordic race at the pinnacle of the racial pyramid.  One of the explanations which he, like many of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, accepted for the superiority of the Aryan was that the Nordic race had always been, in his eyes, the culturally most advanced race.  This historical argument led Rosenberg to preach for the rebirth of a German volk culture which would replace the degenerate values imposed by the Weimar Republic and impose a new worldview through which the Nordic race would regain its rightful role as ruler.

          It would seem that Rosenberg’s view of the modern era as a struggle between races became a central feature of his beliefs because of the influence of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.  The latter’s 1899 book analyzed Western history in terms of clashes between races and saw the Aryan race as leading the struggle.  He warned that the West was likely to degenerate in a way similar to that which had happened in the Roman Empire if the “inferior” races were allowed to continue to advance the disintegration of the leading white race.

          Rosenberg was well acquainted with Chamberlain’s works and in 1927 published a pamphlet where he thanked his spiritual guide and emphasized that he had first been exposed to Chamberlain’s works at the age of fifteen.[570]  Later he called Chamberlain the bearer of the message and explained that the latter had foreseen the awakening of spiritual sources belonging “to species” and the war for “German spiritual and political ideals, for a new and deeper nationalism together with a German socialist renewal”.[571]  In a 1928 article Rosenberg called Chamberlain “an untiring warrior for the honor and greatness of Germany” and explained that he was responsible for the development of a “beautiful world picture of our history”.  Rosenberg also mentioned favorably Chamberlain’s devotion to Hitler in his last years.[572]

               Rosenberg expressed his agreement with Chamberlain on various issues[573] and in many cases did not even develop them in a significant way.  Field has thus claimed that “Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, which became one of the central texts of Nazi ideology, reflects the extent of his [Rosenberg’s] debts [to Chamberlain] throughout its 700 pages”.[574]

Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts

 

The idea to write a book which would present the image of the artist- genius influencing his people first came to Hitler when “he discussed the book for whole nights with Alfred Rosenberg.”[575]  Hitler never finished the book, but Rosenberg began to work on a manuscript of his own in 1928.  Herzstein has described the process of writing.  Rosenberg would sit in the Café Odeon at a round marble table near the window, surrounded by three or four chairs full of books.  According to Herzstein, it was important for Rosenberg that people saw him writing or “visibly thinking”.[576]

          After finishing the first draft Rosenberg called it Der Mythus der 20. Jahrhunderts:  Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit.  The title may have been drawn from the ideas of Georges Sorel, which had influenced Rosenberg, especially Sorel’s 1908 Reflections on Violence.   Rosenberg himself claimed that his concept of a worldview as a myth was mostly taken from Chamberlain.[577]  Heiden has claimed that Rosenberg gave Hitler a draft of the book for his approval, but that the latter did not respond for an entire year.  When Rosenberg finally asked, Hitler replied, “I feel sure that it’s all right.”[578]  Cecil has presented another opinion; “considering Hitler’s control over the Nazi party, it was unlikely that he would have allowed Rosenberg’s book to be published without having read it.”[579]

          The book was published in October 1930;  during the Third Reich it became a bestseller, second only to Mein Kampf.  By 1944 it had sold about 1.1 million copies.[580]  Nova has stated that Rosenberg’s Myth was unquestionably the standard text of National Socialist Party ideology.  Most Nazis (and certainly Hitler) were fully aware of the Myth.”[581]  The popularity of the book was the result of the manipulation of book publishing in Nazi Germany.  Like Mein Kampf, Rosenberg’s book was a must;  “all libraries, secondary schools, and institutions of higher learning had copies”.[582]  Every ordinary member of the Nazi Party most likely had one as well.

          In addition to the measures the Party took to ensure mass sales of the book, it was also one of the most controversial books published in Nazi Germany.  Mosse has described a gap between ritual and theoretical activities;  his argument strengthens the claim that the book was bought, but not necessarily read.[583]  The terminology used by Rosenberg was impossible to deal with and certainly did not make the book easier to read.  He used expressions which had not previously been known.  In 1938 Otto Gros wrote a book to help the reader with Rosenberg’s original. [584]   The language was not the only problem;  the positions expressed in the book were extremely controversial.  For example, his dismissive attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church severely damaged the relations between the Nazis and the Holy See.[585]

          The Nazi leadership was divided over the contribution of Rosenberg.  Goebbels called him an “ideological hiccough”[586] and ironically wrote in his diary that “there are always ideologists in our midst who believe a man of the submarine crews on emerging from the machinery compartment dirty and oil- bespattered would like nothing better that to read the Myth of the Twentieth Century. That, of course, is sheer nonsense.”[587]  Other Nazi leaders testified at the Nuremberg Trials that they never read the book.[588]

          On the other hand, Hitler supported Rosenberg and claimed that it was “a very intelligent book”.[589]  However, he was careful never to refer to it as an official Nazi ideological document.  In 1942, he explained that “I must insist that Rosenberg’s ‘The Myth of the Twentieth Century’ is not to be regarded as an expression of the official doctrine of the Party. The moment the book appeared I deliberately refrained from recognizing it as any such thing. In the first place, its title gives a completely false impression. There is, indeed, no question of confronting the conceptions of the nineteenth century with the so-called myth of the twentieth. A National Socialist should affirm that to the myth of the nineteenth century he opposes the faith and science of our times.”[590]  Hitler even noted that the publisher had had trouble selling the first edition and that few of the Nazi leadership had read the book.

          The inconsistencies in Hitler’s attitude toward the book were similar to the up and downs of the relations between the two men.  Bracher has claimed that Hitler used the fact that he could always count on Rosenberg the ideologue at any time.[591]  However, in addition to this hint at opportunism on Hitler’s side and continuing Heiden’s argument about Hitler’s plans to write a book on the connections between art and race, there is a clear similarity between Rosenberg’s Mythus and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, at least on certain topics.  Nova and Bollmus have noted this resemblance. “It is a well known that both these works are in full agreement on Germanophile, nationalistic and racist (anti-Semitic) ideology and that their authors base their justifications for aggressive territorial demands upon them.“[592]

          The assumption on which Rosenberg based his book is that the history of the German people had to be rewritten.  In his introduction he stated that

a new interrelated, colorful picture of human and terrestrial history is beginning to reveal itself today if we reverently recognize that the conflict between blood and environment, between blood and blood, represents the ultimate phenomenon accessible to us, behind which it is not vouchsafed us to seek and investigate. But this realization immediately brings with it recognition of the fact that the struggles of blood and dimly felt mysticism of living events do not represent two different things but one and the same thing in two different ways. Racial history is therefore natural history and the mysticism of the soul at one and the same time; but the history of the religion of the blood, conversely, is the great world story of the rise and downfall of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists.[593]

          The rewriting of German history was thus to be based on the struggle between races led by the Nordic race with its special cultural abilities and its extraordinary political initiative.   Rosenberg’s analysis of history in terms of growth, flourishing, and decline clearly shows the influence of Spengler.  The influence of Chamberlain can also be seen in the basic theory of the book, as Rosenberg referred to the latter’s theory according to which cultural genius was a unique characteristic of the Nordic race.  Any place in history where there had been an important creative cultural force, as in Ancient Greece, there was also evidence for the presence of the Nordic race.

          Throughout Der Mythus there are harsh attacks on democracy, Communism, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Jews.  They had led to the “spiritual bastardization of our people”;  the elites were in their service, leading to “a loss of natural common sense” and even “the loss of Nordic aesthetics dictated by the will”.  Instead of these controversial values, a new worldview was needed which would save Germany from the decline and degeneration it was undergoing.  The book deals at length with the role of aesthetics and the goals of art in this process.  More than a third of the book is devoted to “the essence of German art”, which is also the title of its second section.

          The chapter dealing with “the racial ideal of beauty” opens with Wagner’s motto:  “a work of art is religion presented alive (Das Kunstwerk ist die lebendig dergestelle Religion)”.  Rosenberg’s argument here started with an attack on what he called “the age of the intellectuals”;  he saw this age as starting with Neo-Classicism and as characterized by international aesthetic values.  He attacked Neo-Classical aesthetics and claimed that the leaders of the movement, Winckelmann and Lessing, did not truly reflect German values.  “They are almost all looking only at Greece and they are all speaking based on a general aesthetics which is seemingly possible.”[594]

          Rosenberg, as opposed to Hitler, completely rejected Neo-Classicism because he saw no way of building a culture on universal values.  Universal aesthetics could not be valid because different peoples created aesthetics with different contents;  these could not be understood by or reduced to a generalizing theory and unifying principles.  The rejection of Neo-Classicist aesthetics stemmed from it “not helping our essence, the development of a clearer consciousness.  It did not give direction, but analyzed European art according to vague and general criteria or Greek criteria, especially Late Greek.”[595]

          Late nineteenth-century philosophers of aesthetics erred when they ignored the existence of the racial ideal of beauty.  Rosenberg explained that works of art were produced according to a certain racial mental structure and therefore could not be understood by someone from another race.  While Ancient Greece had produced the classical model which was indeed worthy of emulation, the Germans had to remember that as a different race they would never be able to completely understand the Greek model.

          Similarly, Chinese art was even less understandable than classical art.  “In the essence of art or in its influence the pure physical presentation of the Greek, for example, must influence us differently than a picture of the Chinese Emperor.  Every outline has a different function in China than in Hellas, and it is not possible [to receive] ‘aesthetic pleasure’ or even to interpret it without a knowledge of the designing will which is dependent on race.”[596]  At first, classical Greek art depicted the handsome Greek hero and saw him as a model for emulation.  However, extended processes of democratization and bastardization left their marks on Greek art in the form of  “mixed, ‘human’ (menschheitliche) figures with blurred limbs and undefined heads, and the racial chaos stemming from an extended age of democratization together with a process of artistic democratization.”[597]

          Rosenberg was also ambivalent about Neo-Classical aesthetics.  While he did not reject the similarity between the classic and Nordic ideals of beauty,[598] in order to stay true to his belief that each nation had its own unique characteristics which could not be copied he explained that there were differences between the Aryan and the Greek which could not be ignored.  He claimed that where the Greek was static, “his brother”, the German, was dynamic.  “Greek beauty thus always has a static essence, and not a dynamic one….  Our art was from the beginning, despite a similar ideal, not meant to be a fixed visual beauty but spiritual movement;  that is, it was not the external situation which took shape but the spiritual value in fighting against other opposing values or forces.”[599]

          Explanations of this sort focusing on the cultural particularity of Germany were used by Rosenberg to explain why Neo-Classicism must be rejected as a general theory.  He dealt in a similar way with the contents of classical art which he did not accept in comparison to those of Western Nordic art.  The tendency to glorify Greek art in a one-sided way, sometimes through the use of incorrect interpretations, worried Rosenberg, as unlike Greek art, “Nordic-Western art deals, in addition to content, with problems of form at the same time”.[600]  The superiority of Nordic art lay in the fact that it displayed the complexity of the personality, unlike the characters of the Iliad and the Odyssey, for example.  The latter “move in the middle sphere of the human, they do not sink into spiritual depths full of secrets, they do not show a desire for the highest peaks, and their actions stem less from a stiff internal impulse….”[601]  His main criticism of classicism and the late eighteenth-century Neo-Classicist theory which developed out of it was based on their overemphasis on a perfect exterior;  the latter often came at the expense of the spiritual depth required of cultural creations.

          For Rosenberg the nineteenth century was characterized by the existence of many and varied aesthetic theories.  Some of them had been formulated innocently, such as Impressionism, which is mentioned in his early writings;  in Der Mythus he expressed ambivalent feelings toward it, a sort of insufficient grounds for proof of guilt.  Rosenberg explained that Impressionism was created by great artists, but slowly became a declaration of war of “intellectualism which dismantles everything”.  The atomist worldview in control at the time led to “an atomization of color”.[602]

          The Impressionists may not have been completely bad, but what came after them was for Rosenberg much worse.  Post-Impressionist artists were accused of having an appetite for publicity which could not be explained.  van Gogh was described as needing to be at the center of modern creation at any price.  His desire not to fall behind modern developments “tortured him and he painted apple trees, coal, and cobblestones” until finally he “went mad”.  Rosenberg did not see his “tragic” figure as atypical.  Gauguin also “painted the race of his black girl friends” and thus became “torn apart and rotting away, just like all of those who searched the whole world for lost beauty, whether they were called Böcklin, Feuerbach, van Gogh, or Gauguin.”[603]

          The list of artists attacked by Rosenberg was not limited to post- Impressionists.  The addition of late nineteenth-century Symbolist artists to the list required no little bravery, given that Hitler was quite fond of Böcklin and Feuerbach.[604]  Even so, Rosenberg did not hesitate to attack their works and to describe them as defective because of the lack of clear direction in their art;  their exposure to many styles also led them into an unending search.  These problems tired them and led them to give in to chaos.

          Picasso was, for Rosenberg, an example of an artist in constant search of novelty.  Rosenberg called him “a parasite who hungrily looked for the new sensation”.  The artist “hid with shame” his new style behind “artistic tricks”, but it “burst out in the open with effrontery after the World War”.  During the interwar period expressions by “mixed creatures” who claimed that their “bastard offspring” were the result of the “expression of the soul” became legitimate, and in this way “spiritual syphilis and artistic infantilism” were strengthened.[605]

          The relatively mild criticism of pre-war modern art was in great contrast to the general frontal attack on artists and cultural figures active after the war.  The change can be seen in both the style and content of Rosenberg’s works on the subject;  he spoke of a “period without myths” characterized by complete chaos.  The general despair led artists to search for salvation;  one of the results was “the birth of the mockery called Expressionism”.[606]  The rejection of Expressionism would lead years later to a bloody argument with Goebbels over the question whether it could be included as part of the National-Socialist revolution.[607]  On Rosenberg’s side, the rejection of this movement was based on several claims important for understanding his worldview.  His criticism stemmed from their choice of the metropolis as the center of their activity and the content of their art.  Their works were produced “in the night cafes of the asphalt people which became studios”.[608]  The big city was after all where the processes of alienation and atomization of modern society had reached their peaks.

          Life in the metropolis had produced in the Expressionist artists a dynamic excess and had caused them to surrender to the mixing of races which was part of urban life.  In this way the artists were exposed to the influence of the Jews who controlled the capital of the cities and even dictated tastes there.  The dominance of the Jews could be seen in their control of the press and their consequent ability to dictate the aesthetic preferences of the European intelligentsia.  All of these processes were found especially in the big cities, which also had “a racial chaos of Germans, Jews, and unnatural street races”.[609]  The Expressionists’ choice of the metropolis made it only natural that a mixed art would be produced.  Rosenberg saw the big city as threatening the integrity of the volkish community and of course its racial purity.  One of the examples of this process was the tendency of Expressionist artists to imitate primitive cultures and see them as a source of inspiration.  These sorts of tendencies were seen as threatening the unity of the collective, patriotism, and the purity of the race.

          In addition to their problematic choice of location and their call for universalism, Rosenberg also attacked the developed and clearly-visible political worldviews of most of the Expressionist artists.  The artists took positions on concrete issues German society was dealing with as a result of World War I;  they were active in politics and identified with political parties and movements in an unprecedented way.  They also, as the name of their movement suggested, expressed their own private feelings resulting from their own worldview.  The individual experience, which was at the center of their works, was expressed as part of a desire to strengthen individualist trends which left art almost completely impossible to understand.  Rosenberg used the works of the Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka as examples.  He mockingly claimed that the viewer must “look long and with attention for example at the ‘self portrait’ of Kokoschka in order to arrive at a partial understanding of the horrible and frightful inner nature of this idiotic art.” Chagall and Pechstein, “the future leaders of art”, were also attacked as having a style which clearly expressed degeneration. [610]

          Expressionism was not the only avant-garde movement attacked by Rosenberg, though he did see it as bringing degeneration to new heights.  He saw most of the other avant-garde movements as guilty of the same sins.  The impossible situation in modern art could only be changed if the modern artists decided to return to a desired model, that is, to an aesthetics expressing “the beauty inherent in race”.[611]  The adoption of these new values would replace the “democratic theory racially identified with the metropolis which is destroying the people…” and even the “systematic Jewish disintegration”.[612]  The aesthetic alternative could never be based on the characteristics of the Jewish race.  In a tone reminiscent of Wagner’s “Judaism in Music”, Rosenberg stated that “one need only imagine a face with a crooked nose, drooped lips, sharp black eyes, and wooly hair in order to immediately understand the visual impossibilities of representing the European God by a Jewish head (not to mention a Jewish ‘image’).”[613]

          Rosenberg believed that art could not exist outside of the racial context and without being based on the Nordic ideal of beauty.  “Race and people are preconditions for the existence of the ‘I’ and their simultaneous use will create the only possibility for strengthening it”.[614]  The “true aesthetics” of Europe must be drawn from the people;  they are what art must wish to represent.  Art must fulfill three preconditions.  It must be based in the future “on the Nordic racial ideal of beauty, the internal dynamics of European art, that is, content as a problem of form, and the acknowledgement of aesthetic will”.[615] 

Rosenberg’s theory about the need of art to express the superior race is presented in detail in his book, but in the years after 1933 he provided additional explanations for the connections needed between race, people, nation, culture, aesthetics, and art.  In an article which appeared in a book meant for Nazi officials, he pointed out a false analogy between the laws of liberal economics and modern art.  “The universities announced that art, the most noble and national thing the people have, was international, just as the ‘laws of the economy’ seemingly were”.[616]  He suggested the laws of race as a replacement for these universal laws.  “This connection to blood and soil and to the peasant as representing this unity leads him to a renewed appreciation of artistic activity”.[617]  Rosenberg thus had no doubt that the driving force behind cultural creation must come from the Nordic collective which expressed the connections of blood and soil.

          The establishment of race theory would do away with the internationale of art, as “all great art demands a clear ideal of beauty and every people develops its own will for culture (Kulturwille) stemming from its own unique racial nucleus”.[618]  This kind of aesthetics would return the unity of the people and prevent the threat to cultured nations from “the mentally ill, idiots, bastards of Jews, or mulattos”.[619]

 

 

Trying to put ideology into Praxis: The Combat League for German Culture

            

          This section describes the methods used to put the worldview described in the previous chapter into practice.  Rosenberg was worried about the possibility that the National-Socialist revolution would not be accompanied by appropriate political ideology and philosophy, and therefore tried to put his worldview into action.  During the early 1920s he used the term unity (Einheit) and emphasized that without it there was no possibility of establishing a common worldview for the German people.  He was not yet using the term Gleichschaltung, among other reasons because political power was still unavailable, but Rosenberg, who was already aware of the importance of cultural standardization, argued for the establishment of a “cultural community” with common criteria. Such tasks led Bracher to refer to him as the “administrative clerk of the National-Socialist Weltanschauung”.[620]     The founding of the Combat League for German Culture (Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur) toward the end of the 1920s foretold both Gleichschaltung and the translation of Rosenberg’s conservative worldview into operative terms.  While Rosenberg’s contribution to this theoretical term[621] in the areas of culture and aesthetics is clear, his contribution to its praxis need to be shown. 

Rosenberg’s works from the earliest days consistently emphasized the need for the German people to stand united against the disintegrative trends and the disharmony surrounding them.  The democratic order and the pluralism accompanying it led to chaos and destruction.  For him the starting point of the modern era was “the French Revolution of 1789 which made subjectivism political, economic, and cultural dogma”.  All of the ills to which German society was exposed could be traced back to the French Revolution;  the damage caused by “this atomist worldview” was obvious ever since. [622]

          The disintegrative trends starting at the end of the eighteenth century reached a peak during the Weimar Republic, as Rosenberg noted in 1928.  “Today, out of the depths of the big cities which pollute us, the subhuman has arisen.  Millions of bastards have been thrown onto the asphalt, lacking in space, lacking in nationality or direction, and they are exposed to all kinds of demagogues, naturally led by the strange son of ‘chaos’, who dares to present consistently today… mulatto and nigger culture as the highest achievements of this period.”[623]  The democratic order, urbanization, and cosmopolitan influences were the enemies of the German people;  all of them increased considerably during the Weimar Republic and led to disintegration and chaos.  Rosenberg was not yet using the term Gesellschaft, but his analysis of the contemporary situation clearly shows that the modern urban arena was responsible for the destruction and degeneration of the German people, and that only there could the subhuman control things.

          Rosenberg’s attack on “asphalt culture” was already systematic by the middle of the 1920s.  In November 1926 he preached for the purging of the “spiritual junk products of the metropolis, which are essentially formless”.[624]  Only a purge could ensure the cessation of the processes of disintegration, the chaos, the degeneration, and the cultural destruction of the German people.  Only it would again create unifying trends.  “There is no other way!  Because the essence of the National-Socialist freedom movement comes from the fact that the sad history of the German people, dismembered in every way, will again lead to unity (Einheit), to simplicity, and to true greatness!”[625]

          During the years after the seizure of power the clear distinction between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft was extended into two opposing patterns, two types of organization of social, cultural, and political life which were fundamentally different.[626]  Rosenberg saw the spirit of the German community (Gemeinschaft) as damaged by a series of ideas foreign to the German race such as liberalism, democracy, and the call for a Marxist class struggle.  The volkish community was described from that point onward as a single racial group, an autarchic traditional and homogeneous body;  it was faced with extinction by heterogeneous and individualist modern society (Gesellschaft).  It was thus extremely important to strengthen the unifying values of the National-Socialist community.

          Rosenberg saw culture and aesthetics as playing a leading role in the creation of this unity and in the redevelopment of the Nazi people’s community.  He explained that “when we gather together a ‘National-Socialist cultural community’ (NS Kulturgemeinde) we want to express our highest debt to the National-Socialist worldview.  [We must] create the mediation between individuals, people, and state by the grouping together of all of those forces which out of a similar desire for the content and a new form of life want to cultivate those expressions of artistic activity which express what millions feel….”[627]  At the base of the desire to create a National-Socialist cultural community lay the belief that “our obligation is to cultivate the organic growth of everything which serves… the values of the German and his ideal of beauty, and at the same time to prevent the wild growth of everything sick or internally foreign and which does not act to serve German unity but helps the breaking up of the German essence.”[628]

          The fields which could be used to translate worldview into praxis and to achieve unity were aesthetics and culture, but both had deviated from their desired paths and therefore worried Rosenberg since 1925.  He claimed that “the neutralization of bastardization as it is systematically advanced in our art exhibitions today” was the first mission and that it could be carried out through “the mobilization of communes and organizations of volkish artists.[629]  In 1927 he created the Combat League for German Culture.  Bussman has claimed that the creation of the League symbolized a “unified direction” in the cultural policies of the Nazi movement, as opposed to the previous period, which had been characterized by “the numerous theories of decline, decay, and degeneracy”.[630]

          The start of the League was a series of informal meetings in Munich at the beginning of 1928.  In May of that year Rosenberg published an article with the founding manifesto of the “Organization or League for German Culture”.  He emphasized there that the name was not yet final.  The article included a clear statement of intent;  the main purpose of the organization was to be “the fight against the visible moral collapse and for the German character values and the culture which belongs to a species (Art)”.[631]  Rosenberg explained that the organization was established by National- Socialist circles but would gladly accept those who were not members of the Party as long as they were “aware of their people”.

          The basic goal of the organization and “a moral precondition” was to advance everything stemming from race.  “Researchers on race, visual artists, and scholars from all areas are supposed to present this basic necessity in the war against the bastard ideas of the Internationale which break apart every real thing in speech and in writing.”  Rosenberg suggested that the rules of the organization explicitly state that the intent was “to protect with all determination… the values of the German character and to cultivate and advance every expression of the species (artigen) in German cultural life.”[632]  In addition, “the organization sets itself the goal to open the eyes of the German people about the connections between race, art, science, and moral and soldierly values.”[633]  Rosenberg explained that the organization had many and varied means at its disposal, including the use of the press, journals which “were aware of species” (artbewuter), the organization of exhibitions, public events such as lectures, attempts to influence the content of plays and films, and any other activities which might serve the cause.[634]

          The Völkischer Beobachter reported the formal establishment of the “Combat League for German Culture” on February 26, 1929.[635]  The first publications of the League were meant to demonstrate Rosenberg’s claims about the cultural decline and degeneration of the Weimar Republic.  They included citations from antireligious and pacifist works by authors such as Ernst Toller, Kurt Tucholsky, and George Grosz.  The activists of the League even warned against the spread of “pornography” in public entertainment.[636]  Modern art was attacked by the activists claiming that it was aesthetically repulsive and even politically subversive.[637]  The works of “pacifist” artists such as Ernst and Barlach were used to show the supposedly subversive trends.  The League demanded that “all productions showing cosmopolitan and Bolshevist symptoms shall be removed from German museums and collections”,[638] and its representatives called for efforts to make sure that the names of artists with Marxist connections would not be mentioned in public.

          Even though Rosenberg consistently claimed that his organization was cultural and had no political tendencies, it showed clear traces of accepting the National-Socialist worldview.  “The purpose of the league was ‘to carry National-Socialist ideas to circles not ordinarily reached by mass meetings’.”[639]  From the beginning Rosenberg wanted to obtain significant support for the League from conservative intellectuals, those who had identified since the beginning of the century with the activities of volkish groups such as the Werdandibund and the Dürerbund, and with the Bayreuth Circle.  His early success can be seen in the fact that by the middle of 1930 key members of the Circle, among them Winfried Wagner and his sister Eva Chamberlain, were active members of the League.  Miller-Lane has claimed that such support allowed the League to expand its activities rapidly, especially among academics.[640]  The League became a meetingplace for right-wing intellectuals who accepted Rosenberg’s views on German art.  They sent out a call for “Aryan” and “Nordic” art which would express the German people;  its criteria would be based on a detailed program put together by Rosenberg.[641]

          The activities of the League, together with those of many others advancing volkish culture,[642] formed the basis for the establishment of the “National-Socialist cultural communities” in the summer of 1934.  These activities included lectures by figures such as Paul Schultze-Naumburg and publications such as the Deutsche Kulturwacht;  they were all covered in detail in the pages of the Völkischer Beobachter.[643]

The discussions of the League and the rest of the volkish cultural groups who opposed modern art were gathered together into a book. The author, Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder, who was trained as a painter, had founded the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft in her apartment in Dresden in November 1920.[644]  This organization of German artists accepted members according to their racial origin;  they had to declare their loyalty to the aesthetic theories of Schultze-Naumburg and Rosenberg and to swear to fight for Nordic, German, heroic, and noble art.[645]  During the mid-1920s the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft attacked artists such as Gauguin and Matisse;  the works of the latter were described as based on a sick ideal of beauty.  For example, Gauguin “looked for his ideal of beauty in the South Seas… in girl friends of black race….  He too is torn apart and rotting away, like all those who searched the world for a lost beauty.”[646]  This organization also attacked museum directors who bought the “non-art” of these painters.  Starting in 1927 they published two journals, the Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz, which was later called the Deutscher Kunstbericht, and the Deutsche Bildkunst.  The Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz was distributed as a supplement in a number of radical-right local newspapers;  most of it was devoted to attacks on modern art and architecture. 

Feistel-Rohmeder’s book includes articles published in this journal between 1927 and 1933 dealing with the classification of artists as representatives of cultural Bolshevism.  The book reflects the activities of more than twenty groups, including the Combat League for German Culture, whose goal was the relentless hounding of modern art and architecture.

In the introduction to the book, Feistel-Rohmeder explained that since the beginning of the 1920s the members of the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft had been part of the attempts to deal “with the spiritual poisoning of the German people”.  She claimed that a distinction had to be made between latent and visible actions, because “there is a danger that only the visible manifestations of degeneration, which fill every healthy man with disgust, will be thought cultural Bolshevism, but the most active poison which will be displayed by the holders of power then, it will not be known what it is”.[647] 

The latent activities of those determining taste in the Weimar Republic were thus the most dangerous, and therefore the author explained that there was a “wild” war of cultures occurring in the Weimar Republic, and that everything must be done to stamp it out.  An examination of the book shows not only the clear influence of the aesthetic theories of Rosenberg and Schultze-Naumburg, but also indicates the main questions on the cultural agenda of the Nazi Party at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s.

An article published in the Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz in 1927 included an attack on the “half-Danish” painter Emil Nolde, about two hundred of whose works were being exhibited in Dresden in honor of his sixtieth birthday.  The unique case of Nolde, a member of the Nazi Party since 1920, is considered below, but the case shows the radical stand of the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft;  the author of the article demanded the complete rejection of Nolde’s works, claiming that the artist suffered from  a soul hostile to art.  Nolde’s works reflected “horrible technique” and the topics portrayed in his works were impossible: “niggers from Papua, symbols from pagan masks, and primitive attempts at the art of a cultureless people.”[648]  The membership of the artist in the Nazi Party did not help him here.

Given the attack on Nolde, it is not surprising that other Expressionist artists suffered harsh attacks.  A 1930 article in the Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz stated that it was necessary to reject the “great intemperance of art and degeneration of form seen in the products of the men around Kokoschka, Barlach, Nolde, and others….”  The only possible explanation for the “products” these artists produced was connected to an addiction to cocaine, morphine, or heroin.[649]

The idea that modern artists were somehow crazy was well accepted in these circles at the beginning of the 1930s.  Schultze-Naumburg connected modern art to madness,[650] and a 1931 article attacked the decision to display the Prinzhorn collection in Munich along the same lines.  The author of the article claimed that modern art reflected madness more than in any other era;  the connection resulted from the distortion of the criteria of society by other mad Jewish thinkers. “Was it the adherents of that redskin chief and sage of relativity, Einstein… who undertook to prove ‘massively and conclusively’ to us poor naïve souls, who regarded a healthy soul in a healthy body as the desirable basis for artistic creation, that ‘we don’t know nothing for certain’ beneath the sun – not even where reason ends and nonsense begins – or, to put it another way, how closely related the works of the now almost defunct Expressionists are to the productions of the insane? Or is this display of madhouse art one last desperate attempt to demonstrate the inherent lunacy of certain artistic movements?”[651]

The authors published in the Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz praised those preaching for the purge of all modern foundations from German art.  Among those praised was “Professor Paul Schultze-Naumburg”, whose lectures “greatly moved the public”.[652]  The latter was an example of “a brave fighter at the front”;  the members of the organization appreciated his activities.  “To experience it is a joy which no one can feel more deeply than we do, the members of the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft, we who 11 years ago started as a ‘tiny group’ the war for German art.”[653]

Artists expressing different political views and an acceptance of leftist values were attacked by the members of the organization.  For example, a 1929 article explained that the “November Group”[654] included artists who would be found in the “future Soviet Garden of Eden”, including “Otto Dix who depicts ‘Women in Whorehouses’” and George Grosz, who had managed to escape “twice already from accusations of blasphemy”.[655]  In addition to the clear identification of the artists with Communism, the author of the article hinted at Grosz’ two trials, one in 1920 after the Malik Press had published Gott mit uns, a collection of his works,[656] and the other after the publication of another collection, Ecce Homo, in 1923.  In both cases Grosz was tried for  “offences against the moral boundaries of German society”;  his sentence was the banning of the two books and a fine.  This punishment does not seem to have satisfied the author of the article.

In March 1933 Feistel-Rohmeder, now the editor of the Deutscher Kunstbericht, published there a document entitled “What the German artists expect from the new government”.  This important manifesto paved the ideological way for the establishment of the Reich Chamber for Culture.[657]

The activities of the Combat League for German Culture increased toward the end of the Weimar Republic.  During 1932 it vastly increased its membership to a total of about 38,000;  in a number of provinces the League had almost complete control of cultural life.[658]  Bollmus has described the unique importance of the League in the cultural unification of 1933-1934.[659]  However, Steinweis has claimed that despite its contributions at the beginning of 1933, its influence on German cultural life actually declined after the seizure of power.  In 1934 it was reorganized as the “National-Socialist cultural community” and from then on its influence on cultural life was mostly indirect.[660]  One of the explanations for this decrease in influence was the power struggle between Rosenberg and Goebbels, but the spirit the League represented and the values for which it had “fought” show that Rosenberg’s ideas on the connections between art and race, developed long before 1933, did not remain theoretical;  they were implemented on the institutional- organizational and political levels even before the seizure of power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tangled in the Power Struggle:  The Argument over Expressionism

 

               After 1933 Rosenberg was distanced from the sources of political power.  Cecil has stated that he only managed to have a private meeting with Hitler at the end of March 1933, and at the meeting was given a position with no real power.  He was made head of the foreign affairs section of the Party.[661]  Bracher has well described the situation as “it remained his fate to be over-estimated ideologically and overlooked politically”.[662]

          The appointment of Goebbels as Propaganda Minister and the subordination of the Reich Chamber for Culture to his authority and that of Ley as leader of the German Labor Front, with responsibility for Kraft durch Freude,[663] led to the de facto neutralization of Rosenberg and the League.  Rosenberg was so hurt by the way jobs were handed out that in December 1933 he wrote to Hitler and explained that if the placement of his rivals in powerful positions would force him to break up the Combat League for German Culture, “there would be an unfortunate need for him to give up all cultural activity in the National-Socialist Party”.[664]

          The power struggles and Rosenberg’s feeling of having been pushed aside may explain why in January 1934 Hitler appointed him to a position bearing the extended and promising title of Fuehrer’s Representative for the Supervision of all Intellectual and Philosophical Training and Education of the German National-Socialist Party.[665]  However, the position had no real authority.  Amt Rosenberg, as it was called for short, did have control over  some departments in education, history, philosophy, Aryan worldview, Nordic questions, and ideological information,[666] but in general his authority was  extremely limited compared to that of Goebbels.

          In June 1934 Rosenberg decided to combine the Combat League for German Culture and the Nazi theater organization[667] into the National- Socialist cultural community.[668]  He hoped to use the new cultural communities as a power base in the struggle over Nazi culture and to strengthen the processes of unification.  “There is a real tug-of-war right now over questions of culture.  Everywhere I go I hear the same lament about the lack of direction of the Reich Chamber for Culture.  Everywhere it is clear to everyone that a mob has gathered there.  Veteran friends of Jews as presidents, lawyers for the Rotary in key positions, “National-Socialism without ability, and among all those a few industrious people who feel more than uncomfortable, in addition Goebbels’ contentless speeches, in a manner which bypasses all the problems.  It causes despair.  They are waiting for me but because a National Socialist is president of the Reich Chamber for Culture, it is hard to create a different Party organization without the Chamber, or more correctly – against it.”[669]

          It would appear that Rosenberg’s decision to unite the two bodies came too late;  a few months earlier the League had been placed under the authority of Ley’s Work through Joy[670] by Goebbels and its role reduced to providing ideological education for the members of the latter.[671]  This incident, which Rosenberg was forced to accept due to budgetary restrictions and manipulations by Goebbels and Ley, symbolized the final push which took the ideologue out of the corridors of power.

          The activities of the National-Socialist cultural communities were covered in its journal, Kunst und Volk, (figure 19) and even in the Völkischer Beobachter.  The communities were described there as responsible for preparing theatrical presentations for the members of Ley’s group and organizing exhibitions and other cultural activities.  Miller-Lane has emphasized that after 1935 the communities were no longer mentioned in the Nazi press, even though they continued to exist until 1937.[672]

          Rosenberg recognized the lessening of his standing, and decided on a strategy emphasizing his role as the “ideologue” of the Party.  He was constantly attacking Goebbels, claiming that he did not express firm enough stands on cultural issues and was too flexible on ideological principles, two things that the rigid Rosenberg was never willing to do.  Unlike the latter, Goebbels was more interested in the effectiveness of his propaganda and was an opportunist on everything connected to art.  He worked consistently according to his view that “propaganda has only one object, to conquer the masses.  Every means that furthers this aim is good;  every means that hinders it is bad.”[673]  Rosenberg rejected this view and attacked Goebbels, mockingly calling him “the great dictator”[674] and labeling him an opportunist with no ideological spine.

          The main mission which Rosenberg set himself was preserving volkish ideology and its pure expressions.  His opposition to the subjective contents of avant-garde works of art and the non-realist style of the Expressionists cannot be seen solely as part of the power struggle with Goebbels.  Like Hitler, Rosenberg saw Expressionism as a true threat, and thus the bitter struggle among the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture was not a only a tactical one.  The fact that the movement included German artists, some of them patriotic citizens who had taken part in the battles of World War I only made it necessary for Rosenberg and those who agreed with him to take an even more unambiguous stand. For this reason he took part in the aggressive attack on the Schreiber group.[675]

          Between 1933 and 1935 Rosenberg discussed the Expressionism in his articles and speeches in great detail and greater frequency.  One of his first, if indirect, references to the issue was in a July 1933 article.  “The visual arts have also been locked in a stubborn war of opinions for quite a while.  It is certainly clear that National Socialists with similar political beliefs are still divided on the question of art and on their judgment of certain artists opposing opinions often clash sharply.”[676]  Rosenberg carefully outlined the boundaries of consensus and stated that everyone agreed that certain styles were not suitable to the Nazi revolution, such as pseudo-Baroque structures from the nineteenth century or Jugendstil.  On the other hand, Expressionist artists were the cause of a real controversy.  “Around men like Barlach and Nolde there is a very emotional struggle.  A group of National-Socialist artists wants these two removed from the picture of our image of future art while another group, which calls itself revolutionary, has taken them to heart.”[677]

          Rosenberg did not deny that the two artists had “great talent”.  They showed excellent command of materials in their works, and in some cases their expressive abilities produced remarkable results.  However, despite their stylistic prowess, their art remained controversial because of its impossible contents.  They depicted “negroids with no fear of God, crude and lacking all true internal power of design.”[678]  Barlach’s Landsturm[679] (figure 20) was a good example of the problems.  His soldiers are positioned so that they are “staring in a half-idiotic and small-scale way out into the world, they are standing sealed and stupid one next to the other….”  For Rosenberg works of this sort led “each healthy man of the S.A.” to the conclusion that he could not accept art of this sort as a model for National Socialists to emulate. [680]

          Rosenberg was completely opposed to Expressionism and was not willing to accept that these artists would be seen as reflecting the absolute Nordic ideal of beauty he argued for.  For him, those who “today, in order to praise Barlach, claim that he has great faith” were hypocrites because the “deep belief”, as expressed in the Magdeburg monument, was “the groveling of a beaten slave”.  On the other hand, the “deep belief… which created The Rider of Magdeburg is the spiritual power of a man sure of himself and thinking big”.[681]

          The criticism of the works of these artists also included those who supported them.  Rosenberg claimed that Barlach and Nolde “excited ‘revolutionaries’ who generally had little connection to the visual arts….”[682]  He rejected the claim of the supporters of Expressionism that the style reflected an “ecstasy” which had always been a part of the German and explained instead that “ecstasy was never a crucial element in the history of German art”.[683]  The mistake made by the supporters of Expressionism stemmed from their confusion of “ecstasy” and “will” (Wille).  While the German was characterized by a heroic will, “those who try to make ecstasy a fundamental of German art are still living within the sick movement of the last 50 years, and it does not help if they display for us an image ‘saving’ Expressionism as slogans in the war against French Impressionism.”[684]  Rosenberg thus dismissed the attempt to display Expressionism as a style foretelling the Nazi revolution and as a movement springing from that which was essentially German.  “Experienced dialecticians draw before their eager students a line from Grünewald through Caspar David Friedrich, to – Nolde and his partners”, but this analysis was based on a mistake.[685]

          In order to illustrate his claims Rosenberg chose to emphasize the type of political stands taken by Expressionists.  “It is no coincidence that Nolde and Barlach, for example, were pushed excitedly to the front by the lords of November, who evidently sensed that these two artists represented a deviation from German art similar to the deviation of Otto Braun from German politics”.[686]  Accusing the Expressionists of leftist political views was meant to remove them from the Nazi camp.  The use of political arguments was not accidental;  Rosenberg used it to show that for him the argument over the nature of German art was not to be pushed to the edges of politics.  During 1934 he emphasized that “when considering this question publicly today, these are critical argumentsand not a petty quarrel on the surface of events in the visual arts.”[687]  Rosenberg saw the potential value of political arguments in general and more specifically of hints about political activities during the Weimar Republic, and therefore strengthened the identification he made between cultural Bolshevism and the Expressionist movement.  “If during those years the expression ‘cultural Bolshevism’ became stained there is good reason for it.  What was revealed in the political area as destructive work against the people and nation during the last fifteen years has a parallel phenomenon in the area of art and culture in general….  The same forces which represented the Communist worldview had to deal consistently in the war of destruction not only of the political sphere but also of the cultural.”[688]

          The National-Socialist war against Bolshevism must therefore include cultural Bolshevism;  here again it must be strong and not wavering.  The opinions favoring official approval for Expressionism reflected weakness.  Rosenberg explained that “insecurity can become dangerous when the conscious carriers of cultural destruction… make use of such opinions and attempt to reduce the general seriousness of the political-artistic war in order to break apart in this way the National-Socialist movement in art, because they did not succeed in doing so in the political area.”[689]   Those asking to include Expressionism in the Nazi movement were subversives and opportunists.  Rosenberg claimed that they had not taken part in the building of the Nazi movement and had even bitterly opposed it on the spiritual level.  The artists they represented were not loyal to the Party.  “Either they lied then or they are lying today.  In either case the National-Socialist movement does not see itself as recognizing them as belonging.”[690]

          The inability of Rosenberg and Goebbels to reach a compromise on the question of Expressionist art finally led Hitler to intervene.  Modern art, which at that stage was already a clear part of the political struggle, demanded a decisive answer.  The existence of opposing opinions could not be allowed for an extended period.  Hitler therefore addressed the issue in his speech at the Party congress in Nuremberg in 1934, and sharply criticized both stands.  He came out strongly against the position of the Schreiber group when he explained that avant-garde styles could not be accepted for racial or even national reasons.  All of the modern styles, including Expressionism, had to disappear.  However, Hitler also opposed Rosenberg’s view and claimed that “the sudden emergence of backward-looking cranks who think that they can spin an old-style Germany out of the muddled world of their own romantic  imaginings and bequeath it to the National-Socialist revolution” also had to be put under control.[691]

          The radical conservative tone of the artists who were members of Rosenberg’s League was also criticized in the speech;  they were labeled something between anachronistic to reactionary.  “They never were National Socialists. Either they inhabited the ivory tower of a Germanic dream world that even the Jews thought ridiculous, or they marched along dutifully in the crusading ranks of a bourgeois renaissance.… After our victory… they hastened to descend from the exalted ranks of their bourgeois parties… to offer their services as political thinkers and strategists to a National Socialist movement that has been mobilized, as they thought, by nothing more than the beating of drums. But they were unable to comprehend the vastness of the change the German people had undergone in the meantime. So they are now offering us railroad stations in the Renaissance style, street signs and typewriters with genuine Gothic letters.…”[692]

          These words reflect Hitler’s position;  he rejected all tendencies to support modernism as represented by Goebbels, but did not completely accept the reactionary position identified with Rosenberg.  Though Hitler was personally closer to Rosenberg on these issues, it would seem that pragmatic motives led him to choose a stand showing that he made all the decisions in the area, and that neither side would be given a monopoly on the setting of artistic policy.  Even though Rosenberg was personally pushed to the sidelines, his conservative opinions finally emerged victorious in aesthetics.  The closeness of ideas between Rosenberg and Hitler can be seen in an examination of their politics of culture and was based on their mutual belief that it was necessary to develop an aesthetics of race;  Goebbels did not share this view.

          Hitler shared responsibilities between Rosenberg and Goebbels according to the principle of divide and conquer, as he did in many other areas beyond the scope of this book.  From the middle of the 1930s onward Goebbels was responsible for the formal-technocratic side of the control over cultural activities and of course for general propaganda needs;  Rosenberg was given only symbolic power and was made chief editor of Die Kunst im deutschen Reich,[693] (figure 21) which expressed the official line on matters of art.  Other journals, which were identified with Goebbels, were pushed aside.  For example, Kunst der Nation, the journal used by the Schreiber group to express their views on Expressionism, was closed in 1935.[694]

          Thus, the Expressionist movement was not made part of the volkish alternative and its artists, including Barlach and Nolde, were not only included in the “Degenerate” Art exhibition of 1937 as authentic representatives of modern art, but were also persecuted by the Nazis.  Even so, the argument over Expressionism remains an important milestone in the development of the Nazi politics of culture, as the very existence of disagreement among those shaping this policy indicates the unique importance of art in the Nazi regime.  While the argument was ended by Hitler in the middle of 1937, it proves that complete unity in aesthetics did not exist before that time, and that a hole in the totalitarian apparatus had existed which would not have been tolerated after 1937.

          The victory of Rosenberg’s approach on the ideological level shows that Hitler and National Socialism preferred to give up on the potential support of certain parts of the educated bourgeoisie and to express instead a unified opposition to modern art.  The argument over positions on Expressionism reflects a preference for a mass and petit-bourgeois base of support for the Party, as well as a preference for total ideological purity even if the price was reducing the potential sources of support.

After 1937 Rosenberg held mostly ceremonial positions. For example, on Party culture days, which marked the opening of the annual Party congresses, he, and not Goebbels, made the keynote speech after the “culture speech” of Hitler.  He also received official honors, such as the awarding of the “Nationalpreise für Kunst und Wissenschaft” in September 1937 for his contributions to the development of the Nazi worldview.  Goebbels, on the other hand, was left with the real power.  It would seem that Rosenberg himself was aware of the division of work between Goebbels and himself.  He stated in his memoirs that “Hitler knew very well, of course, that I understood art and culture much more deeply than Goebbels, who could hardly look beyond the mere surface.  In spite of this he left the leadership in a field that he loved passionately in the hands of this man because, as I realized at many future occasions, Goebbels was able to give Hitler the kind of setting I should never have been able to contrive. Goebbels took beautiful and gifted artists and great actresses, to the Führer. He told him stories about life among artists. He fed the theatrical element in his nature …..”[695]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             Ideals and alternatives: Volkish Art

 

 

          From his developed worldview in the area of art Rosenberg derived a most detailed response to the schools of art and styles he despised and also those he preferred as models which volkish art should emulate.  His detailed politics of culture included a program with a set of instructions for the mobilized artist.  Rosenberg wanted to direct the artists in a comprehensive way about everything connected to the image of the final product preferred by the new regime.  He did not make do with the rejection of various artistic movements, but defined exactly which artists he liked and what the contents of the new aesthetics, that reflecting the people and the race, were to be.

          Like Schultze-Naumburg, Rosenberg detailed the themes he thought were worthy of portrayal and discussed the ideal style for portraying them.  In order to illustrate his claims he used examples from the artistic styles he preferred.  His background in art often resulted in his words taking on a critical tone.  For example, Neo-Classicism, as has been shown, produced an ambivalent response.  He did not see it as worthy of imitation because it was not based on race criteria, and therefore its products, though based on an ideal of beauty similar to the Nordic ideal, were too static.  The Romantic movement, some of whose artists were admired by Hitler, was also problematic, thought not enough so to cause complete rejection.  His main argument in favor of Romanticism was based on the Romantic artists’ clear connection to nature.  This connection was fundamental, as “if there is a main characteristic of the German it is his deep feeling for nature…. The German always tries to listen to the laws of nature.”[696]

          Rosenberg accepted the themes portrayed by the Romantic artists, but emphasized that not all of them managed to correctly express the connection between the Nordic man and nature.  For example, the works of Caspar David Friedrich were exceptional in that he was among the few artists who succeeded in expressing the “reawakening of Romantic painting”.[697]  Rosenberg was hinting here at his pre-Nazi positions;  he chose the most radical representative of the Romantic movement, an artist disliked by Hitler.  On the other hand, some of the other Romantic artists had sunk into “dreamy Romanticism”.[698]

          The saccharinity of the Biedermeier school[699] found in the works of some Romantic artists was not to Rosenberg’s liking;  he attacked it for concentrating on “mediocre criteria and internal happiness, not threatened by great passions”.[700]  Unlike Hitler, who liked the Biedermeier artists, Rosenberg indicated the problematic nature of the style, as it tried to depict a false harmony.  The excessive Biedermeier utopia was not acceptible because it pulled the rug out from under the desire of all art, especially Romantic art, to deliver a message and serve as an educational tool.

          The tendency of contemporary volkish artists to see Romantic art as their model was opposed by Rosenberg.  In 1923 he explained “when we turn our glance to painting we see an unfortunate phenomenon;  most of our volkish painters look at the art of the past as if hypnotized.  We must of course admit that some of our artists today look at the world as for example one Schongauer or one Ludwig Richter did.”[701]  Using a political analogy he stated that the copying of the past was like “the actions of the conservatives in politics….  Instead of listening to the rhythm of the present they close themselves off from the whole world with books and pictures from past periods [and then] they get angry and wonder why chaotic movements suddenly sprout everywhere.”[702]

          This point illustrates the special type of “reactionary modernism” Rosenberg had.  He emphasized the need for a new art which would respond to the present and the National-Socialist revolution, and not copy the past out of reactionary desires.  However, he believed that the Nazi worldview in the area of art must achieve a combination of old and new.  “Old in the same racial appreciation like the great Venetians (Titian, Palme, Giorgione) painted it, like Rafael and Botticelli painted it; like it was resurrected in the works of Wagner.  New – because the powers and forms of today would wrap it.”[703]  Rosenberg was worried about the fact that art would only deal with copying the old, because such a situation would indicate that the volkish politics of culture he wanted was not being established.  He thus pushed Nazi artists not just to copy but to reflect all the aspects of the Nazi revolution in their works.  He stated that “the present times have a greater right to demand expression instead of daydreams and moaning about the dead past of art.  Only an artist who understands the impulses of the present will also find in the future an artistic form for himself.”[704]

          Rosenberg believed that the dreamy Romanticism must be replaced by a “Romanticism of steel”.[705]  This combination, which other Nazi ideologues, especially Goebbels, frequently used, was explained by Rosenberg as “our times have their own romanticism, but this romanticism is not that of Ludwig Richter or Moritz von Schwind.  It is reminiscent of Jahn and Arndt, of the stormy flags of youth of the freedom fighters, and of the deep seriousness of 1914”.[706]  In other words, romanticism had to receive new political contents which would be nationalist instead of defeatist.  It was necessary, as Jahn had preached, to be ready “to forcibly bring the world to culture”.  Instead of the harmonious and quiet message of Richter the gymnastics organizations of Father Jahn, which would prepare fighters for the battle, were needed.  “The steel age produced its romanticism of iron.  Serving the hot, young German nationalism with all of its demands is the romanticism of today and tomorrow.  Who would not want to enter into this service?”[707]

          The rejection of the artistic style of Richter and von Schwind, two of the artists most loved by Hitler, shows not only that Rosenberg and Hitler had different artistic tastes but that the Nazi politics of culture did not achieve an immediate Gleichschaltung of ideas.  Different interpretations of the image of volkish art, even if the differences were minor, continued to compete until the middle of the 1930s.

          Rosenberg rejected the possibility of resurrecting the art of the past and therefore his speeches and writings contain almost no mention of specific artists who should be emulated.  A few exceptional names are mentioned, such as Holbein, Dürer, Friedrich, Goethe, and Wagner, but in general Rosenberg, unlike Hitler and Schultze-Naumburg, thought it important to develop a unique art stemming from race and reflecting the Nazi revolution, and therefore his works lack particular historical precedents.

          The process of creating a completely new aesthetic model was going to be long and complicated. Rosenberg frequently emphasized this during the period after the seizure of power and especially during 1934, at the height of the power struggle with Goebbels.  He explained that the war of cultures in the Weimar Republic did achieve political results but damaged the ability to immediately express National-Socialism in art.  “Until a single artistic style will develop, we will need whole generations with a certain directed artistic feeling….”[708]  A different explanation was that “the awakening feeling of life has not yet received visual expression.  The great spiritual tension has not yet been strong enough to create a true monumental expression”.  Rosenberg emphasized the fact that volkish art had not yet developed sufficiently to prevent a feeling of confusion in the younger generation.  They needed to be told explicitly that there were still no leading artists.[709]  The seemingly naive claim he made here was meant to serve as ammunition in the struggle against Goebbels.  He attacked Goebbels and described him as one hoping to enlist the Expressionists into the Nazi revolution instead of dealing with the problems stemming from the creation of the new aesthetics.

          The outline of volkish art did not include artistic theories.  Rosenberg had completely rejected the rational tradition of the Enlightenment, and therefore believed that the volkish artist could not act according to “theoretical considerations but only based on experience”.[710]  Instead of theory, he stated that “the fundamental principles of future art will not be derived from rules and laws but only from the new spiritual direction”.[711]  It was thus important for Rosenberg to emphasize the intuitive nature of artistic activity.  The artist was called to depict experiences and myths stemming from his organic connections with the people. 

As far as the content of volkish art went, Rosenberg described a less consistent approach which did not always fit the rules he himself had dictated for style and form.  The main myth and guiding force was the myth of heroism.  “The deal of today are the living connecting links… the founders the volkish myth.  The are the greatest witnesses to the eternal nature of the ideas of race and people….  Out of this myth will someday arise new culture and art.”[712]

          Volkish art must return to the Nordic man the heroism which had characterized him and arm him with the racial superiority which had been his in the past.  Rosenberg explained that “the heroic power of will (Willenhaften) is the hidden means which directed our thinkers, our researchers, and our artists”.[713]  Art, an inseparable part of politics, had to supply the individual, a member of the Nazi community, with the values from which he could draw an archetype worthy of imitation.  “The new workers’ movement waking today – National-Socialism – will be forced to prove whether it is capable of providing the German worker and the whole people with him not only with a political idea but also an ideal of beauty of masculine power and masculine will, a sublime spiritual value which will control all [and be] a precondition for an organic art washing through life and creating life.”[714]

          Rosenberg described a vision of kitsch and death mixed together with the new civil religion.  “Monuments for heroes and memorial forests will be turned by the new generation into pilgrimage sites of the new religion where great numbers of Germans will be reshaped again and again and a new myth will be developed.  Using art they will again overcome the world.”[715]  The ultimate value which must control German life was heroism;  those who died in the war were those who gave the people coming together their lives.

               Volkish art could not make do with depictions of the warrior hero and the heroic myth;  it must also provide a clear and unambiguous model for emulation.  Rosenberg therefore provided a detailed description of his ideal fighters.  “A strong and furrowed forehead, a straight and strong nose with an angled shape, a well-closed and narrow mouth in whose deep slash can be seen tense will, wide-open eyes looking straight ahead consciously into the distance, into eternity, masculinity with the will of a soldier at the front.” (figure 22)  He saw this ideal of beauty as groundbreaking and as completely different from that of the past because it was based on race.  “This new beauty is also the picture of beauty which belongs to the race, especially of the German worker, and more generally of the contemporary fighting German.”[716]

          The way in which soldiers had been depicted in the period after German unification in 1871 was embarrassing for Rosenberg, and he wanted it changed.  “After 1871 theatrical soldiers raising flags [were depicted]… with bayonets and cannon, all of it without depth and without symbolic character, without true tragedy, and even without a true joy of victory”.  The replacement should be figures who were simple of form, monumental, describing soldiers marching in a slow and restrained way.  This style would show “the simple greatness and restrained drama” of the soldiers which should be the basis of volkish art.[717] 

          Rosenberg, who rejected the kitschy depictions of the Biedermeier school, emphasized the need for simplicity and for avoiding “all false splendor”.  Only in these conditions could volkish art depict the true life of the people.  He was aware of the difficulty in creating an optimal model which could mobilize artists.  In an article published in the Völkischer Beobachter he addressed the great difficulties in the “rewelding of millions of people”[718] and explained that in order for this mission to succeed culture must be placed under the control of the regime in a sophisticated manner.  “The role of our times is to see man as part of a single experience, to magnetize him, and to direct him toward one goal”.[719]  In order to successfully hypnotize the masses, a worldview was needed, as Rosenberg did not believe that propaganda alone could do the job.

          This worldview clearly needed the tools of a dictatorship to back it up.  In 1938 Rosenberg described retrospectively the cultural doctrine needed to enforce the aesthetic worldview he desired.  “The National-Socialist movement entered into more and more areas of life, our thoughts and feelings needed to enter into the thinnest branches of our existence in order to respond to all of the problems that appeared….”[720]

          This seemingly heroic view of the abilities of the new regime somewhat blurred the gaps between his vision of the aesthetic worldview, the community of the people, Gleichschaltung, and reality.  Rosenberg developed a system of terms for evaluating the contents of volkish art.  He even managed to influence the removal of the supporters of Expressionism from the legitimate boundaries of volkish art and to describe them as “degenerate”.  However, the closed politics of culture he suggested as the basis for the unification of the “dictatorship of culture” was not completely accepted.  Rosenberg became a symbol of radicalism in the framework of a vague consensus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Architect of Race: Paul Schultze-Naumburg 

 

Professor Paul Schultze-Naumburg was one of the main figures shaping the Nazi politics of culture and Nazi ideology on aesthetics.  His books from the late 1920s were an attempt to provide a theoretical basis for the Nazi positions on modern art, which otherwise could only be deduced from extemporaneous statements made by figures who would later become Party leaders.  His writings took to an extreme the idea that modern art reflected madness and that avant-garde artists were deliberately degenerating societies. He saw art as a reflection of race which would therefore serve as a constructive factor or as a unifying instrument in the hands of the rulers, something which would facilitate the implementation of Nazi ideology. 

Despite his contributions, his writings have been almost completely neglected by art historians, historians of ideas, and political scientists.  Art historians have paid some attention to his work, and his 1928 book Kunst und Rasse (Art and Race) has sometimes been cited, but the other research that he did has hardly been considered. The lack of interest art historians have shown in his life and work is unclear; I do not agree with Petropoulos that Schultze-Naumburg “did very little to advance the study of art”.[721] I would argue instead that the traces of his worldview are evident in Nazi aesthetics on both the theoretical and practical levels. Not only did he offer a systematic worldview, his views and works affected the praxis of the Nazi politics of culture; he was among the first to introduce methods such as juxtaposition.

Schultze-Naumburg was one of the first among the Nazi elite to examine the relationship between art and race methodically.  The theory he developed on the links between the two stressed the urgent need to purge the Nordic race of alien influences, and included all of the principal elements of Nazi politics of culture years before Hitler assumed power.  His combination of anti-modernism, anti-urbanism, extreme conservatism, and antisemitism later came to be seen as typical of the Nazi worldview.  In addition, he included a version of the conspiracy theory which saw Jewish control of capital as explaining the emergence and continuing dominance of the avant-garde in art.  Hitler used a similar concept in his early speeches, though in a slightly different way.[722]

The parallel between modern art and insanity comes from the works of Schultze-Naumburg, and he was one of the first Nazis to try to justify such arguments on the basis of pseudo-scientific research. His findings were based on studies of the art of the insane carried out mainly by Prinzhorn during the early 1920s at the Heidelberg psychiatric clinic.

The idea from his Kampf um die Kunst (Struggle for Art) that the race of the artist was inevitably reflected in his art, together with his view that culture and politics were inextricably linked, were repeatedly used by the numerous Nazi leaders who accepted his views.  Schultze-Naumburg also authored a call to remove all of the barriers between art and politics in order to provide the National-Socialist revolution with as broad a basis as possible.

Hitler was familiar with the works of Schultze-Naumburg (a copy of his Die Kunst der Deutschen was in the Fuehrer’s personal library), and the two met on several occasions starting in the mid 1920s. The latter brought clippings of newspaper articles supporting modern art to a meeting with Hitler in 1933.[723] Hitler was enraged and immediately ordered that the National Gallery in Berlin[724] be purged of the vestiges of modern art still on display. Other senior Nazis, including Josef Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Frick, and Walther Darré, had met Schultze-Naumburg during the late 1920s when he participated in the activities of the Combat League for German Culture. His activities for the League were extensively and favorably covered in 1931 and 1932 in the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi press organ.

In the years following the Nazi takeover Schultze-Naumburg became one of the main art critics of the Party and a member of the reactionary wing of Nazi ideologues on aesthetics.  Like Rosenberg he attacked Goebbels and criticized his appointment as Propaganda Minister several times, warning that his pragmatic approach, particularly his favorable view of the idea that Nazi art should include the views of the new, revolutionary era, such as Expressionism, might harm the Party.  Schultze-Naumburg’s uncompromising opinions widened an already deep gap between the positions of the fanatic guardians of the Nazi politics of culture who favored purity, and those of the officials of the Propaganda Ministry on the question of the character and direction of Nazi art.  This division continued until Hitler rendered his verdict on the eve of the opening of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition in July 1937.[725]

Goebbels and Albert Speer, who felt threatened by the extremely conservative positions and the volkish politics of culture of Rosenberg and Schultze-Naumburg, went to great lengths to have the latter removed from all of his posts in the Reich Chamber for Culture.  In 1939 Speer even prevented the distribution of a collection of drawings entitled “Buildings of the Movement”, arguing that it placed “too great an emphasis on the work of Schultze-Naumburg”.[726] Although these struggles ended with the minimization of Schultze-Naumburg’s importance within the Nazi elite, there are clear traces of his theories in the shaping of  the Nazi politics of culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Road to National Socialism

 

          Schultze-Naumburg worked as an architect in Germany before World War I.  He became known for designing apartment buildings in a simple style and earned a considerable reputation.[727]  He also authored articles in prestigious architectural journals.  After the war the demand for his designs declined and his reputation suffered.  He published a number of articles in an attempt to defend the old-style architecture he favored.  During those early years his arguments dealt mainly with his profession; the chief target of his criticism was the “conveyors of the new style”, the architects of the Bauhaus school. 

During 1926, the year he met Hitler at Wagner’s home in Bayreuth for the first time,[728] his positions became more extreme. These changes are particularly evident in his 1926 Das ABC des Bauens (The ABC of Architecture). An anti-urbanist approach underlay his increasingly strident attacks, but on the whole he still concentrated on architectural topics in a manner that was primarily meant for members of the profession. The topics are listed in alphabetical order and included a comparison of the old and new styles.  Despite his clear preference for the old, Schultze-Naumburg did not venture beyond his profession, and his contention that the proposals of the supporters of the new style “are as a rule based on limited professional knowledge” is the sharpest critique made.[729]

          His process of radicalization can be seen in a series of exchanges with Walther Gropius in the pages of the Deutsche Bauzeitung and other journals.  This architectural debate was published under the title “Who is Right?  Traditional Architecture or Building in New Forms” during 1926. Schultze-Naumburg presented his conservative views and explained that even though architecture in the new age had new tasks, and that architectural traditions could no longer serve as the only guide, at its core architecture still needed to answer the same basic needs. “Eating, drinking, sleeping, sociability, and cozy togetherness are extremely conservative things”. The addition of contemporary issues such as “nation, race, culture” made it certain that traditional forms could still be suitable.[730] The Bauhaus style, one of whose features was the flat roof, showed a radical break with “our entire past” and had nothing in common with “our German spirit and German landscape“.[731] Bauhaus was instantly recognizable as “the child of other skies and other blood”.[732] 

The radicalization of his thought was explicitly expressed in Schultze-Naumburg’s 1928 Kunst und Rasse (Art and Race), whichis perhaps one of the most provocative ideological texts produced under the influence of National Socialism.  Like his other works, it was read by the Nazi leadership, including Hitler,[733] and was even placed on a recommended reading list of the Third Reich.[734]  In this book, he refined the comparative methodology which juxtaposed modern art and mental illness or physiological abnormality. (figure 23)  This methodology would later be used by the Nazis on various occasions such as the “Degenerate” Art exhibition of 1937 and in different publications by the Nazi art critics; all borrowed it to foster their arguments.[735]

Shortly after the publication of Art and Race in 1928, Schultze- Naumburg founded a society of architects called Der Block,[736]which met at his home in Saaleck.  The society’s manifesto asserted the need to protect German artists and their natural patrimony.[737]  Shortly thereafter he published his Die Geschichte des deutschen Hauses (The History of the German House), an attempt to explain in detail the connections between architecture, race, and culture.  He again used a comparative methodology, but this time to delineate the differences between houses built in the old style and those in the new one.  Schultze-Naumburg described the latter as posing a threat to the German people and argued that the former was a source of racial and national identity.  “The German house makes one feel as if it grows from the ground… like a tree that sends its roots deep into the soil and merges with it.  This house provides us with an awareness of the homeland (Heimat), the bond with the soil and the universe.”[738]

          After Wilhelm Frick was appointed a member of the National Socialist- led coalition in the state of Thuringia in 1930, he started replacing those occupying key posts in cultural institutions.  He stated that his ambition was to purge Thuringia of all “immoral and racially alien elements in the arts”.[739]  His most important step was to replace Walther Gropius with Schultze-Naumburg at the Bauhaus;[740]  the latter was appointed director of the Joint School of Arts.  Frick also appointed racial ideologue Hans Günther to a professorship at the University of Jena.

Schultze-Naumburg’s term in office lasted less than a year;  he was forced to leave after the right-wing parties withdrew their support from Frick.  Even so, his brief tenure was sufficient to have works by Ernst Barlach, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff removed from public places in Weimar.  Murals by Schlemmer, which had been designed especially for the building of the Bauhaus school, were obliterated and replaced with local art works and German decorative motifs.  Schultze-Naumburg even started proceedings which led to the firing of faculty members at the Bauhaus school.  He claimed that too many of them supported the ideas of Gropius.

Very early on Schultze-Naumburg’s activities in Thuringia attracted the attention of Nazi Party officials.  The Völkischer Beobachter, which had only printed a brief review of Art and Race when the book was published, now started to provide detailed coverage of his speeches and books and described him as “the true representative of German architecture.”[741]

After the creation of the Combat League for German Culture by Rosenberg in 1928 he went to great lengths to recruit the members of the League from the conservative establishment, including highly-respected university professors, in order to broaden its base of support within a short time.[742]  When Frick introduced Schultze-Naumburg to Rosenberg, the latter quickly saw this prominent conservative architect as a good candidate for membership in the League.  The conservative-racial approach used in Art and Race was quite compatible with the League’s racialist attacks on various trends in contemporary art.  In 1931 the League financed a series of lectures by Schultze-Naumburg in major German cities called “The Struggle for Art”; the same title was used for a book published in 1932.  The lectures summarized the arguments from his earlier books.  Comparative analysis inevitably led to a denunciation of modern art and the glorification of “masterpieces” of medieval German works of art, especially the Bamberg Rider,[743] a famous sculpture which Schultze-Naumburg discussed in detail in his books.[744]  His anti-urbanist tone became even more strident during the course of these lectures.  “The metropolis caused the loss of the idea of the Heimat, the German house planted in the soil.”[745]

          Most of Schultze-Naumburg’s lectures were given at universities and technical institutes; in most cases, Rosenberg introduced him.  Due to his provocative style, he was provided with SA bodyguards for his protection.  In at least two cases the lectures ended violently.  Rener has described one such incident.  The painter Waltz Panizza was clubbed by stormtroopers for shouting “Where is the good German art?” during a lecture in Munich;  among others, Panizza was referring to the Expressionists.[746]  The lecture series received extensive coverage in the Nazi press, especially in the Völkischer Beobachter, which reported on them in great detail and declared them an “unexpected success”.[747]

          Senior League officials saw the considerable media coverage of Schultze-Naumburg’s lecture tour as a huge success and decided to publish his lectures and other works.  In the end, more copies of his works were circulated than those of any other member of the League except for Rosenberg.[748]  At the second annual congress of the League in Weimar in June 1930, Rosenberg, Darré, and Frick all mentioned Schultze-Naumburg in their addresses, and even used his words when attacking “urban, rootless” architecture.[749]  The publicity generated by the lecture tour led Interior Minister Frick to appoint Schultze-Naumburg to the post of Advisor for Art Affairs in 1933.[750]  In the early 1930s he thus became “the party’s principal spokesman on architectural questions”,[751] and helped boost the membership of the League, as other conservative intellectuals also became members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toward a Theory of Art, Race and Degeneration

From Nordau’s cultural degeneration to Schultze-Naumburg’s racial Degeneration

 

Schultze-Naumburg wrote extensively on the definition of degenerate art, the causes for its emergence, and its chief representatives.  His work in this area drew heavily on the concept of degeneration that became a “generative metaphor” or “explanatory myth”[752] during the second half of the nineteenth century. Several historians, including Mosse, share the view that “degeneration” became a “powerful slogan”[753] in Europe through Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau. It seems that Schultze-Naumburg borrowed his terminology from these authors, as well as from studies on Social Darwinism and racism. He was alsofamiliar with the implications of these writings and thoughts as they were developed by Hans Prinzhorn and others.

          Max Nordau’s Entartung (Degeneration) appeared in 1892, and was dedicated to Cesare Lombroso, whose 1876 L’uomo delinquente (The Criminal Man) had become a scientific sensation in Europe.  Measurements of the skulls of criminals led Lombroso to the conclusion that they exhibited a remarkably similar structure.  Like the French psychiatrist Benedict Augustin Morel, Lombroso saw criminology as a tool for dealing with the threats to progressive society.[754]  In addition to the scientific research he carried out on the nature of the criminal, Lombroso dealt with the genius, the artist, the political revolutionary, and the prostitute.  All of these groups were seen as degenerate, and Lombroso’s works paved the way for a more intensive discussion of cultural degeneration, as seen in Nordau, and the stereotypical popular thought which reached a peak at the end of the nineteenth century.

Lombroso used photographs to display the physiognomy of the insane; it was not a unique methodology, as other psychiatrists and criminologists of the period also used it.[755]  Later, Schultze-Naumburg and other Nazis used this technique to support their claims that the degenerate artist was insane and that the racially degenerate had a different external appearance.

Lombroso did not just sketch the characteristics of the criminal.  His provocative Man of Genius from 1891 and The Female Offender: The Prostitute and the Normal Woman from 1893 provide empirical physiological ways to identify the degenerate.  These works led to the strengthening of the theories connecting social and racial degeneration, though this was not Lombroso’s aim.

The chapter on “The Genius and Degeneration” states that a large percentage of the physical and mental disturbances which afflict the genius are the result of hereditary or accidental degeneration.  The physical disturbances are listed, together with a list of geniuses and creative individuals who suffered from each of them.  The list includes “short stature, rickets, pallor, emaciation, cretin-like physiognomy, very frequent lesions of the cranium and brain, left-handedness, unlikeness to parents”.  Additional disturbances attributed to the genius were “stammering, sterility, precocity or delayed development, misoneism, vagabondage, unconsciousness and instinctiveness, somnambulism, genius in inspiration, originality, amnesia, fondness for special words”. [756]  Lombroso claimed that all of these disturbances did not necessarily appear in the genius, but “the conception of the morbid and degenerative character of genius is confirmed and completed more and more when its isolated phenomena are subjected to a more rigorous examination….”[757]

Greenslade has claimed that The Man of Genius, together with works from the late 1880s and the early 1890s which dealt with genius, especially the artistic genius as an insane type, created the conditions for the commotion over the appearance of Nordau’s Degeneration.[758]  More importantly, the connection between genius and degeneration legitimized the labeling of whole populations and led to the vulgar stereotyping of groups in society.  If the genius could be degenerate, the members of inferior races certainly could be.

Lombroso’s influence on Nordau is evident;  the latter argued that “it is not necessary to measure the cranium of an author or to see the lobe of a painter’s ear in order to recognize the fact that he belongs to the class of degenerates.”[759] Nordau saw his task as examining the spiritual dimension of degeneracy just as Lombroso had analyzed its physical dimension.

          Nordau’s critique of German society is based on his analysis of its literature and art.  He saw evidence for the degeneration of German society in the numerous contemporary novels and plays which featured sick and abnormal characters, the motif of sexual aberration, which was a recurrent theme, and the pessimist fin-de-siècle spirit found in art works.  His claim was “that every healthy person who does not allow himself to be prejudiced by the noisy admiration of the critics, who are themselves degenerates”,[760] could identify the works of degenerate artists.  Nordau thus stretched the concept of degeneration to include both the art critics and the artists;  both contributed to theprocess of degeneration.

               Impressionism is mentioned by Nordau as an example of degeneration:  “the curious style of certain recent painters – ‘impressionists’… becomes at once intelligible to us if we keep in view the researches of the Charcot school into the visual derangements in degeneration and hysteria.  The painters who assure us that they are sincere, and reproduce nature as they see it, speak the truth.  The degenerate artist who suffers from nystagmus, or trembling of the eyeball, will, in fact, perceive the phenomena of nature trembling, restless, devoid of firm outline.”[761]

 

Insanity and modern art

 

The link between modern art, degeneration, and insanity proposed by Nordau was elaborated and expanded by Schultze-Naumburg in his 1928 Kunst und Rasse. Any analysis of this book must begin with a discussion of the peculiar methodology of juxtaposition used by the author.  The chapter on the “Racial Implications of Contemporary Art”[762] presents photographs of people with physiological abnormalities and the mentally retarded.  These are compared with photographs of modern painters from Modigliani to the German Expressionists.  The attempt to draw a link between modern art and illness soon became a link between the avant-garde and mental illness. This link is certainly not a Nazi invention, as it was built on a selective acceptance of earlier sources, such as Romantic thinkers.[763]  During the late nineteenth century such attempts were common, as can be seen in the works of Lombroso. 

In Germany the art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn published in 1922 the Art of the Insane: A Contribution to the Psychology and Psychopathology of Artistic Creation.  Prior to the publication of his book Prinzhorn carried out three years of wide-ranging research; he assembled some 4500 works by about 450 psychiatric patients, mostly schizophrenics, from mental asylums in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands.  Prinzhorn was hoping to open a museum of works by the mentally ill and mount an exhibition in Heidelberg, but neither project was realized. In 1921, “as a result of professional disagreements and difficulties in his personal and family life, he left the collection, the clinic and the city”.[764]

Prinzhorn’s study presents the patients’ art works and analyzes their common themes. He compared works by schizophrenics, children’s drawings, paintings by adults with no artistic training, and the works of “primitive” tribes and prehistoric cultures, claiming that “the particularly close relationship between a large number of our pictures [done by schizophrenics and analyzed in the book] and contemporary art is obvious.”[765]  Prinzhorn even mentioned the works of two Expressionist painters, Max Pechstein and Erich Heckel, as providing evidence for his conclusions.  At the same time, however, aware of the danger in his statements, he toned down his conclusions.  He stated that “the astonishing fact that the schizophrenic outlook and that displayed in recent art can only be described by the same words”[766] just indicated an external similarity between the products, while the real reasons for the methods used by modern painters were different. According to Prinzhorn, the schizophrenic had no choice but to adjust to his psychotic estrangement and the deep changes in his subjective world.  The healthy artist, on the other hand, could make a conscious and rational choice to change his focus from the external reality he was familiar with to his private experiences.  While this transition was indeed related to the “alienation” which the modern artist felt toward contemporary reality, the causes for the estrangement from reality were different in the two cases.

Prinzhorn’s efforts to play down his conclusions were part of his debate with Wilhelm Weygandt, a collector and poet, professor at the Hamburg University clinic, who denounced all that was “uncontrolled and deviant”.[767] Weygandt dealt intensively with racial purity.[768] In a 1921 article he argued that “all the startling similarities and affinities between lunatic art and the excesses of the modern movement do not in themselves entitle us to dismiss the painters of such pictures as mentally ill. But the affinity in individual traits – betokens a deviance from the paths of normal thinking and feeling, a degeneracy that means in our unhealthy and troubled age, that the dignity of man sinks lower than ever”.[769]   

          Even though there is some debate over the question whether Prinzhorn was associated with National Socialism, his works did receive considerable attention during the Third Reich. Gilman has concluded that there is no evidence that Hitler was familiar with Prinzhorn’s work,[770] but journal reviews and other reactions in a broad range of publications, including the organs of the extreme right, support the assumption that the future Nazi leadership was aware of his work.[771]  The tendency to attempt to support Nazi ideology with pseudo-scientific theories and the belief that established scientists would provide evidence substantiating racial doctrines can clearly be seen in the ways that Prinzhorn’s study was used. Some of the pictures from his Heidelberg exhibition appeared in the 1937 catalogue of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition alongside reproductions of works by Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, and others.[772] (figure 25) Other pictures used by Schultze-Naumburg were given to him by Weygandt, who made his collection of photographs of inmates of “idiot-institutions, psychiatric clinics, cripples’ homes, leper colonies” available.[773] The link between modern art and mental illness and insanity became a central theme in Nazi ideology, and recurs in various forms.

 

The history of degeneration and its causes

 

          Schultze-Naumburg, like the German Romantics, saw the French Revolution as a turning point whose consequences posed a danger to authentic German culture.  “The first shock administered to the ideal of racial form (rassischen Zielbilde) came from France, the country in which the first liberal revolution took place.”[774]  This revolution set the process of degeneration into motion.  “The spirituality of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries bears the imprint of the liberal ideas brought forth by the French Revolution of 1789.  These ‘western’ (westischen) notions have long stood in complete opposition to the fundamental ideas that the Nordic-German man created for himself.  They have infiltrated our country like a bacillus.”[775]

          A combination of social, political, and economic factors brought the process of degeneration to its highest point during the Weimar Republic.  The liberal tradition which had slowly infiltrated Germany before World War I became dominant after 1918;  “degenerate” manifestations of culture became ascendant.  It was therefore quite clear that “over the last twenty years we find in it [art] such a strong emphasis on and preference for the degeneration of the Volk which in turn is explained by the growing degeneration of the Volk itself.”[776] The liberal values of the Weimar Republic facilitated the process during which “another kind of people began to push themselves into the center of activity.”[777]  This “other kind” was the Jew.  Explicit anti-Semitic elements did not appear in the 1928 version of Schultze-Naumburg’s theory linking race and art, but only criticism of “alien races” in general, referring mainly to black races.

After 1933 a distinctly antisemitic dimension was added to his racial theory. In 1934 he followed an unmistakably antisemitic line when he argued that“it would not be an exaggeration to argue that in these commercial times the Jewish man (the Jew as a racial type or as belonging to it due to elective affinity [Wahlverwandter]) has begun to control spiritual life in general.  It was to be expected that art would also bear his imprint.”[778]

The Jew, one of the principal carriers of the degeneration bacillus, contributed to the strengthening of this process.  Schultze-Naumburg’s Nordic Beauty describes how the Jew was deliberately destroying the Nordic superiority which had previously reigned supreme.  “The repression of the Nordic ideal was acceptable to them [the Jews] because of their nature.”[779]  The degeneration bacillus gradually infiltrated Germany between the end of the nineteenth century and “the first three decades of the twentieth century”.  During this period, one could discern in Germany “the growing might of the Jewish spirit taking shape, which expressed itself in attempts to annul every German, and particularly Nordic, thing of its kind (artlich).  Every possible means was used to debase it and turn it into an object of mockery and scorn.”[780]

According to Schultze-Naumburg, Jews played a double role in the degeneration of art.  They were active in avant-garde artistic movements and also controlled the art market and media, which enabled them to foist their artistic taste on the public.  In this way “German art submitted itself step by step to the dominance of the gang of Jewish art dealers, Jewish journalists, Jewish art historians, and Jewish ‘philanthropists’, who systematically and with the energy characteristic of their people subvert the sublime Nordic ideal.”[781]  Jewish control of capital brought them closer to the centers of power, and therefore powerful men brought under their control not only all private and state exhibitions, but also all of the publishers.  This category included not only the openly leftist press, but also the bourgeois newspapers which dared not print anything opposed to the official line.[782]

          These facts indicated that the process through which the Nordic ideal of beauty disappeared was most natural. The very nature of the Jew prevented him from accepting the Nordic man as the ideal. In his 1932 Struggle for Art, Schultze-Naumburg argued that just as a man “can never leave his race”, a work of art “cannot escape the physicality and spirituality of its creator.”[783]  The influence of heredity on culture was so fundamental that a “Nordic man is bound to make Nordic pictures, the mongoloid will express his mongoloid nature, while all of the models of a Jewish painter will acquire something of Jewishness even if they are not of the Jewish race.”[784]

Schultze-Naumburg’s radical racial determinism made it seem completely natural to him to add to this equation “those in charge of contemporary art” who were trying “to liquidate the Nordic man at any price.  They know very well how to create the impression that the essence of our Volk is based on a different phenomenon altogether and that the figure of the hero can only be used in a comic fashion.”[785]

Like Hitler, Schultze-Naumburg described a conspiracy of modern artists who created according to Jewish tastes and surrendered to the art critics.  According to this criticism, “no one dares anymore to say honestly and loudly what he likes and what he can’t stand.”[786]  Art had thus lost two of its most important roles: to represent the people and to make them happy.  It had also become disconnected from the people, “because the people in general anyway do not understand anything at all about art”.[787]  When the people accepted a certain work of art, art critics claimed that it was necessarily inferior.  “What is exhibited in contemporary art…  can only rarely cause the German to be enthusiastic”.[788] 

          The “disintegrative spirit” which loomed large over German cultural life as a result of Jewish dominance led to the entrenchment of the “stinking rot”[789] which characterized Germany in the first two decades of the twentieth century.  In addition to Jewish dominance over capital and consequently over taste in art, Schultze-Naumburg identified other factors contributing to the emergence of degeneration:  migration from the country to the cities, the weakening of the status of the peasantry, industrialization, overcrowding in the large cities, the allure of “Mammonism”, the materialist spirit, and declining birth rates.[790]

All of these factors together rendered the people incapable of seeing the bigger picture, and also manifested themselves in “the general image of culture (Kulturbild), including the arts”.[791]  The “barren” aesthetic of liberalism gave rise to cosmopolitan tendencies, and Schultze-Naumburg claimed that it was no surprise that the German people were under the influence of alien cultures which sprang from different sources and accelerated in the modern Gesellschaft. The “pathological phenomena” brought in by the latter had been spreading for years.  He decried the fact that in Germany “they [the supporters of liberalism] make dedicated attempts to create the impression that here people are equally stupid.”[792]  The cosmopolitan influences were not confined to art.  Following a Romantic tradition urging the preservation of the purity of the German language, he decried the exaggerated use of foreign words by art critics when describing “modern” works of art.  “There is at present an abundance of buzz words such as ‘dynamics’, ‘polarity’, ‘cosmic’, ‘synthesis’, ‘molecular’, and so on.”[793]

          Schultze-Naumburg also discussed the process of discarding traditional habits and restraints as one of the main issues of the modern era.  “Suddenly there is no lack of demagogues who preach that people do not have to have their impulses suppressed by the moral conscious that has been imposed on them.  The sub-human (Untermensch)… does not have to force himself to submit to crooked morality.  He can live ‘without restraints’….  Anxiety and shame have become old-fashioned notions; everything has gone down the drain.  Pandora’s Box has sprung open and devils are pouring out howling and screaming like a dark torrent flooding the humanity which has been tended and nurtured with such immense effort.”[794] The use of terms such as “sub-human” and “decline of cultures” indicate the influence of Oswald Spengler, another central figure of fin-de-siècle thought; and it is therefore not surprising that his The Decline of the West is cited in Art and Race.[795] 

The wide breach in the bulwark of tradition and the parallel discarding of traditional discipline and inhibitions could not but manifest themselves in art.  “If we attempt to present the general picture of contemporary art, we would have to conclude that it displays general disorder, instability, an uncreative pursuit of sensation, and the absence of simple and true humanity.”[796]

 

Degenerate artists

 

          Art provided the ultimate proof for the decay of the German race.  “If yet more proof was needed to demonstrate the fact that the population living within our borders is presently undergoing an unprecedented racial decline, the dearth of sensitivity to beauty in art is proof of it.”[797]  In contemporary German art “we see everywhere degenerate phenomena as we know them from the army of the failed, the sick and the bodily deformed.”[798]  Like Nordau, Schultze-Naumburg saw the subjects chosen by degenerate artists for their works as proof of the degeneration of art.  “If we were to consider the symbols expressed in most contemporary paintings and sculptures, they would be the themes of the idiot, the whore, and the woman’s breast.  We have to call a spade a spade:  this is the true hell of the sub-humans (Untermenschen)”.[799] 

The offensive treatment received by the German race in modern art was only one of the distinctive features of degenerate art.  Schultze- Naumburg’s critique was also directed against “the almost abnormal flirting with distant races” which caused the visitor to exhibitions of modern art to ask himself if “the Negro influence” sprang from “actual interbreeding” or if its origins lay in “the spiteful denial of the instinct of racial purity”.[800]  The influence of alien races on modern art could clearly be seen not only in their appearance as models, but also in the extensive ties between German artists and their foreign colleagues.  These influences were both harmful and dysfunctional.  “Negro art… cannot satisfy the desires of those who are of foreign races… The Negro art imitated in the Western world oscillates between the ludicrous and the undignified.”[801]

Kunst und Rasse barely mentions the names of particular artists, but after 1933 Schultze-Naumburg focused his attacks on modernism by dealing with specific artists.  The earliest art movements criticized are Realism and Impressionism.  “In paintings by Courbet, Manet, and Renoir a creative impulse originating in blood totally different from Nordic blood manifests itself.”[802]  Max Slevogt, a German Impressionist painter, managed to transmute the sublime figure of Achilles “into a butcher’s apprentice or a cannibal”.[803]

          Picasso was also the subject of Schultze-Naumburg’s attacks.  Even though he was described as a “talented Parisian painter”, he was thoroughly denounced for his alleged tendency “to present us with a picture of a disease with a horrible deformation of body parts”,[804] and every “healthy person” must reject his ambition to create a new style of painting.  Chagall was the subject of similar criticism;  his pictures called to mind the “painted pictures sold from stalls at country fairs” which “even today can be seen at amusement parks”.[805]  Kandinsky was described as possessed by “frenzy” and as “identifying himself with five-year-olds”.[806]  Schmidt-Ruttloff was attacked for creating images “of severely deformed people who can be found in clinics, hospitals, mental asylums, and other places where the sick and rotten of our society are brought together.”[807]

          Schultze-Naumburg was particularly strident in his criticism of Expressionism.  He was especially annoyed by Barlach;  this German Expressionist painter was already one of the prime exhibits in his gallery of degenerate artists during the Weimar period.  Barlach was described in a 1931 article in the Völkischer Beobachter as an Eastern sub-human (ostischer Untermench)[808] who was instrumental in the spread of degeneration in art.  One of his specific crimes was that he depicted “the mongoloid man, visibly degenerate both physically and mentally, who, as we all know, stands far from the Nordic man.”[809]

          In the years following the Nazi takeover, Schultze-Naumburg took a clear position in the debate over the inclusion of Expressionism in the

National Socialist revolution.  He completely rejected the views of Goebbels[810] and other supporters of Barlach and Nolde, and even criticized them for attempting to describe the works of the two as reflecting the National-Socialist spirit.  “With a complete lack of understanding and without a shred of racial instinct these paintings were presented as ‘truly German’, even as ‘Nordic’, despite the fact that their meaning is the complete opposite of the Nordic.”[811]  Schultze-Naumburg even accused members of the Expressionist movement of opportunism, and cited Hitler to buttress his claim.  “We have forcefully rejected the representatives of the art of the November state, who, decked out in swastikas, hoped to mend their ways with the same skill they had shown in 1918.”[812]  Visions such as those of Schultze-Naumburg shaped the Nazi politics of cultureon the issue of Expressionism. A hard liner, he managed to form a coalition with Alfred Rosenberg which determined Nazi cultural policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Racial Ideal of Beauty

 

Ideal Volkish Art: From Ancient Greek to the German Romantic Movement

 

The first and most significant example of Nordic art was Greek art;  Schultze-Naumburg claimed that it was “one of the most wonderful flowers of art”.[813]  The Greek people were fundamentally Nordic, as could be seen from the way in which Homer described the tall, blue-eyed, and blond gods.  The beautiful Greek body depicted in their art was undoubtedly done according to what the artists saw.  They used living models, not the result of their imaginations.

          The Nordic type was not the only one which had lived in Greece.  Greek art also depicted non-Nordic types,[814] but it was safe to assume that the Nordics had always been an integral part of the upper strata of society and that they had defined “the view of the body in art which left behind it works which were aware of race”.[815]  Schultze-Naumburg emphasized that “it would be a mistake to think that only the northern is Nordic”.[816]  Here he wished to dispose of the contradiction inherent in the definition of Greek art as Nordic.  He stated that the history of art was full of peoples who had not been geographically located in the north, but still had a Nordic culture.  Among these non-northern peoples there had always been non-Nordic races which were depicted in art.  The central question in these situations was which race ended up dominating the others in the cultural sphere.

          According to Schultze-Naumburg, the ecclesiastic art of the German city-states in the Middle Ages provided another example of Nordic art.  Examples included the Bamberg Rider in the local church[817] (figure 26) and even the statue of Otto the Great in Würzburg.  In these works the Nordic was also northern.  The sixteenth-century art of the Renaissance was also a worthy model for emulation because of the dominance of the Nordic ideal found there.  Even though “the Renaissance also had its own dregs and a layer of the fallen, ugly, and sick”, “the sublime and healthy whose appearance was Nordic triumphed”, and they dictated the tastes of the period. [818]  Among the artists discussed in detail in this context were Dürer, Holbein, Granach, da Vinci, and Michaelangelo.  Schultze-Naumburg claimed that only the most talented managed to express the Nordic ideal and at the same time also the ideals of other races, such as for example the Homo alpinus or other Western races.[819]

          After dealing with the Renaissance, Schultze-Naumburg considered the Neo-Classicism of the late eighteenth century, whose art also tried to depict the Nordic ideal.  He agreed with contemporary critics that the Nordic type was portrayed in Neo-Classicism in an academic and boring way, and stated that “the use of the ideal type was cold and lifeless, seemingly ‘academic’”.[820]  This criticism later appeared in his 1937 book, where he specifically discussed the case of Joachim Winckelmann.  The latter founded “the science of ancient art”, “and thus helped, despite his intentions” to establish the Nordic ideal of beauty in art.  The fact that Winckelmann had advised artists “only ‘to imitate’ the ancient period” made Neo-Classicist works academic and frozen. [821]  “The result was masses of sculptured plaster heads which did not have any great connection to art”.[822]

          The criticism of Winckelmann was somewhat moderated by the claim that he was at least aware of the close connections between ancient and Nordic art.  “However, he came to the wrong conclusions from this observation in accordance with the limitations of his time.”[823]  The main mistake he made was that his recommendations had been cosmopolitan.  “This classicism was directed at horizons alienated from the soil” and therefore the results were insufficiently developed.[824]  If Winckelmann had based his works on the foundation of “blood and soil” he would have had significant achievements.  Schultze-Naumburg thus accepted Winckelmann’s aesthetics, but not the liberal ideology accompanying it, which was based on the imitation of “foreign” peoples.

          The next topic on the agenda was Romanticism.  It “was not at all uniform [but even so preserved] the Nordic picture of beauty;  this remained the obvious supreme goal which no one questioned”.[825]  The art of Alfred Rethel illustrated the ability to deal with themes having no connection to the Nordic ideal but still producing high art, as seen in “one of the strongest examples of the new art, Another Dance of Death”.[826]  “One need only look deeply at one plate of Rethel in order to know that he was one of the most German artists that ever lived.”[827]

          According to Schultze-Naumburg Rethel got the maximum out of his style, but there were also opposing examples of Romantic artists influenced by “the spiritual view of the nineteenth century, the French Revolution, and liberal ideas”.[828]  These ideas, which Schultze-Naumburg claimed “stood for a long time as a complete contrast to the fundamental views the Nordic-German man created for himself”, influenced artists thought to be the “most German”, including Richter and von Schwind.[829] 

Schultze-Naumburg was critical of these artists because they were influenced by alien races, and as an example he chose one of Hitler’s favorites.  Even though Richter “gave us a great bounty of wonderful interpretations of the life of the German people, its legends and nature, and it is hard to ignore the charm of his works”, a look at his self-portrait shows that “something soft is mixed into these lines….  This non-Nordic mixture can clearly be seen in most of Richter’s works.”[830]  For example, the figure of “the princess bathing, she is not the daughter of a king but a fat tramp of Eastern origin”.[831] (figure 27) German Romanticism was, for Schultze-Naumburg, essentially the last period from which Nordic art could take its ideal of beauty;  after thatcame the decline and degeneration of art.

Sometimes degeneration in art was the outcome of physical deformities which the artists suffered from.  Exceptional cases admired by Hitler had to be discussed;  one such case was Hans von Marées, whoSchultze-Naumburg described as suffering from a “tragic conflict” due to his mixed origins;  his father was German and his mother Jewish.  Schultze-Naumburg argued that “in most of his works, one senses the rift which splits his entire being.”[832]  The German painter Adolf Menzel was also problematic.  He had rickets, a crippling disease of the spine, and was therefore a dwarf, “but his deformed head was not expressed in his works.”[833] 

 

 

Art and Politics

          Schultze-Naumburg devoted a good deal of attention to the interrelations between art and politics.  He did not see them as separate areas each with its own autonomous sphere of influence, and therefore neither of them could be seen as dominant over the other.  He claimed that politics was connected to art and that art was continually influenced by politics;  there was thus no possibility for dramatic change in the political order without devoting the same efforts to culture.  The opening paragraph of one of his books stated that “the life or death struggle going on in art is no different from that in the political field….  The struggle for art must be carried out with the same seriousness and determination if we do not wish to abandon the German soul.”[834]  Versions of this claim can be found throughout Schultze-Naumburg’s works;  they indicate the great importance he saw art as having in Nazi Germany.  It would seem that similar statements later appearing in the works of leading Nazi figures, including Hitler, Rosenberg, and Goebbels, show the influence of Schultze-Naumburg and his books.

          “It is often said that art and politics are not connected to each other”, but Schultze-Naumberg stated that this was only true the context of “peoples and situations where the composition of their blood is essentially homogeneous, or where purity of race exists at least in the leading strata.”[835]   The situation in a politically and artistically heterogeneous Germany was different, leading to confusion.  The main problem was that some of these artistic schools, which mixed with the elite, displayed political worldviews which were not appropriate for expressing the values of the German nation and even threatened it.    This situation was especially apparent in art.  “It sounds unbelievable;  all possibility of true German artistic expression has disappeared”.[836]      

Change was therefore clearly needed, “and the solution can only be expressed as a general national liberation, which with the help of political means must bring about in Germany the spread of German morality (Gesittung) in art as an obvious infrastructure.”[837]  He explained that “we hear today a great deal about the word ‘total’, which means that we must again develop the whole man.”[838] 

          Schultze-Naumburg was willing to subjugate himself to the ideological imperative stemming from the leader principle, and therefore he noted that “the essence of art in the new Reich has been drawn with great clarity by Adolf Hitler so that those who are considering betraying his will – will fail.  For Adolf Hitler the starting point of art is the hero….  Art will always express the picture of the most sublime goal of the people.”[839]  This citation is not the only one in which Schultze-Naumburg mentioned the importance of the leader principle, thus contradicting his earlier assumptions about the influence of art on politics. He stated that “as Hitler’s work Mein Kampf is the foundation for the artistic worldview of ‘blood and soil’, thus the Fuehrer again renewed in his great culture speech on Party day in Nuremberg[840] the guidelines according to which art is supposed to develop in the Third Reich.”[841]

Despite Hitler’s clear guidelines, Schultze-Naumburg explained that the changes in the area of art could not happen as quickly as in politics.  “One must be aware that works of art need a different period of ripening from state- political changes, which can happen suddenly.  In works of art the seed sprouts slowly, and generations pass until the flower bears fruit, in soil sometimes fertilized with blood.”[842]  This is one side of the apologia meant to explain why in 1934, when the book was published, no National-Socialist artists who expressed the Nordic ideal had yet been found.  However, it is not the only explanation Schultze-Naumburg provided, as elsewhere in the book he stated that “there are certainly many talented artists who were not mentally capable of blowing the official horn [during the degenerate period], but they remained anonymous.”[843]

 

Art and Artists in the service of the regime

 

          Schultze-Naumburg dealt with the role of art in general and more specifically the mission placed before the individual artist.  He saw art as dependent on the social context and therefore rejected the idea of “art for art’s sake”.  The artist had a defined role;  he was to “become mostly a drawer of the ethnological archetype, the one who supplies biological models for the genetic improvement of future fighters for the Party.”[844]  The guidelines which he suggested were meant to supply artists with the optimal criteria for the creation of sublime art.  The detailed program presented in his books included clear directions for acceptance and rejection, illustrated by specific examples.

          In Schultze-Naumburg’s system the artist had limited artistic freedom; his role was almost completely determined by those above him.  He cited da Vinci and noted his agreement, stating that “the painter must choose his figure according to a certain image, according to a view.  He must choose what to ignore in the body of his model according to the ideal he wishes to sanctify.  He must fight weakness and refrain from expressing his own problems;  he must express the ideal and not follow his soul,”[845] as the artist served the collective.

          The artist was to depict an ideal archetype in his works, but the question remained whether he was only to depict this ideal and to ignore reality.  Schultze-Naumburg stated that “clearly it is forbidden to change and think that the artist ‘must’ show only the beautiful man as the archetype and that he must avoid depicting horrors.”[846]  It was thus permissible for the artist to show the unpleasant if he did so as if watching from a distance, using a scientific approach.  He claimed that it was legitimate “to look for the human even in the lowest”, but the artist must always remember that “the lowest” was not an “equal among equals”, and that it could never replace the sublime ideal.

          If the artist was a genius and talented, he would manage to deal with both the high and the low without losing the desired distance.  As illustrations of his desired view, Schultze-Naumburg mentioned the works of Breughel and da Vinci.[847]  According to his rules, the artist was allowed to use the grotesque as long as he did so in measure.  “The art of the Middle Ages as we know was not lacking in crudity.  Yes, the comic and the grotesque had a clear place there”.[848]  However, artists then knew where to use the grotesque and where not.

          After providing a general explanation of the role of art, Schultze- Naumburg discussed different issues which the artist must emphasize in his works in order to help the new regime.  “In a fundamental examination of the art of the Third Reich, we cannot help but place race at the center.”[849]  Art had to be a reflection of the ideal race or else it would damage the social order and contradict the Nazi revolution. “Art that is not related to life is implausible,” and therefore “it must more or less reflect the contents of the life of the Volk which created it.”[850]  If art did indeed reflect the people which created it, then the quality of thepeoplewould determine the quality of its art. According to Schultze-Naumburg the healthier a people, the healthier its art, and the purer a race, the more its art would approach Nordic art, which was the most sublime. In order to establish a healthier people it was thus important to guarantee a healthy community. One of the first tasks of the artist would be to portray a seamless organic society.  Schultze-Naumburg was critical of the fact that the “environment has lost all significance in the life of the individual and the group”.[851] In his eyes the solution would be found only if the rules of heredity would be presented by the artist.

In 1934 Schultze-Naumburg criticized art historians for their tendency to emphasize environmental factors when analyzing contemporary art.  This emphasis led to their “having almost disregarded the significance of race in all this.”[852]  He added that art historians had disregarded the chief issue and therefore had failed to develop a theory which would deal “with the decisive power of race”[853] over art.  In art, as in other areas, “the two forces from which all the creative activity of man springs forth, namely blood and soil”[854] merge into one.  Here, “blood” designates the race of an individual;  one of the things it determines is his capacity for culture.  “All of man’s creations spring from his capacity for spiritual action.  This explains the fact that people with similar traits cannot but create similar works or ones which are similar in kind.  In this fashion these creations, including artistic creations, converge toward their racial circle.”[855]  It was thus important to examine the racial traits of the German people, “because nothing is superior to the hereditary racial traits of those who create art in defining the position taken by art and its content.”[856]

Art was to represent race, and the representation of the race had to be controlled by Aryan artists.  Schultze-Naumburg confessed that “I would like to believe that artists almost always tend to create self-portraits.”[857] A detailed discussion of art as an expression of race also appears in Schultze- Naumburg’s 1937 Nordische Schönheit.  He drew on pseudo-scientific concepts of physiognomy in order to assert that the “characteristics of the soul as determined by race find their outward expression in the body, and there they can be seen.”[858]

The Aryan race and the ideology of blood and soil connected to it were thus of the highest importance.  “Only an examination of the art of blood and soil can give us an understanding which will help us in reaching safe evaluations.”[859]  The new art must completely ignore the depiction of the surroundings and deepen its treatment of the German nation and its bases.  “The art of the Third Reich will thus not want to know anything about the madness of the surroundings and the generations of the nineteenth century, but will teach us to pay attention to subjects expressing the laws of life, and will display for us the essence of the true connections.”[860]

          Modern art had made a “systematic attempt to destroy the virtues of the German people”,[861] and therefore Schultze-Naumburg detailed additional vital subjects to be included in the new art.  He claimed that more attention must be given to German history.  “The artist must have a fatherland to which he directs his roots and from which grow his images”.[862]  Art was not allowed to mock German mythology.  “When great figures from our past, such as from the legends of our heroes, are depicted in a way which makes them a mockery and ridiculous, it must influence [things] in a degenerate and disintegrative way.” He stated that all the degrading comments about “our German past” which stemmed from petit-bourgeois humor must be put to an end.[863]  Art had also unfairly damaged the image of the German army.  “In depictions from the World War our field grays (Feldgraue) look like representatives of a species from which there were perhaps a few among the German soldiers.  These depictions do not fit the regular appearance of our soldiers”,[864] as “everyone who knows our army knows that these microcephali were a tiny minority and not characteristic figures.”[865]

          An additional problem in contemporary art which also damaged the morality of the German people was the depiction of the German woman.  German artists had devoted a great deal of attention to this topic over the generations because of an impulse they could not control.  “The erotic desire for a female partner… was expressed by artists in a special way…  in the works of men, who by their nature choose the woman and her body as expressions of their urges.”[866]  Depiction of women was of course legitimate, and was even a characteristic of Nordic culture.  Schultze-Naumburg was amazed that the subject was not found in East Asian culture.  “One can look at thousands of plates [of Japanese art] without finding any depiction of the naked body.”[867]  The explanation was based on cultural differences, and was expressed in the fact that the naked body was not a symbol of highest beauty in the east, and therefore the figures were almost always presented clothed.

          The depiction of the Nordic female archetype in modern art crossed the line from erotica to a pornography showing no respect for women.  “Women have never been shown in a way so lacking in respect and so unappetizing as could be seen in the exhibitions of German art in the last twelve years.”[868]  The modern depictions proved how far modern art was from the “Nordic soul”, as the Nordic by his very nature “would never expose the secret of the tension between the sexes, and would express a great respect” for the female body.[869]

          The depiction of the Nordic woman was a topic of great interest to Schultze-Naumburg;  he supplied a detailed work plan according to which the artist could create the ideal aesthetic prototype.  Following traditions developed by Hans Günther and Ludwig Clauß, who he cited in his book, he described the “narrow waist”, the bone structure, the hair, and more.[870]  His books, as Richardson has claimed,  “not only describes but displays Nordic body parts, and enjoins readers to put the Nordic aesthetics into practice….”[871]  Schultze-Naumburg emphasized that such an ideal description of the Nordic woman would help not only establish volkish art, but also the “proper choice” of a wife “so that the future generations would be perfect”.[872]

          Schultze-Naumburg’s conclusions were optimistic.  He claimed that the various attempts to damage the morality of the German people, as expressed in the approach to the German heroes, the German woman, and even religion,[873]  would cease because of the appearance of a new political movement which would fight against all of these.  Education would play a critical role in the battle for German morality.  “The best guarantee for the healing of art is our youth and the spirit in which they grow”.[874]

         

Schultze-Naumburg was one of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.  He was one of the earliest in his field to support the Nazis, and was among the most fanatical and doctrinaire ideologues of the movement.  The group of right-wing intellectuals he belonged to in the 1920s was deeply disappointed and embittered by the outcome of World War I and the parliamentary democracy of the Weimar Republic.  Art and Race, which appeared in the late 1920s, marked a turning point in his growing radicalization.  After this book he closely aligned himself with the most fanatical and radical guardians of the purity of National-Socialist ideology.  His writings and actions provide incontestable evidence for his desire to formulate a new aesthetics which would provide an alternative to the decline he saw in an era of degeneration.  Schultze-Naumburg used racist and antisemitic arguments to try to formulate the principles of an authentic culture which would again express the spirit of the German people.    His attempt led to an antisemitism inextricably linked to the volkishalternative he put forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Propagandist as Artist: Joseph Goebbels

 

            A consideration of the views of Joseph Goebbels on the image of culture and aesthetics is necessary given his positions as one of the central shapers of Nazi cultural policy and as the Propaganda Minister who saw culture as a central political instrument in the Nazi revolution.  This consideration illuminates different sides of the meeting between the Nazi politics of culture and Nazi cultural policy, even though the intent here is not to discuss the activities of the Propaganda Ministry in theReich Chamber for Culture (Reichskulturkammer).[875]  This chapter focuses instead on the aesthetic views of Goebbels, despite the difficulty in isolating them; his views on the place of aesthetics and the interpretation of cultural production are not clear or unidimensional.  In addition, they changed with time and are influenced by his place in the Nazi hierarchy.  Here I will show how his views were different from those of the rest of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture and the Nazi art critics, and of course from those of Hitler.         

          Goebbels, especially when young, seems to have seen art as a reflection of the cultural situation or a certain social reality.  Although in this context his approach did not differ significantly from that of art critics who used terms such as “degeneration”, “decline”, and “Germanness”,  one gets the impression that the meaning he attached to such terms was somehow different.  For example, his interpretation of the term “Germanness” allowed it to include modern works of art which were seen by Rosenberg, Schultze-Naumburg, and other art critics as “degenerate”.  This different approach would become the basis for conflicts over the design of Nazi cultural policy.

               Toward the end of the 1920s Goebbels became involved in political activity which exposed him to the term propaganda and its literature.  This exposure led him to a new definition of the place of art and aesthetics in politics and to the creation of a hierarchy among the various fields of art.  The main point of this change was that art then became not just an expressive reflection of a certain consciousness, but a tool for changing consciousness and preserving revolutionary fervor.  Propaganda was a matter of the manipulation and broadcasting of slogans and symbols leading to the desired reality, but art was to serve as a tool for sophisticated mobilization.

               After Goebbels discovered the wonders of propaganda, his views on art merged into his political views on the combination of revolution from above and revolution from below.  The revolution from below sprouted from the expressive foundations of the volkish artist while that from above encouraged the artist to continue the revolution and created the conditions for mobilized production.

               The attempt to isolate the political-bureaucratic element in the activities of Goebbels as Propaganda Minister and as head of the Reich Chamber for Culture demands a balance between the intellectual background of the young Goebbels and the wonder of propaganda and the new definition it brought about for the place of art in politics. These issues are considered in the next section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revolutionary Ideas Turn into Propaganda

 

In 1921 the University of Heidelberg granted Joseph Goebbels a Ph.D. in German literature.[876]  His academic education would later make him, as in other ways, an unusual figure in the Nazi leadership. Fest has argued that “as a man with a physical deformity and an intellectual, he was something of a provocation to a party that regarded, not intellectual ability, but muscular strength and radical heritage, fair hair and long legs, as qualifications for genuine membership”.[877]  In the years after finishing his education, Goebbels became the “unsuccessful author of romantic, nationalist novels”[878] such as his 1923 Michael.[879]  This novel was the only whole novel Goebbels wrote;  it was finally published in 1929, and then by the Nazi Party.  By 1942 it appeared in seventeen editions.[880]

This novel, written in the diary format which Goebbels particularly loved,[881] describes the life of its hero Michael over the course of several months;  the period is that of the Weimar Republic.  Michael is a student who, like Goebbels, studied at a number of German universities.[882]  The novel does not clearly indicate what Michael studied, but the intellectual conversations presented in the novel, especially those with Hertha Holk, the student he fell in love with, give some idea of the issues which he was interested in.  Michael and Hertha consider a number of different issues from the problems of German society through the political structure of the Weimar Republic, religion, and the writers, musicians, poets, and artists who Michael preferred.

Michael had clear stands on issues of culture;  they were to a great extent those of Goebbels at the beginning of the 1920s, as other sources attest.  Goebbels had already taken a great interest in the history of art while studying in Freiburg and Würzburg, and Michael was also interested in the topic.  During the winter semester of 1918-1919 Goebbels took a course from Professor Knapp called “From Expressionism to Cubism: History of Modern Art”;[883]  his early diaries include descriptions of visits to the Wallraff-Richartz Museum in Cologne and the National Gallery in Berlin.[884]  His diaries suggest that he was particularly impressed with nineteenth-century works, but also with modern ones;  Michael expressed similar opinions.

Michael saw art as playing the role of the critic;  he emphasized that its role was simultaneously “to shock and to uplift”.[885]  He also described a parallel between the artist and the statesman, especially in the relations between the leader and the masses and between the creator and material.  As in art, real politics was interested in displaying “the artistic side of the nation”.[886]  Michael compared the politician to the artist who gave form to matter;  for the politician “the people are no more than what the stone is for the sculptor”.  Goebbels’ views in the early 1920s were different from the instrumental approach of art as propaganda he would later adopt.  During these years the young Goebbels had an approach which saw aesthetics and politics as connected to each other;  this analogy appears a number of times in the book.[887]

Michael displayed an impressive knowledge of and interest in classic German artists who reflected the greatness of the German people.  The book repeatedly mentions his admiration of Goethe and his special interest in Faust;  he always carried the first volume of Faust in his pocket.[888]  Michael admired and quoted from the works of Nietzsche and Schiller;  he listened to Beethoven and Mozart.[889]  Hertha and Michael also discussed the sublime music of Wagner;  this conversation showed a familiarity with the terminology of Wagner.

In his free time, Michael regularly frequented museums, galleries, and the places where various sorts of artists tended to meet.  The book makes a distinction between the early periods of German art, which he admired, and modern art, toward which Michael had ambivalent feelings.  For example, in order to see the works of Dürer Michael made a special trip to the Pinakothek in Munich.[890]  von Schwind, Spitzweg, and Feuerbach were called the “poets of German painting”,[891] and after a visit to what he called the Quartier Latin of the artists in Munich, the same area in which Hitler lived on his arrival in Munich, he wrote that the artistic dreams dreamt in that place “must sometime be properly cleaned out.  It is the incubator of the dissolving trends.”[892]

Goebbels used the figure of Michael to attack the principle of “art for art’s sake” and explained that artists choosing it were guilty of a “sin [against] the German feeling for art”.[893]  He claimed that “groups of foreigners” had taken over German cultural life, and that they “must leave German art”;[894]  German artists were called to take part in the process.  Michael stated that the fate of German art must only be decided by those belonging to the people.

Even so, Michael’s support for the removal of internationalist influences did not lead him to reject avant-garde movements such as Expressionism.  Although that movement had spread beyond the borders of Germany, the artists identified with it at its founding had been Germans and this was a significant fact.  In addition, Expressionism reflected an inevitable necessity;  it was the product of the age in which it was created.  “We the contemporaries are all Expressionists.  Men want to shape our external world out of what is inside us.”[895]  However, despite the German origin of the creators of the movement and the fact that it reflected contemporary trends, Michael was critical of the spokesmen of the movement, art critics, and art dealers, who were “false priests” and damaged the movement.[896]

Michael’s acceptance of modern artists was not dependent on their being of German origin.  For example, he admired van Gogh, who he described as a “star”, as the artist who was the “most modern of the moderns”, and as the only one whose works were of value as compared to all the rest of the “nonsense”.[897]  As to van Gogh’s purported madness, he did not accept the position that the Nazis would later develop connecting madness, the avant-garde, and modernism, but rather argued that madness was a characteristic of all those living in the modern era.  “We, really all of us, are mad when we have an idea.”[898]

According to the plot of the novel, Michael’s feeling of mission and his need to act for his people led him to leave university life and work as a miner;  he was killed in a mining accident.[899]  Michael’s activities suggest that a change in the consciousness of the people would come from below because “the wisdom of the chairs in the university will never be able to redeem us!”[900]  The renewal of the German people could only be found in the workshops, as “work is war without cannons”.[901]

Michael explained his leaving of the university as stemming from his hatred of “gentle Heidelberg”,[902]  a place characterized by escapism and the collection of information to be published in research articles at a time when “the entire Reich was broken”.  This explanation may refer to Goebbels’ own biography in explaining why he himself left the university.  Herzstein has suggested that despite his doctorate, Goebbels made no particular impression on his university colleagues;  there is no evidence that he seriously tried to obtain an academic position in Heidelberg.[903]

The conversations between Michael and another friend, Agnes Stahl, gave his opinion on class solidarity.  “The working class (Arbeitertum) is not a class.”[904]  Michael’s socialism was primarily nationalist;  the Germans must unite in order to create a new man, a new homeland, and a new nationalism.  Mosse has claimed that Goebbels put the emphasis here on “the socialism of National Socialism, which meant integration of the individual into the organic whole of the Volk.”[905]  Michael thus repeatedly emphasized his disgust with the bourgeoisie and the moneyed classes who he saw as the results of liberalism.  Goebbels used the novel to indicate the connection between money and the Jews and stated that “they belong to each other”.  The bourgeois conspiracy in the economy hinted at the Jewish conspiracy in art.

The pages of Michael are full of harsh antisemitic descriptions.  He described the physical disgust he felt when he saw a Jew, and explained that he despised them because they had “corrupted our people and spoiled our ideals”.  In terms reminiscent of Wagner’s “Judaism and Music” Michael explained that the Jew was a “pustuous growth” in the body of the German people who would never produce anything creative.[906] 

Goebbels’ attempts to build a literary career did not succeed;  he looked for work at several newspapers, including the Berliner Tageblatt.  The series of articles he sent with his application, and which were not found to be appropriate for publication, were returned to him by Theodor Wolff, the editor of the paper.[907] 

Years later, in an attempt to improve the image of his political career, Goebbels claimed that he had been exposed to “the National-Socialist idea” around 1920,[908] but he actually showed only limited interest in politics in the early 1920s.[909]  It would seem that his support of Nazism also stemmed from pragmatic motives;  his activities in the branch of the National-Socialist Party in his hometown of Rheydt led to his becoming the assistant of Georg Strasser in the editing of a journal which was to be the “intellectual mouthpiece’ of the Party.[910]

During the first half of the 1920s the northern branches of the National- Socialist Party were known for their opposition to the southern leadership.  The social-revolutionary spirit they expressed, so typical of Berlin, led them to oppose the leadership of Rosenberg while Hitler was in Landsberg Prison in 1924.[911]  This opposition indicates why in November 1925 Goebbels demanded the removal of the “petty-bourgeois Adolf Hitler” from the ranks of the Party because of his disdain for socialism.[912]  This demand did not, however, prevent Goebbels from supporting Hitler a few months later in Munich when the latter attempted to revitalize the Party and increase its numbers.  The Strasser brothers saw Goebbels’ support for Hitler as a betrayal;  it is an example of his inconsistency, and explains why he was accused of opportunism.

Goebbels displayed an unusual interest in propaganda from the beginning of his time as the head of the Berlin provincial office of the Party;  there he had special mandatory powers.  In various speeches and articles published at the time, some of them in Der Angriff, which he founded in 1927, Goebbels developed “a new propaganda style, in which intellectual cunning and the mass appeal of tabloids were combined into an effective amalgam of slander and pathos.”[913]

The early views of Goebbels on the importance of art and culture in politics can also be seen in a 1928 speech.   In this apologetic appearance he described the parameters which were not suitable for carrying messages in propaganda.  He claimed that propaganda was measured by its results.  “Propaganda which leads to success is good.”[914]  It would seem that during these years, before his view of propaganda became more sophisticated and unlike the position he would adopt in the middle of the 1930s, he came as close as he would to supporting direct propaganda.[915]  At that time, he explained in a speech that National-Socialist propaganda could not be attacked as mass or vulgar because these were not the parameters according to which propaganda was measured.  The criticism that Nazi propaganda was not refined or polite was for him equally irrelevant because the purpose of propaganda was to create consciousness, and all the means were legitimate in achieving this aim.

Among the various important roles he saw propaganda as filling, Goebbels saw the translation of abstract ideas to a concrete language as central.  He explained that ideas themselves were timeless, they were not connected to any particular individual or even to the collective.  Every political movement was based on an idea, but if political discussions remained on the theoretical level, the movement could not become a real alternative to the existing regime.  Ideas and theories had no validity until they became a whole structure of ideas capable of answering needs in all areas of life.  The stage at which “the idea broadens into a worldview” is the stage at which propaganda had particular meaning.[916]

During the years after 1933 the total side of propaganda gradually gained the upper hand.  At the Party congress in Nuremberg Goebbels explained that propaganda was “among the arts with which one rules a people, it ranks in first place….  There exists no sector of public life which can escape its influence.”[917]

Goebbels saw propaganda as having a number of mediating roles in addition to those already mentioned.  It was to supply the individual with a connection to the Party; it would mediate between the Party and the people and between the state and the worldview of the Party.  Propaganda would shape the consciousness of the people and the system of visual symbols accompanying that consciousness.  The subjugation of the standards of propaganda to its audience so that it would serve the political goals of the Party and the people created different levels of expression and the transfer of slogans.  Goebbels thus claimed in 1933 that “when I want to make an idea clear to a worker my speech will be different than when I address the learned.  I speak differently to an artist and to an hourly worker.  No one will be innocent enough to believe that the way in which we speak to a worker expresses the only possibilities of speech we have.”[918]

The approach stating that there are various levels of propaganda suggests that there is also a new hierarchy of forms of artistic expression.  For example, film became more important than painting, and the relations between the written and spoken word also changed.  Goebbels claimed that the National-Socialist revolution was made possible by the speech and not the book.  The importance of the preacher or the speaker lay in his ability to make a direct impression on the masses.  He explained that “we do not find any revolution in world history which was carried out through books.  The preachers, the propagandists, and those with the ability to make speeches always stood in front.”[919]

In discussing the relations between the propagandist or leader and the masses Goebbels shows the influence of the works of Le-Bon, especially his 1895 Psychologie des foules.  Indirect evidence for Goebbels’ admiration of Le Bon can be found in the diary of Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels’ assistant;  a 1943 entry states that “Goebbels believed that since the Frenchman Le-Bon, no one had understood the minds of the masses in such a successful way.”[920]

Goebbels did not mention Le-Bon directly, but the terminology and examples he used were definitely reminiscent of Le-Bon’s works.  For example, “Erkenntnis und Propaganda”[921] included a list of “large world movements” whose leaders successfully united their followers while focusing on a limited number of topics understood by the masses.  Goebbels’ list was almost completely identical to that of Le-Bon in The Crowd.[922]  Le-Bon also provided Goebbels with the idea that it was necessary to address the masses using a series of simple and easy to remember images.  In The Crowd Le-Bon stated that “the masses think in images, and the image itself immediately raises a series of other images which have no logical connection to the first image….  The masses only rarely distinguish between the subjective and the objective.  They accept the images in their brains as real, even though they have only a partial connection to the facts.”[923]

Le-Bon connected the fact that the masses think in images to their figurative imaginations.  The masses were incapable of rational analysis, and therefore they were naturally attracted to the fantastic and the imaginary.  “The masses are only capable of thinking in images, they are only impressed by images…. For this reason theatrical representation, where the image is presented in a clear visual form, will always have enormous influence on the audience.”[924]  This opinion may well explain the source of Goebbels’ hierarchy of the arts.

Le-Bon’s arguments had a clear effect on Goebbels and shaped his view of propaganda from an early stage, as can be seen in the Horst Wessel affair from the end of the 1920s.  Baird has claimed that Goebbels used this affair for his own needs while creating a “mythology and liturgy” completely derived from Le-Bon’s view of propaganda.[925]  This claim is supported by the language used by Le-Bon. “It is not even necessary that the heroes be separated from us by hundreds of years so that [their] legend will be pressed into the imagination of the masses.”[926]  Goebbels adopted this line of argumentation;  he saw Wessel as a contemporary hero around whom could be created a mythology and cult connected to a series of immediate and concrete events.  The image of Wessel fit Goebbels’ reactionary modernism;  the latter preferred not to strengthen reactionary myths from the past unless they were given a modern context. “The sadness over the death of Horst Wessel, killed by the Communists in 1930, was exactly the them the Gauleiter [Goebbels] needed in order to provide his propaganda with the unifying symbols it needed.”[927]  The same type of argument was used by Goebbels concerning the visual arts;  he preferred a “romanticism of steel”, a combination of a reactionary style from Germany’s past and a futurist approach to modernity.

In addition to strategic principles about the consciousness of the masses, Goebbels also took tactics from Le-Bon based on the latter’s The Crowd.  Le-Bon, emphasizing the need of a speech-maker to take the feelings awakened in the masses to an extreme and to encourage them to sentimentalism, wrote that “an orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings”.[928]  Goebbels used the period during which Wessel was dying to act according to Le-Bon’s “prescription”.  His articles in his paper Der Angriff combined reports of his visits to Wessel, whose health was deteriorating, with attacks on the “degenerate Communist bandits” who, in Wessel’s case, had picked “the flower of his youth”.[929]  During this period the extended cooperation between Goebbels and the caricaturist Hans Schweitzer, known as Mjölnir, reached a peak, as can be seen in the caricatures of Wessel in his sickbed.[930] (figure 28) Friedländer has noted that “Horst Wessel’s burial was the most perfect creation of the great kitsch myth of the Party….”[931]

At the end of 1928 Goebbels was appointed by Hitler to the position of Reichspropagandaleiter.[932]  Three years later he had at his disposal “a well-managed and highly-effective bureaucracy”[933] which he continued to use after his formal appointment as Propaganda Minister in 1933.  This bureaucratic apparatus then allowed Goebbels, among other things, to establish his position and power on the question of a monopoly of cultural policy.  However, even at this early stage he was aware of the danger lying in the Munich-based opposition to his cultural policy;  this opposition was led by Alfred Rosenberg.  In a 1931 diary entry Goebbels noted that “ a strong clique operates against me in Munich.  Hierl, Rosenberg, and others.  Also Strasser.”[934]

In an attempt to limit the damage resulting from the opposition of Rosenberg Goebbels signed a statement of intent in 1932 entitled “The Combat League for German Culture”.  In the second section he ordered all the artists in his district who were members of the Party to join the Berlin branch of the League.[935]  At the same time he declared the Deutsche Kultur-Wacht the official mouthpiece of the League, in order to reduce the importance of a number of other journals associated with Rosenberg and dealing with culture.  This was not the last time that a war of journals developed as part of the struggle over the nature of cultural policy.  It 1937 Rosenberg would respond to a similar move by Goebbels by founding the journal Die Kunst im Dritten Reich in order to reduce the latter’s power.[936]

Goebbels in turn made every move possible to use the apparatus at his disposal.  He managed to have the center of activities of the League moved from Munich to Berlin and in this way obtained an advantage over Rosenberg.  His move led to an increase in the number of members of the League from about 2100 at the beginning of 1932 to about 6000 a year later.[937]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Romanticism of Steel

 

          The attempt to trace a utopian view of art in the writings and speeches of Goebbels after 1933 does not reveal a coherent and organized thesis.  There does not seem to be a systematic worldview which saw art as having an autonomous existence.  However, the lack of this sort of coherent theory did not lead Goebbels, as might have been expected, to support the positions of Hitler, Schultze-Naumburg, Rosenberg, and other art critics as to the desired artistic style in Nazi Germany.

          Fragments and partial considerations of the image of the ideal German art show that Goebbels supported an artistic style which he called “romanticism of steel”;  it was fundamentally different from the style which Rosenberg called by the same name.[938]  In a 1933 speech Goebbels claimed that the National-Socialist worldview must be characterized by “a romanticism of steel which will make German life valuable again.  This romanticism will not hide from the difficulties of existence and will not try to run away from them into the blue spaces.  Romanticism which has the courage to stand up to problems and look them pitilessly in the eyes steadily and without blinking.”[939] This style was needed in order to create a synthesis between the reactionary aspects of Nazi ideology as exemplified by German Romanticism and Goebbels’ support of a futurist approach to modernity.

          Goebbels was implicitly critical of the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century when he detailed how art was supposed display the ideal of “romanticism of steel”.  “German art of the next decade will be heroic, it will be romanticism of steel, it will be matter of fact and without sentiments, national and having great pathos and at the same time obligatory and connecting, or it will not be at all.”[940]  Unlike Hitler, who repeatedly expressed his appreciation of the Romantics and realism of the late nineteenth century, Goebbels believed that the adoption of this sort of artistic style would miss the essence of the National-Socialist revolution.  He felt that art must express the modernism of the Nazi age and be a visualization of the revolution.[941]

          The National-Socialist revolution was a total one, and therefore Goebbels did not believe that it could rely solely on political control.  He repeatedly emphasized in his writings that a general worldview was needed for the revolution to be effective.  He thought that if the Nazis were to rely on a revolution from above the end result could be failure.  “Revolutions never rely on the purely political realm;  them spread from there to all other fields of common life.  Economics and culture, science and art will not remain outside.”[942]  The totality of the revolution a priori did away with possibility of an autonomous culture disconnected from politics.  The relations between society and culture were most intensive, and therefore those who saw Nazism as solely a political theory would not contribute to its establishment.  Those who saw art as belonging to the artists, economics to the economists, and agriculture to the farmers would bring down disaster on German public life.  “National Socialism is not just a political theory but rather a whole show, total and covering all of public life.”[943]  For this reason “it would be innocent to assume that art will be spared, that it will be able to operate next to time or after it in a Cinderella existence disconnected from life….”[944]

          Art had no autonomy to operate in a world of its own disconnected from politics or to express an international spirit.  Goebbels’ approach, unlike those of Hitler and Rosenberg, was that art had to subjugate itself to the political order;  it was a field mobilized for political ends, useful as a tool forpropaganda.  He did not see art as being at the basis of politics, as his colleagues did, but rather as something acting to advance the political agenda which developed after the revolution.  It was therefore clear why the artist could not choose an apolitical stand, as then he would miss his professional calling and betray his people.  The artist must take part in the revolution, he must enlist and help achieve its goals and obey its laws.  Goebbels said that “I completely oppose a situation where only the artist will have the right to be apolitical”;  when “politics shakes and shivers everything from the foundation up, when it builds everything anew, when nothing is hidden from it, the artist cannot continue in his ordinary course, he must catch the wave and gallop forward.”[945]

          In order to ensure the success of the National-Socialist revolution the statesman and the artist must forge a contract.  The analogy between the statesman and the sculptor Goebbels first presented in Michael in the early 1920s reappeared in the 1930s in a slightly different form.  At the latter time Goebbels emphasized that such a contract was built into the basic ideas of Nazism.  “Nazism itself is based on the deepest roots of art, and therefore… [it sees] politics as the most sublime and the greatest of all the arts.”[946]  However, while the sculptor carved dead stone, the statesman “shapes the masses and provides them with laws and a framework, gives them form and life….”[947]  The main analogy between the artist and the statesman stemmed from the ability of the artist to influence the feelings of the viewer, a special power which the statesman also had when he influenced the masses.  “The artist has the godlike gift to design feelings, predictions of the heart, possibilities, and future things….  In this way he is different from the statesman.  The statesman is also artistic in that he helps the masses, who without him would have remained an unformed mass.”[948]

          Like the statesman, the poet could influence events and “design time, and in this way stand out beyond time and deal with the problems of the time in order ultimately to describe them as timeless (Zeitlos).”[949]  This was the main reason why the artist could not be allowed to detach himself from the problems of the time.  Goebbels emphasized several times that the artist must also deal with concrete issues.  He explained that “the poet must have the courage for new problems.”[950]

          Goebbels believed that artists were not allowed to maintain an independent and private dialogue among themselves, but they were not required to choose unambiguous political contents for their work either.  This “false pluralism” was unique to Goebbels and fit his belief that the revolution from below must take place together with the revolution from above.  His positions were different from those of the others who are presented in this book, and indicate the difficulties in achieving complete Gleichschaltung. 

          One of the main reasons why Goebbels had difficulty with the full mobilization of art for political needs was connected to his worry that art would become anachronistic kitsch. (figure 29)  The artist must avoid the meaningless copying of the symbols of the new Reich.  “What we want from art is more than a Party program which has undergone dramatization”.  As in his tendency, dating from the mid 1930s, to reject direct propaganda,Goebbels aimed at “an ideal where there is a deep blending of the spirit of a heroic worldview and the eternal laws of art”.[951]  It is therefore not surprising that Goebbels was sometimes very critical of opportunistic artists who he saw as refusing to express this ideal.  In a speech opening German Book Week in 1934 Goebbels explained that “I do not support the dilettantic kitsch of an army of the talentless who believe that the right time has arrived and that now is the time to march in processions with swastika flags waving above the stage and on the cinema screen.”[952]

          During the years after 1933 Goebbels repeatedly warned against the possibility that reactionary approaches would become dominant in the new Reich. In a subtle criticism of Hitler he wrote in his diary that it was not possible that Schultze-Naumburg would set the tone, as “it was forbidden to leave the field to the reactionaries”.[953]  Goebbels acted intensively to prevent a group of reactionaries from taking over cultural life in Nazi Germany;  the power struggles between them are discussed in the last section of this chapter.  He again expressed his fear that a kitschy style would replace modernism in 1937 on the eve of the opening of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.  During a press tour of the exhibition meant to display the Nazi alternative to modern art, he was cited as saying with satisfaction that the war against “degenerate” art had not led to kitsch taking over.  “National- Socialism had successfully held up against the danger that the fight against cultural Bolshevism would lead to the extreme opposite of national kitsch of the Biedermeier variety, which is petit bourgeois and lacking all novel form”.[954] The strengthening of cultural Bolshevism in the Weimar Republic symbolized for Goebbels an ever deeper split between the artist and his people.  In order to renew the link between the people and cultural production, the artist must deal with concrete reality and daily life in his works and not just display some ideal vision.

          Degenerate art was to be replaced by an artistic style which was not kitsch but also did not express pure propaganda, as this sort of switch meant the creation of an artificial style, a utopian front which would also lead to alienation from the people.  The dialogue between the artist and the people would only be valid when viewer could really identify with a work of art instead of being presented withdetached illusions.  This view is a fascinating one which cannot be seen as purely opportunistic.  Goebbels understood that the area of the visual arts was one where propagandaalone was not sufficient;  the creation of a real cultural alternative could not make do with only kitschy copies of the symbols of the Reich. His stand clarifies why his positions on art, although not well developed, cannot be characterized as sheer opportunism.

          An examination of Goebbels’ diaries from the period just before the opening of the first Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung shows that he was worried about the gap between his desires and the roles he had in mind for art and the artistic reality of the Third Reich.  His dissatisfaction can clearly be seen when he visited the House of German Art in Munich with Hitler at the beginning of June;  he summed up his opinion of works chosen for the exhibition.  “We [Hitler and I] examined the choices of the panel of judges.  Sculpture is somehow all right, but in painting the situation is almost catastrophic.  They hung here horrendous works….  The panel of judges of the artists examined the school, the name, while a true feeling for the art of painting – lost.  The Fuehrer went wild with rage.”  Goebbels mocked the kitschy taste displayed by the choices of the judges and called it “Biedermeier”.  He reported that the matter so bothered Hitler that Goebbels suggested what he felt, putting the exhibition off by a year and not “to display this sort of junk”. [955] The worry that delaying the exhibition would be interpreted as a lack of appropriate volkish art may explain why, less than two weeks later, a decision was made to significantly reduce the number of works displayed and not to delay the exhibition.[956]

          Goebbels’ diaries indicate that in the weeks prior to the opening of the exhibition both he and Hitler devoted a great deal of attention to the people preparing the exhibition, its contents, and the events accompanying it.  The two made several trips to Munich;  they followed the activities of the judges, and spent a lot of time discussing the exhibition.  The initial dissatisfaction gave way to euphoria, and on the eve of the exhibition Goebbels expressed his satisfaction with the works which remained in it.  “Later the House of Art.  It is almost ready, and has succeeded wonderfully”.  “The pictures chosen are very pretty, better than the statues.  There are not many of them but they were chosen carefully!  The Fuehrer is very happy.  We talked about the various celebrations.  If only it won’t rain.”[957]

          The opening of the exhibition was described by Goebbels as a most important event.  He described the holiday spirit in Munich,[958] (figure 30) which had been specially decorated for the occasion, noted the participation of the entire leadership in the events, and even covered the purchase of pictures by senior members of the leadership before the opening.  Hitler’s speech was seen as a ”classic” and as “the last punch”.[959]  The procession which was the high point of the Day of German Art Goebbels described as “an intoxicating mass of forms.  Wonderful.  We were all deeply moved, especially the Fuehrer.”[960]  The coverage of the exhibition in the press pleased Goebbels even more, especially the mention of his speech in an editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter.[961]

          The annual speeches of Goebbels at the openings of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen show his awareness of the propaganda potential of the exhibitions rather than a critical discussion of the works and their contents.  The events accompanying the openings, especially the Days of German Art, became within a relatively short time a central part of the new civic religion of the Third Reich.  Wistrich has discussed the 1939 Day of German Art, and has stated that “by the summer of 1939, the Day of German Art was one of the established high points of the festive calendar in the Third Reich.”[962]  The annual exhibitions led to a significant increase in the number of the artists participating and the works submitted for judgment;  Goebbels saw this increase as proof of the establishment of a National-Socialist style.  In his speech at the 1940 opening Goebbels described this increasing creativity as evidence that the war had not damaged creative life.[963]

          In most of his speeches Goebbels was careful to ascribe to Hitler a special understanding of art;  this can be seen especially clearly in speeches at cultural events.  At the opening of the Day of German Art in 1937 he emphasized that the Fuehrer had a special interest in culture as a result of his being a talented artist himself.  Hitler treated politics as creation.  “His whole creation is a sign of artistic views.  His policy is built according to truly classic forms.  The artistic leadership of his state places him according to his essence and character as the first of all German artists….”[964]  During the war, when Goebbels was invited to open the annual Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung, he stated that Hitler would not have missed such an important occasion if it hadn’t been for the situation.

          After the seizure of power, Goebbels changed his views from the late 1920s;  he began to support indirect propaganda.  This change stemmed from the fact that he saw everyday life in Nazi Germany as full of symbols, and therefore there was no longer any need for culture, art, and film as tools for the spreading of direct propaganda.  Unlike Hitler, who supported the use of direct propaganda, Goebbels saw it as presenting the viewers with a simplistic series of symbols.  On the other hand, indirect propaganda used more sophisticated tools to get the audience to identify with the cause;  it supplied entertainment and not just straight socialization.  From this point of view it promised to be significantly more effective.  Hoffmann has summed up Goebbels’ views well.  “Goebbels realized how counterproductive it would be in the long run to have Brown Shirts constantly marching not only in the streets but across the silver screen as well.”[965]

          Propaganda became effective when it managed to get the viewers’ minds off their daily problems.  “What we are seeking is more than a dramatization of the Party program.  The ideal that we have in mind is a profound union of the spirit of the heroic life and the eternal laws of art.”[966]  Goebbels therefore opposed the use of direct political propaganda films and preferred comedies or dramas.[967]  This preference was the main point of his criticism of Leni Riefenstahl;  he saw her as producing mobilized films characterized by direct propaganda.  The literature on Riefenstahl has suggested other reasons why the Propaganda Minister opposed the leading director of the Third Reich;  some of these reasons are connected to his unsuccessful courting of Riefenstahl, while others point to his unwillingness to share the glory of being Propaganda Minister.[968]

          The first mention of Riefenstahl in Goebbels’ diaries dates to 1929;  he had seen Piz Palü, one of the mountain films produced by Dr. Arnold Fanck.  He noted with great enthusiasm that he had enjoyed the movie and “the beautiful actress Riefenstahl, who is full of grace and splendor.”[969]  A reading of the diaries from the next few years gives the impression that Riefenstahl became part of the inner cultural circle of Hitler and Goebbels.  For example, in May 1933 Goebbels noted that he saw Madame Butterfly together with “Magda and Leni”;  later that month he stated that the latter had participated in a picnic in the mountains with Hitler.[970]  He also described meetings with Riefenstahl in June 1933 where they discussed the possibility that she would make a propaganda film about the Party and Hitler.  He emphasized that “the lady is a unique star”, and that she had been invited to Hitler as a result of her meeting with Goebbels. 

After Hitler saw her The Blue Light (1932) he became one of her fans;  she later stated that she was invited to his office where “as I began to talk, he listened patiently for a long time, then suddenly he said: ‘Once we come to power, you must make my film.’”[971]  The result of the meeting between Riefenstahl and Hitler was the most famous propaganda film made in Nazi Germany, the 1935 The Triumph of the Will, and another, even more mobilized film, the 1933 The Victory of Faith;  Riefenstahl was never satisfied with the latter.  Goebbels believed that the former had taken too long to produce, and the result was a deterioration of his relationship with Riefenstahl.  In October 1935 he noted that “she is still a woman who knows exactly what she wants” and mentioned a number of arguments between them over progress on the movie.[972]

Riefenstahl’s goal in her cinematic work was to produce a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk;  one of her ways of achieving this goal was to do away completely with the individual in favor of the masses.  Hitler loved her works for this reason because he saw in them the total subjugation of the individual to an authoritative system of surrender to the rule of the Fuehrer.  Hoffmann has stated that Riefenstahl’s aesthetics consciously abolished the existence of social connections.[973]  Kracauer, discussing The Triumph of the Will, has stated that the movie created a “metamorphosis of reality….  The film also includes pictures of the mass ornaments into which this transported life was pressed at this convention.  Mass ornaments they appeared to Hitler and his staff, who must have appreciated them as configurations symbolizing the readiness of the masses to be shaped and used at will by their leaders.”[974]

Paradoxically, the same claims made by Goebbels, that her films were direct propaganda, were made by critics after the end of World War II.  Riefenstahl herself completely rejected these criticisms in interviews she gave, in her autobiography, and in Müller’s 1993 documentary film The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.[975]  I do not believe that her denials stand the test of reality;  her movies, including Olympia, show her motives.[976]  Watching her movies bears out Sontag’s claim that they display a new kind of aesthetics which outlined the visual standards for Nazi cinema.[977]

It is hard to decipher exactly why Goebbels opposed Riefenstahl’s films, and whether his motives were expressive or instrumental.  The tendency to see him as motivated by opportunistic positions does not provide a sufficiently convincing explanation, as the dissatisfaction he expressed in this case was reflected in other cases, such as the argument over the image of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin[978] or that over Expressionism, settled by Hitler in 1937.  In all of these cases Goebbels expressed determined opposition to situations where Germany would be described as a totalitarian dictatorship and preferred to avoid direct propaganda;  he tried instead to camouflage the mobilization of art and culture.  His position can clearly be seen from his answer to criticisms of the Nazi politics of culture.  “We have been publicly blamed that we have lowered art to the level of mere propaganda.  Lowering – why?  Is propaganda a low point to which one descends?  Is propaganda as we understand it nothing other than a kind of art?”[979]

Goebbels saw the oversymbolization of the Reich and its closed image as less functional than a pragmatic approach characterized by a combination of camouflaged mobilization and “false pluralism”.  He was sure that this combination would better serve the needs of Germany.  At the beginning of March 1942 Goebbels summed up his views on propaganda in an unambiguous way.  “The moment a man becomes aware of propaganda the propaganda becomes ineffective.  On the other hand, when propaganda is displayed as a tendency, characteristic, or approach, when it remains in the background and is given its meaning by people, propaganda with all of its meanings becomes efficient.”[980]

The support Goebbels gave to indirect propaganda proved most functional when the Reich was forced to argue with its “democratic critics”.  He claimed that the critics’ position, which seemingly protected culture from authoritative regimes, actually reflected “ridiculous and insulting arrogance given the fact that in those of their own states which had had a rich cultural life in the past authoritative types of regime were established, while in those states which live almost completely on the basis of the culture of the other states – democracy still rules.”[981]  Goebbels thought that the source of the criticism of Nazi Germany was the United States, and that fact just made his views more extreme, as that country “has very little independent cultural life which reflects its species….  They [the Americans] never made any significant contribution to Western culture about which it could be said that it will survive the coming centuries.”[982]  Democratic culture was characterized by a mixture of “the smell of poverty with the perfume of the fringe world”.

Somewhat paradoxically, Goebbels explained that the history of art proved that there was no point to ask under what sort of regime any kind of art was created, as the most sublime works were produced under thoroughly autocratic regimes.  “Churches and secular buildings were planned and built under Popes and tyrant kings.  A painting considered the most valuable property of European culture in general was created during decades full of the noise of battle, the highest and richest visual art was created while demonic lordly families placed cities under their dominion….”[983]

Goebbels did not deny that Germany had limited the freedom of the spirit, but stated that the situation stemmed from the desire to protect national interests and therefore it was more logical than the limitations placed on cultural life in democratic countries “where they were opposed to capitalistic interests”.[984]

During World War II Goebbels once again adopted instrumental views which gave art a role in advancing the goals of the regime.  His speech at the opening of the 1939 annual congress of the Reich Chamber for Culture was entitled “Cultural Life during Wartime”.  The war was ultimate proof that art must not be autonomous.  “Now it will become clear to all of those who in the past could not understand why we always insisted that it is a mistake to see art only as an outing for a few happy hours.”  Art was a “most powerful spiritual weapon” in wartime;  German artists were willingly enlisting to supply the soldiers at the front with entertainment and calm.  Goebbels noted with satisfaction that the leading cultural organizations, the Reich Chamber for Culture and the National-Socialist cultural community, had mobilized for the war in order to ensure the continuity of artistic activity.  “We must insist that the more the streets are blacked out, the theaters and movie houses will be better lit.  They must shine in the twinkle of the lights.”[985]

Artists were called to create culture for the homeland;  their sacrifice was minimal compared to that of the soldiers fighting for the preservation of “the first European nation of culture, the land of Beethoven, Wagner, Schiller and Goethe, Dürer and Grünewald.”  Goebbels saw the need to continue to express one’s self in times of trouble as German;  it had historical precedents, as opposed to the case of England, which, he stated, had ceased to produce films. [986]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Degeneration delayed

 

 

          An examination of the way in which Goebbels approached the phenomenon of degeneration strengthens the claim that many elements of his views were not original;  they were taken from the shapers of the politics of culture and the art critics considered elsewhere in this book.  His speeches, diaries, and other writings show that Goebbels made almost no contributions to the Nazi worldview;  only in unusual cases did he even illuminate certain points with his views.

          As the ministerresponsible for Nazi propaganda Goebbels understood the potential of the modern tools of the mass age.  Herf has stated that from this point of view Goebbels believed in the “modernist credo”, as did those who identified the need for a combination of the tools of modern technology with political irrationality, and that he was thus a classic example of a “reactionary modernist”.[987]

          Goebbels respected the art and culture produced in Germany during the previous centuries, but it seems that his personal taste was not the same as that of those who claimed that these works were the height of German culture.  He believed that National Socialism had to avoid adopting positions which were fundamentally reactionary.  A number of different sources strengthen the claim that Goebbels admired Expressionist art.  The combination of an understanding of the potential of modern art as a reflection of the era in which it was created together with the propaganda damage Germany would suffer if it completely rejected modern art led Goebbels to support Expressionism in the years just after 1933.  This support explains the lack of a systematic discussion of degeneration in general and more specifically cultural Bolshevism in his writings, speeches, and diaries before 1937.  Even after this date, when pragmatic motives led to a hardening of his stands, his words sound forced, a necessary repeating of accepted slogans primarily meant to satisfy Hitler.

          The earliest mention of degeneration and the reasons for its establishment appeared in 1933 in a radio speech serving as the introduction to a broadcast of a Wagnerian opera.  However, the consideration of degeneration here was indirect and did not show particular originality or depth.  He did not use the word degeneration;  Goebbels hinted at its existence when he described the spiritual development of the post-war era which was “unhealthy and sick and therefore necessarily led to sickly results.”[988]  The relatively late date at which Goebbels chose to discuss this central question, compared to the discussions of the fanatic guardians of the Nazi politics of culture, shows that he saw the discussion of degeneration as a pointless necessity.

          Goebbels stated that the starting point for processes of degeneration was during the Weimar Republic, a later date than that given by most of the others.  The German people had been in “a deep spiritual and political coma since November 1918”.[989]  Unlike Rosenberg and Schultze-Naumburg, who traced the roots of degeneration as a social and cultural phenomenon and suggested the French Revolution as a starting point, Goebbels chose a much later one which fit his belief that Germany must avoid adopting fundamentally reactionary stands.

          In a speech at the opening of the Reich Chamber for Culture Goebbels developed the distinction between culture and civilization.  He defined culture as “the highest expression of the creative forces of the people” and warned against a situation where “the artist lost, even if only once, the hard ground of the traditions of the people (Volkstum) where he must be found”.  In this situation he might be exposed to “the hostility of civilization to which he would sooner or later surrender”.[990]

          The phenomena of civilization strengthened with the increase in personal freedom and individualism, and the situation quickly became one of spiritual anarchy.  The same also happened in the creative world.  “German art disconnected from the forces of the people became lost in the thicket of the motion of modern civilization and thus quickly became an experiment, a game, a fraud.”[991]  One of the ways in which the increase in individualism was expressed was the tendency of artists to sink into a private dialogue among themselves, “the tendency of the modern artist was to be responsible to himself alone….”[992]  Goebbels criticized this trend and claimed that it led to the disconnection of art from the community and to a dramatic reduction in its ability to mobilize until it faced the danger of extinction.[993]

          The Weimar Republic and its artists committed a “horrible crime” when they broke their organic connections to the German people.  Instead of dealing with the acute problems of German life the artists dealt with unimportant issues and “got confused in the wrong ways and side paths of acrobatic snobbism”.  The situation in which only a small circle could understand art, that same internal dialogue which Goebbels criticized, led to an unnecessary division between those who understood art and those who did not.  Instead of acting as a “translator” for the whole people, the artist placed himself unambiguously on the side of property and education.  The deepening gap between the artist and the members of the community represented a comprehensive and ever-strengthening process, as by its very nature “liberalism ends in a disintegration of spiritual life”.[994]

          The first explicit mention of the age of degeneration (Verfallszeit) appeared in a speech before journalists in April 1934.  Goebbels stated that the political order of the Weimar Republic had led to the complete destruction of the German people.  He believed that those directly responsible for the process were the “asphalt litterati lacking roots and species” who made cynical use of the German people when they checked the people’s responses “to their sick brain hallucinations”.[995]  The terminology Goebbels used gives the impression that he had read Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and that he was drawing his main arguments from them.

          Only at the end of 1939 did Goebbels add the Jew to his general description of the age of degeneration.  This late date fits the length of time it took him to decide to purge the Jews who were members of the Reich Chamber for Culture, and the two together strengthen the claim that Goebbels was the least radical of the Nazi leaders.  Although he did point to the connection between degeneration and the Jews in May 1933 when he staged the burning of the books in Berlin,[996] he was in no hurry to come to any other operative conclusions from the connection.

          In a 1939 speech to the members of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts Goebbels emphasized the unique “contribution” of the Jews to the process of disintegration, a fact stemming from their “basically lacking a sense of beauty”.  He explained that the perversion of the Jews was expressed in the world of culture;  they were “the most active representatives of the deviation from German culture”.  They had produced “pathological deviation” which had justly received the name of degenerate art.  Typical Jewish art “dealt splendidly with all of the sins and the abnormal.  The anti-hero, the ugly, the sick, and the rotten – they raise all of these to the level of an artistic ideal.”[997]

          The taking over of German cultural life by the Jews had been gradual and sophisticated;  in the first stage they took over criticism, which “praised everything which served this artistic direction and cursed everything that rose up against it”.  The next stage was to take over the art market and sell only the results of degenerate art.  After that the Jews gradually entered the academies of art and dictated the content of exhibitions.  All of these factors created a situation where “an infinite number of German painters, sculptors, and architects became the victims of the terror of this view.  They must place themselves at the disposal of an artistic direction which they saw as deviant and sick or else they were materially and ideally repressed through this growing terror.”[998]

          The “spiritual terror”, mostly guided by Jews, led to one of two outcomes.  Either the artists “retreated in disgust and despaired of the noisy Jewish art business or else their opposition was so minimal that they were forced to take part despite many hesitations.”[999]  Degenerate art dealt with “the experience of the bloodless” of the Republic and ignored the fate of the people.  The artists who led this trend chose to focus on “the sick complexes of modern man which had been repressed and on the deviation of its heroes.  In the end, this process would lead to the grotesque end of individualism.”[1000]

          In a speech at the opening of the second Reich Theater Week in 1935, Goebbels stated that cultural Bolshevism was one of the main expressions of degeneration.  “What we call cultural Bolshevism [can be seen in] the rootless asphalt literature, the rootless asphalt painting, the rootless asphalt music – they do not draw on the pool of folk wisdom but are invented in pale brains foreign to life”.  Cultural Bolshevism would never see Germany as its homeland.  It drew its values from the foreign and the international.  The expressions of cultural Bolshevism strengthened during the Weimar Republic and led the processes of “internationalization” and “aestheticism for its own sake” to new heights which had not been seen in Germany.[1001] As a master of propaganda Goebbels was quick to grasp the dichotomy between the two conflicting worldviews.  He explained in a most vivid way what was wrong with the modern Gesellschaft, and how these problems were reflected in the life of the metropolis.

          After 1942 Goebbels spoke of a “hierarchy of degeneration” which could be seen in various areas of cultural activity.  In a speech at the opening of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung he noted that painting revealed the worst effects of degeneration.  “The ignorant and uneducated are willing to buy pictures… where it is not clear whether they deal with a tomato salad or a landscape of the Alps.”  It was harder for a “degenerate” style, such as that of the Bauhaus, to establish itself in architecture than it was in painting;  the result would be serious damage to the quality of life of the buyer.  “To ask them to live in square concrete monsters instead of a pleasant home – that was beyond the ability of the client to adapt himself.”[1002]

          Goebbels saw volkish art as fulfilling completely different functions from those art filled during the age of degeneration.  “It is not the goal of art ‘to illuminate’ the perversions of human life.  Art is supposed to depict the typical:  people, objects, and goals which represent the times and from which the next generations can learn:  That’s how it once was.”  Art only had the right to exist when it was trying to fulfill these goals, as “in reality art is nothing more than the most plastic spiritual expression of the Volkstum….”[1003]  In accordance with his belief that art was to be a form of indirect propaganda, Goebbels was against provocative art.  If art was to “depict the typical”, he certainly would have preferred the works of Barlach and Nolde over those of Otto Dix, George Grosz, or even Franz Marc. 

          The success of an artist was a function of his ability to express his cultural roots;  all types of international art also necessarily drew on their own special national sources.  “Shakespeare became a world artist because he was the best Briton….  Goethe became a world artist because he was the best German – in the end they drew their power from the folk culture from which they sprang.”[1004]

          The influence of Le-Bon can be seen in Goebbels’ claim that the symbols, images, associations, and essentially all of the materials of the artist must come from the collective memory of his people.  “Art must turn to the feelings and to the images common to the people, especially for everything connected to the most developed natural beauty and harmony of the people.”[1005]  In 1927 Goebbels had already explained that “culture is created at the moment when the individual develops into a people.  The single man is unable to create cultures, he can create culture only in the framework of the people.”[1006]  In other words, the existence of culture was dependent on the subjugation of the individual to the requirements of the collective.

          Goebbels explained in a 1939 speech to the members of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts that because the process of individualization reached new heights in the Weimar Republic, collective culture could not develop there.  This fact “forced” the Nazis to deal with the chaos in art once they had seized power.  Placing culture under government control was a result of its importance;  a radical cut had to be made “in order to achieve order and clarity in this area as well”.  Here Goebbels’ instrumental approach and his tendency to see art as subservient to politics can clearly be seen. Goebbels stated that taking care of the chaos in art, or the “radical cut”, was done by politicians because art no longer had enough power and authority to take care of things itself.[1007]

          By using the term “radical cut” Goebbels hinted at the purging and confiscation of “degenerate” art carried out in the summer of 1937 before the opening of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition.  His words show that he was aware of the criticisms which saw the confiscations as a particularly drastic step, but he also justified Hitler’s policy.  “When the Fuehrer took this step two years ago it was thought to be revolutionary by the artistic public.  Certain circles could not and did not want to understand the fact that this matter had to be resolved using political means….”[1008]  Goebbels explained that the critics saw the purge as hurting “valuable beginnings of moderna which was at its peak of novel design”, but at that time it was already clear that the decision only helped the German people because “the cut only removed the disease and again allowed life to become healthy”.[1009]  “If we hadn’t acted in this way, the same degenerate division into types of people and life which are opposed to the heroism of our front would still be hanging here in the name of ‘German art’.”[1010]

          An examination of Goebbels’ diary from the period just before the opening of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition strengthens the claim that he saw it as having mostly instrumental meaning;  he saw it as a sort of test mission Hitler had given him.  The diaries strengthen the assumption that Goebbels was not driven by ideological fervor here, as does his support for Expressionism.  His style in the diaries is fragmentary and dense, and his entries on this topic are the shortest;  even so, I believe that the diaries reflect his true opinion, while his speeches display ideological cover.

The idea to hold the “Degenerate” Art exhibition first appears in the diaries at the beginning of June 1937.  Goebbels noted that he planned to hold in Berlin an exhibition of “the art of the Verfallszeit”;  its purpose was to be pedagogical, “so that the people would learn to see and identify”.[1011]  In the middle of June Goebbels noted the importance of holding the exhibition in Munich;  it would provide an opportunity to influence cultural policy in this important city where he had always had significant opponents.[1012]

On June 29 Hitler ordered Goebbels to start confiscating works and the next day Goebbels signed an order stating, among other things, “according to the clear instructions of the Fuehrer I hereby appoint the president of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts, Professor Ziegler of Munich, to choose and display for the exhibition works of German degenerate art done from 1910 onward, in the areas of painting and sculpture, which are now located in collections belonging to the German Reich, private collections, or local communities.  You are ordered to give Prof. Ziegler your full support during the examination and choice of the works.”[1013]

After the signing of the order a committee was set up with Ziegler, who had been appointed president of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts in 1936, at its head.  The other members of the committee were the leading critics of modern art in the Nazi regime, including Willrich and Scholz, who are considered in the next section.[1014]  The great extent of the committee’s activities led Goebbels to express doubts as to whether they could finish their mission by July 19, the opening day of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.  During the first two weeks of their work the committee visited thirty-two museums and confiscated more than seven hundred works of art.[1015]  The order appointing the committee gave them relative freedom and expanded authority, but they went even beyond what they had been granted;  they confiscated works done before 1910 and even those not done by Germans.  Goebbels responded to the excesses after the fact;  in November 1937 he visited Munich with Ziegler and Speer and saw all of the confiscated works.  He justified Ziegler’s “criteria” for confiscation and stated in his diary that there were “very few borderline cases.  All the rest are such great garbage that after a three-hour visit you become nauseous.  So I actually purged the museums.  I believe I was privileged to do that.”[1016] (figure 31)

The comments in Goebbels’ diary show the pragmatic way he treated the exhibition.  He noted that “the Fuehrer spoke to me at length about art.  He is quite sure of his way.  He has great faith in me, and I will not fail him.”[1017]  The role of organizer of the exhibition gave him the means to increase his influence and power in the Nazi hierarchy, as can be seen from an explicit comment in his diary.  The “credit” for the confiscation of degenerate art “belongs to me – and I will get it”.[1018]  He also saw one indication of the success of the exhibition as appropriate exposure in the press.  With great satisfaction Goebbels stated that there were positive echoes in the press of Ziegler’s speech at the opening.[1019]  Goebbels described the exhibition as “an enormous success and a nasty blow” to his enemies.  The disagreements which accompanied the opening and were expressed in the objections of Speer and Schweitzer to the main idea of the exhibition led in the end to a strengthening of the connections between Goebbels and Hitler.  “The Fuehrer stood solidly by me against all the hostility.”[1020]

It seems that Goebbels realized that the exhibition could increase his power, but he was far from supportive of the ideas behind the exhibition.  A comment in his diary showed his real views.  Writing about a visit to the “Degenerate” Art exhibition with Hitler a day before the opening, he noted that “this is the craziest thing I have ever seen.  Complete madness.”[1021]

After the opening of the exhibition Goebbels felt that he had succeeded.  This may explain why he decided to continue to purge the museums, as the purge was not the result of planned policy.  “I gave Ziegler instructions by telephone to purge the museums.  It will take three months and then everything will be clear.”[1022]  The order to continue the purge received retroactive legal approval in the form of an order signed by Goebbels.[1023]  The result was unprecedented;  during the summer the committee confiscated 15,997 works by 1400 different artists.[1024]  On September 22, 1937 Goebbels noted that the purge had been completed;  what remained was to sort the works for a planned public sale in Lucerne.  He thought the sorting would take two months.[1025]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Minister of Illusions: The Case for Expressionism

 

 

          Goebbels’ comments on the events preceding the opening of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition strengthen the impression that his views were not a function of an extreme ideological system but rather were characterized by flexibility and stemmed from opportunism.  Welch and Fest have claimed that Goebbels’ worldview expressed “the least volkish” tone;[1026]  Petropoulos has stated that Goebbels symbolized the “promodernist forces within the party”.[1027]  Reuth and Herzstein have claimed that Goebbels’ actions show his opportunism and that Goebbels was characterized by a relatively “leftist” approach.[1028]  Steinweis has seen Goebbels as a pragmatist.[1029]  Hochman has suggested a slightly different approach;  she has claimed that Goebbels’ relatively liberal cultural stands were the result of his “Berliner” orientation, which was geographically and intellectually distinct from the reactionaries of Munich.[1030]

          The lack of ideological strictness can be better seen in Goebbels’ views on cultural and artistic questions than in any other area.  It may have resulted from the combination of wanting to please Hitler and to increase his own power and control, and a general indifference on issues of the visual arts.  This indifference led to a flexible and pragmatic approach to matters of culture;  it is especially apparent when compared to his enormous interest in questions of propaganda.  At most Goebbels hoped to use the visual arts in order to create an illusion, to engineer reality.  Finally, his personal taste in art led him to support a movement which Hitler and Rosenberg saw as the very image of degeneration.

          The Expressionist movement was the center of a power struggle between Goebbels and Rosenberg and the rest of the reactionaries.  In the first years after the seizure of power Goebbels expressed his support for Expressionism and even helped the Schreiber group.  After 1935 his stand began to shift as he understood that Hitler was strenuously opposed to Expressionism and that continued support for the movement might damage his position in the Nazi leadership.

          It is hard to know whether the support Goebbels gave Expressionism at the beginning of the 1930s was really a matter of his personal preferences or perhaps stemmed from his desire to attack Rosenberg for his conservative stands.  However, whether the support was authentic or part of a power struggle Goebbels’ diaries and writings suggest that unlike the rest of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture discussed in this book, Goebbels was not fundamentally bothered by this sort of question.  For him art was at most an element to be mobilized for political reasons, a relevant tool when it helped with propaganda, a decoration like the Expressionist pictures hanging on the walls of his apartment.

          Bussmann has claimed that the argument over Expressionism was actually a cover for power struggles.”[1031]  An examination of Goebbels’ diaries strengthens this claim;  they are full of direct and emotional references to Rosenberg, who Goebbels saw as a personal and dangerous enemy.  By the end of 1929 he was already accusing Rosenberg of trying to undermine him and even called him “that insufferable and arrogant Balt”.[1032]  Rosenberg’s activities in Munich in the framework of the Combat League for German Culture led to the establishment of a strong opposition to Goebbels;  he saw the Munich group as “my enemies until death”.[1033]

          Despite the pragmatic tone of the diaries, the young Goebbels, as expressed in his novel Michael, seems to have really appreciated the Expressionist movement.  The earliest mention of Expressionist artists in his diaries dates from August 1924, when Goebbels visited a museum in Cologne.  He specifically noted The Spanish Dancer by Nolde, and was enthusiastic about “the wonderful colors”.[1034]  The work which most excited him was Die Beserker, a sculpture by Barlach;  Goebbels saw it as showing the meaning of Expressionism, “reinforcement of the limited to a grandiose presentation”.[1035](figure 31a)

          The support for the two Expressionist painters in the years before 1933 slowly became more qualified after that date.  As a person aware of the way in which a change in his views was likely to be seen, Goebbels made a distinction between two types of Expressionism in one of his earliest speeches on cultural matters.  Early Expressionism was characterized by clear stands and expressed the age in which it was created, while Late Expressionism sank into a poverty (Dalles)[1036] characterized by anemia and jokes.[1037]

          In June 1933 Goebbels debated whether Nolde was “a Bolshevik or a painter” and explained that the question might be an appropriate topic for a Ph.D. dissertation.[1038]  Goebbels’ waffling may have stemmed from his interpretation of his talks with Hitler, who harshly attacked Rosenberg during 1933 and 1934.[1039]  In June 1934 Goebbels suggested not to completely reject Expressionism;  his main argument was connected to National Socialism being a progressive and modernist movement which therefore could not ignore “these new directions because of their contribution to art”.[1040]  This claim may perhaps best show the unique combination found in Goebbels;  he saw Expressionism as a style which might well express the “élan vital” of the Nazi revolution.

          The role Goebbels planned for art in Nazi Germany called on it to rise above “modernism” and “the reactionary”.  He thought that both of these terms had to be replaced as out of date.  Art “was to be immune to modern arrogance behind which hid a lack of artistic ability, just as it will be immune to reactionary regression which wants to hide the way from the youth.”[1041]  In his diaries Goebbels expressed his disgust with the reactionary stands of senior figures in the Nazi Party.  The way in which these comments are worked into the diaries creates the impression that they express authentic feelings.[1042]

          Goebbels’ personal taste in art, as seen in the design of his Berlin apartment, also advances the idea that his support for Expressionism in the early years was authentic.  Speer lent him watercolors by Nolde from the National Gallery in Berlin in 1933;  the director of the Gallery, Eberhard Hanfstaengel approved the loan.  Speer, who was later picked by Goebbels to decorate his apartment, stated years after that Goebbels had been very pleased with the pictures and that they would have stayed in his apartment if Hitler had not visited and sharply criticized them.  After the visit Goebbels ordered that the pictures be removed, claiming that they were “impossible”.[1043]  Petropoulos has stated that Goebbels’ patronage and choice of Speer were the result of their shared ability to be flexible and pragmatic.[1044]

          During 1933 and 1934 an argument broke out between the National- Socialist German Student Alliance and the continuers of the tradition of Rosenberg’s Combat League for German Culture after members of the latter could not come to an agreement whether Expressionist artists could be included as part of the Nazi cultural revolution.  They even refused to accept Emil Nolde as a member.[1045]  The group of students who supported Expressionism was organized by Otto Andre Schreiber, who was later called the “Otto Strasser of culture”.[1046]  The members of this group argued that Expressionist artists were patriotic Germans, supporters of the Nazi revolution, and appropriate representatives of contemporary German art.  They added that the style of these artists expressed nationalist feelings toward soil, nature, and landscape, and therefore properly reflected the struggle against the city and modernism, the supporter of the machine, something that abstract styles influenced by Soviet Constructivism could not do.[1047]

          Following Gottried Benn, the spiritual father of the Schreiber group, the group’s members claimed that German Expressionism contained a Gothic element expressing authenticity and the Nordic spirit.[1048]  Schreiber himself claimed that the “demonic mysticism” characteristic of the works of Nolde must be expressed in the art of Nazi Germany.  He believed that the Expressionists had paved the way for the National-Socialist revolution and therefore their inclusion was necessary if the revolution was to be finished.[1049]  The Schreiber group demonstrated at the University of Berlin on June 29, 1933 against “reaction in art” which many of the speakers attributed to the members of the Combat League for German Culture.  At the same time they wished to express their support for the art of Barlach, Nolde, Heckel, and Schmidt-Rottluff.[1050]  Schreiber used the journal Kunst der Nation, for which he was responsible, to print articles supporting Expressionism and the works of Barlach and Nolde.  Exhibitions such as the Futurist exhibition in Berlin, which included works whose style was described as degenerate by opponents, received extensive coverage.[1051]

          The approach of the Schreiber group fit together with Goebbels’ call for neo-corporatism in art;  neo-corporatism meant that the regime had the responsibility to advance culture, but that it must avoid dictating the contents of that culture.  In a speech at the opening of the Reich Chamber for Culture in 1933 Goebbels explained that the Chamber should be a “union of all creative people”, as “we will not want to limit artistic-spiritual development but to develop it.  The state wants to hold out its protecting hands above them.  The German artists are supposed to feel protected under its sponsorship and once again to feel that happy approach that they are necessary to the regime as those who create the values of its material existence.”[1052]  Goebbels did not deny that the mobilization of art to express the central contents of Nazism would help the Party, but he made it clear that “he has no plans to order it”.[1053]

          The Schreiber group pinned its hopes on Goebbels;  they saw him as a supporter of “Gothic” Expressionism.  Hochman has stated that the group could not have continued to operate without his agreement.[1054]  The conflict between the groups supported by Goebbels and by Rosenberg created during 1933 and 1934 a clear distinction between the flexible approach of the former and the reactionary views of the latter.  The artists themselves believed that “they would find shelter from the threatening hegemony of Rosenberg” in Goebbels’ Reich Chamber for Culture,[1055] and, as Steinweis has detailed, the Chamber was indeed relatively pluralistic.  In 1935, non-Aryans were even allowed to become members, and the entrance exams for membership were relatively pragmatic.[1056]

          Goebbels himself emphasized that in the first years after the seizure of power the Chamber had to be run in a relatively flexible way so that it would fit the nature of its members.  “The artist by his very nature, profession, and mission has a strongly individualist approach.  The danger here was thus greater than in any other place, as using inappropriate or too strong means would make the issue itself harder”.  If there had not been a flexible policy the Chamber would have lost its importance.  “It would have had to leave its gates open to anyone acting in a creative-artistic way….”[1057]  In his diaries Goebbels repeatedly warned against the “over-bureaucratization” of art stemming from the plans of the Chamber to pass too many laws.[1058]  In addition to the limited openness of the Chamber, Goebbels used his journal Der Angriff to support the Schreiber group;  he published the works of Nolde, who as a result visited Goebbels together with Barlach.[1059]

          Goebbels’ belief that a “closed culture” would not be effective in mobilizing the middle classes, the educated, and the liberals was also expressed in his sponsorship of the Futurist exhibition which opened in Berlin in March 1934.  The appearance of Goebbels and Goering at the opening reflected their shared view that Futurism, even though it was “avant-garde” and revolutionary, must be shown in Berlin because it was produced by a political ally.  Given Hitler’s unambiguous rejection of Futurism, their support for the movement clearly demonstrates that cultural Gleichschaltung was not reached at once and that different opinions existed within the Nazi leadership responsible for the shaping of the politics of culture.

It would seem that Hitler saw Futurism as one of the most extreme examples of degeneration in art, an opinion he shared with Rosenberg, and therefore the very opening of a Futurist exhibition led to the personal intervention of Hitler in the argument over Expressionism.  Hitler’s decision to appoint Rosenberg to the position of Party general inspector in the areas of philosophical and intellectual instruction in March 1934 reflected the direction of cultural policy he preferred.

          In Hitler’s speech at the annual Party congress in Nuremberg in September 1934 he stated unambiguously that the wavering policy on questions of the Nazi politics of culture had come to an end.[1060]  Goebbels understood Hitler’s stand and the pushing of Rosenberg to the sidelines as a complete victory for him, despite the reactionary tone Hitler dictated for the Nazi politics of culture from then on.  He chose to ignore the compromises he would have to make in his views and the fact that Expressionist works were at the center of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition.[1061]  In his diaries Goebbels noted with satisfaction that “Rosenberg’s crazy plan is dead.  The leadership of culture is unambiguously in my hands.”[1062]

          Even after he was forced to accept the reactionary line of the views of Hitler and Rosenberg, Goebbels was still not promised control over Nazi cultural policy.  He had to take a number of steps to prove that he had changed his views.  Steinweis has described these steps in detail and has emphasized that in 1935 Goebbels expressed his dissatisfaction with the “self-administration” of the Reich Chamber for Culture, even though he had supported the idea at the beginning.  “Frustrated by insubordination, especially over the Jewish question, and feeling pressure by doctrinaire Nazis such as Alfred Rosenberg, the propaganda minister saw no choice but to expand political control over the Kulturkammer.”[1063]  For these reasons Goebbels made a number of moves meant to ensure his dominance and fortify his standing in the Chamber.  One of these was the replacement of a number of key figures;  Höning, the first president of Chamber, was replaced by Adolf Ziegler.[1064]  The appointment of Ziegler to the presidency of Reich Chamber of Visual Arts “marked the culmination of the Reichskulturkammer’s institutional transformation and was the clearest signal of the regime’s growing intolerance for nonconformity in the arts.”[1065]

               The closer control of the Chamber was also expressed in the decision to purge it of all non-Aryan members;  the process was finished during 1938.[1066]  These steps were meant to please Hitler and establish Goebbels’ power, but they also demonstrated that on matters of the politics of culture he was not among those setting the tone.  In addition to his pragmatism and opportunism, which have been shown here, Golomstock has claimed that Goebbels’ compromises show the failure of the worldview he tried to display.  He believes that “like Maiakovskii and Marinetti before him, he [Goebbels]met defeat.”[1067]

However, Goebbels’ defeat stemmed from a clearly different reason. While Marinetti and the Futurists, like Mayakovski and the Constructivists, hoped to receive the title of state art because of their contributions to culture in a revolutionary age, the Expressionists never hoped to become the official German state art. The debate over Expressionism therefore reflects, more then anything else, the Nazis’ uneasiness with modernism.  Nolde’s political beliefs remained a unique case.  Goebbels did not manage to set the cultural tone and define the Nazi politics of culture, because in Nazi Germany reaction was more dominant than anywhere else.  The limited influence Goebbels had on the contents of the politics of culture, despite the fact that he held a leading position in the Nazi cultural policy, shows how limited the description of Nazi art as “mobilized” is.  Even the leading propaganda artist of the twentieth century did not manage to set the tone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

          This discussion of the National-Socialist politics of culture shows that the claims that Nazism was an ideology without a cultural worldview are mistaken.  Not only was the politics of culture a central element of Nazism, it also developed at least ten years before the seizure of power.  Nazi aesthetics cannot be described solely in terms of antimodernism;  this factor, though central, is not enough to explain the Nazi politics of culture or illuminate its roots.  As I have shown here, there was instead a dialectic connection between antimodernism and the desired volkish alternative. 

          Each chapter attempts to outline the boundaries of the politics of culture while showing a balance between antimodernism and volkism.  The basic assumption guiding the writing of this book is that a discussion of the Nazi worldview focusing only on the antimodernist elements misses a fundamentally important element, as the dissatisfaction with modernism stemmed from the volkish worldview and was based upon it.

          One conclusion arising from this research is that the study of Nazi aesthetics is problematic because of the crossing of two issues which are hard to separate.  The first of these is the blurring of the distinctions between art and politics found in the German nationalist tradition.  This blurring was expressed in Nazi ideology until 1933 and even strengthened the calls for Gleichschaltung after the seizure of power.  Thus, any attempt to discuss the mobilized art of the Third Reich using independent parameters such as aesthetics or politics cannot succeed.  For this reason I have used the term politics of culture;  it emphasizes the blurring between the fields.  For the Nazis, the theory of beauty, race theory, historical interpretations, and analyses of the politics of the Weimar Republic were interconnected, though not in a consistent and logical way.

          The second issue is the tension which Stern has called the “conservative revolution”;  it is the dialectic relation between Nazism and the past.  This tension can be seen in the lack of agreement over and the different definitions given by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture to the ideal historical basis for the movement and its ideas.  Rosenberg, for example, wanted a new interpretation based on ancient German volkish inspiration and despised the overemphasis on ancient Greek art.  Hitler, on the other hand, wanted the conservative inspiration for the Nazi revolution to come from a mixture of Neo-Classical form and style and a particularly selective use of the Romantic tradition.

          The disagreement among the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture over the ideal sources of inspiration sometimes spilled over into more immediate questions.  When Hitler criticized Rosenberg during the argument over Expressionism he was trying to find a middle path between Goebbels’ emphasis on the novelty and revolutionary nature of the new regime and Rosenberg’s dream of a Nazi utopia in the form of a renaissance of older worlds.  The language used in the argument shows the extent to which the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture were aware of and busy with culture and aesthetics and how well they knew both olderand contemporary art   It is thus not surprising that the supporters of modernism among these individuals also tended to identify with artistic technologies such as film which had developed in the modern era, even though they could be distributed and duplicated.  On the other hand, the radical representatives of the Nazi politics of culture, the fanatic guardians of Nazi purity, described their world in terms taken from the visual arts.  Both of these approaches were ultimately mixed together in a unique combination put together by the Nazi regime;  festivals and mass processions were used to demonstrate the Wagnerian idea of Gesamtkunstwerk and the new mass society.

          The lack of agreement among the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, like their different approaches, have given scholars the false impression that Nazism was a mixture of influences with no unique features.  However, a systematic examination of the bases of the politics of culture indicates that there was general agreement over at least a few basic assumptions.  The vulgar idealist approach, as Stackelberg has called it, supposed that correction of the world would come from a change in consciousness;  visual elements were a central part of this approach both in the description of the “illness” of the new age and in that of the “cure”.  The shapers of the Nazi politics of culture, and certainly the fanatics among them, had no intention of reducing the visual to a mere representative strategy, but rather developed a general worldview about the place of man, the nation, and nature.

          The term Weltanschauung (worldview)describes all of the various Nazi views on different issues.  Hitler and Rosenberg intentionally refrained from using the term ideology because they agreed with the anti-political spirit in Germany and preferred more “spiritual” terminology, and indeed, the alternative worldview for which they preached cannot be placed in the category of materialist political ideologies such as Marxism or liberalism.  Therefore, the term politics of culture and its analysis as used in this book are meant to indicate non-instrumental and non-materialist definitions of politics.

          If the basic assumption here that the Nazi worldview was developed by conservative circles in Germany out of cultural despair is accepted, and also that this worldview in certain specific historical circumstances was partially or wholly absorbed into Nazism and produced a mixture unique to it, then the term politics of culture seems particularly appropriate.  An examination of the process of the development of this politics of culture shows that Nazism was based on and added new levels and interpretations to earlier texts such as Wagner’s “Judaism in Music” and Langbehn’s “Rembrandt as an Educator”;  during this process they were aware of the need to select between the foundations of volkism so that they would provide inspiration for change yet preserve the historical continuity of National Socialism.

          An analysis of the essence of Nazism in terms of the politics of culture leads to the conclusion that the Nazi regime could not compromise on questions of culture and aesthetics without losing its identity.  For exactly this reason Goebbels and a group of Nazi students lost the battle to legitimize Expressionism, a type of artistic representation whose style and form were influenced by and belonged to modern trends.  This attempt to establish a more open definition of Nazi aesthetics can be seen as a test case for additional cases where the regime debated a more “pluralist” interpretation of ideology, as in the case of race philosophy.  Such attempts were completely rejected after 1937.  If such limited pluralism had been accepted it might have emptied the unified form of representation of race of its content and even prevented the establishment of cultural Gleichschaltung.  The centrality of race theory in the Nazi worldview dictated the need for aesthetic unity and for the translation of the worldview into a visual language.  From this point of view, Nazism is an unusually extreme example of the visualization of ideology, even in comparison with other dictatorships of the same period.  The lack of willingness to compromise over alternative forms of representation was the result of the need to supply examples of the visual ideal and at the same time to emphasize the continuity of ideas taken from thinkers and philosophies which identified the modern era with deviance and degeneration.

          The politics of culture, which Stern saw as resting on cultural despair, or on the crises in German ideology, as Mosse saw it, was characterized by a consensus over the term degeneration.  Degeneration was not found just in the art world;  it was described in racial, gender, and even political terms.  It was at the center of an ideology which had been rejected, it symbolized the modern Gesellschaft which was to be condemned in every possible way. The first appearances of the term in the Nazi politics of culture date to the early 1920s;  three often overlapping varieties of degeneration were described.  Individual or personal degeneration was often connected to madness and was expressed as some sort of deviation or deformity.  Collective degeneration was a phenomenon which spread in the modern Gesellschaft;  as a result of the strengthening of processes of alienation, those suffering from this problem were incapable of artistic creation.  Racial degeneration was best exemplified by the Jew, who consciously spread degeneration through subversive and disintegrative actions.  The overlap between the three types led to ideological contradictions and even the labeling of the same artist in different ways.

          Despite the agreement over the destructive nature of degeneration, there were disagreements over the period in which the process of degeneration began.  Some of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture believed that the French Revolution marked the start of the process and in this way represented a radical and maximalist spirit, while Goebbels tended to see the start of the process in the Weimar Republic.  There were also disagreements over the artistic movements which were seen by the Nazis as marking the start of degeneration.  The radicals went so far as to suggest Neo-Classicism, which they saw as identified with the traditions of the Enlightenment, as the source of degeneration.  Supporters of warrior heroism, they also rejected nostalgic Romanticism and even Impressionism, claiming that these movements reflected degeneration and biological deviation.

          There were also disagreements among the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture as to the causes of degeneration.  Hitler, Rosenberg, and Schultze-Naumburg tended toward conspiratorial explanations according to which the Jews were intentionally spreading degeneration in order to ensure their continued power;  their views were not far from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Other explanations emphasized that degeneration was the result of a view created due to changes brought about by the modern era.

          After 1933 the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture emphasized the clear political mobilization of artists identified with the left, and thus political degeneration, a fourth type of degeneration, appeared;  it was usually identified with cultural Bolshevism.  Emil Nolde, a member of the Nazi Party since its founding, ended up being described as personally degenerate because of the style of his works.  On the other hand, George Grosz was described as both personally and collectively degenerate for his style, and then, because of his political activities as a member of the German Communist Party, he was described as politically degenerate and even as a spreader of cultural Bolshevism.  John Heartfield, who also “fit” the same three types, was falsely accused by the Nazis of coming from a Jewish family so that they would have an example of an artist who was degenerate from every point of view.

          The volkish alternative to degenerate modern art emphasized to differing degrees basic principles of bravery and a fighting spirit as formulated by Rosenberg, together with a village folkiness promising a life without alienation.  Nazi art was meant to illustrate the organic, which was defined in the works of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture as “a closeness to nature”.  Organic was defined as belonging to a racial community, the Volksgemeinschaft, which was different from modern society and the metropolis and symbolized both a renewed harmony with nature and heroic mobilization to achieve the goals of their race.

          One of the things about which the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture agreed was that the volkish alternative would supply a solution for the problem of alienation, but they were divided over the way in which it would happen.  There was general agreement that art should depict life while emphasizing harmony.  I do not believe that they intentionally emphasized this aspect, as some scholars who have used the word kitsch have hinted, nor that it stemmed from the logic of an industrialized world, as seen by Adorno and Horkheimer.  Even so, Nazi aesthetics was based on an ideological logic of its own which justifies the use of the term politics of culture.  The mobilized artist who did not express “subjective gall” mostly expressed a tradition of vulgar idealism and cannot be described as an instrument of propaganda.

          A slightly different analysis of the lack of agreement over the volkish alternative as a solution for alienation is connected to the various definitions given to what Stern has called “cultural despair”.  The shapers of the Nazi politics of culture had two different,sometimes overlapping sets of claims to describe German history.  The solution to modern urban alienation, which was to a large extent personal, demanded the display of a harmonious alternative picture.  However, cultural despair as connected to the decline of Germany and the loss of its cultural superiority demanded heroic, not necessarily harmonic, compensation, which meant the replacement of a politics of despair with a politics of cultural greatness.

          Research has extenuated the claims about the existence of a significant gap between the amount written about the Nazi politics of culture by its shapers and the artistic products resulting from its dictates.  The Nazis themselves were aware of this limitation;  senior figures from Hitler through Goebbels and even his great rival Rosenberg saw themselves as watching the birth of a new volkish art, a fact which explained the limited achievements in the field. It may be that this gap led to the creation of explanations and the misinterpretation of Nazi art as non-art, as Roh did, a view which dominated the literature on Nazi aesthetics during the 1960s and 1970s;  unfortunately, this view did not allow researchers to see the complexity of the Nazi worldview on art.  For many years volkish art was described in the literature solely in terms of a realism with folk themes.  Paradoxically, the Nazi art critics provided support for this view.  For example, when Hitler wanted to define the Nazi artist he preferred to speak of the “anonymous German artist” whose works were absorbed into German culture without any personal recognition.

          Thus, the vast majority of works on Nazi aesthetics have focused on the structure of the bureaucratic apparatus typical to totalitarian dictatorships or on an examination of the visual products.  Both of these approaches have tended to minimize the importance of the broader discussion among the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture.  On the other hand, biographers of the Nazi leaders and scholars dealing with the intellectual history of the Nazi period have been more aware of the centrality of the discussions of the politics of culture.  Mosse, for example, has emphasized in his many works the centrality of aesthetics in an understanding of Nazism.  At the same time Viereck has written in a similar way about the relevance of the bohemian past of Hitler and Schultze-Naumburg as artists and of Goebbels and Rosenberg as some sort of art critics.  He has used the term metapolitics, which places the politics of culture above power struggles, and has even defined the Nazi leaders as “armed bohemians”, because they later had access to all the means required to enforce their worldview.  Analyses of this type, which did away with the neo-Marxist dichotomy between art and politics as expressed by the Frankfurt School, saw Nazi aesthetics at least as metapolitics and not as separate from and subsidiary to politics.  I have used these approaches as the basis for my own and see them as most vital for an understanding of the Nazi worldview.  Analyses of Nazism making a clear distinction between politics and aesthetics seem to me to miss a central element of the Nazi phenomenon.

          A series of suggestions by the Nazi art critics for the building of the volkish alternative and the extermination of modern art support the above ideas.  They assumed that the role of the critic was not merely to mediatebetween artist and audience, but rather to be an active partner in the development of an art appropriate for a nation and of course the Nazi worldview.  Worthy volkish art needed to spring from the analysis of the Nazi politics of culture;  the fact that such art had not yet appeared stemmed from the lack of a suitable environment.

          An examination of the artistic products of the Nazi politics of culture after 1933 gives the impression that they do not depict modern phenomena.  The reactionary dimension of these works is especially apparent given that Nazism took over after several decades of extensive avant-garde artistic activity in Germany.  However, the public and written statements made by the shapers of the politics of culture show a cautious and selective approach to art.  Hitler, Rosenberg, and Schultze-Naumburg wanted to overcome feelings of alienation, which they saw as a central problem of the modern age.  Their claims fit into theories describing kitsch as a modern phenomenon and also with those who saw kitsch as part of the rear-guard which accompanies the avant-garde, as Greenberg has argued.  Even so, the claim that kitsch, in the Nazi context, was more a matter of film and radio than the visual arts must be qualified.  Hitler and the rest of the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture did not support the mass reproduction of works of art for two reasons.  They saw the lack of reproduction as emphasizing the value of art and as appropriate to their approach emphasizing the historical continuity represented by art.  They were bothered by the ways in which art would become available to the lower middle class, and had no intention of creating a “culture industry” along the lines of that discussed by the Frankfurt School.  They saw mass distribution using a modern culture industry as suiting the iconographic and liturgical sides of Nazism instead of the visual arts.

          The anti-modern tone of the Nazi politics of culture does not take it out of the modern context.  Given the tension between past and future inherent in the conservative revolution and the Nazi desire to create a new synthesis rooted in the old, Nazism in a certain sense can be seen as an anti-modern modernism.  The Nazi utopia, even if not exactly expressed in this way, would erase modernism from history as deviance or degeneration.  However, it was not just a matter of rejection;  the Nazis intended to continue the racial struggle of the Germans for greatness, which they saw as the essence of history.

          This planned utopia shows the importance of the works of Herf and his idea of “reactionary modernism” in the description of the modern context of National Socialism.  Herf’s term describes the instrumental use made of the tools of modernism alongside the normative rejection of Enlightenment ideas.  However, while this approach is most suitable for an analysis of the technological and economic sides of Nazi Germany, it does not fit the politics of culture.  In this area the Nazi future was to be based on a complete erasure of the products of modernism with their expression of visual alienation, as can be seen in the fact that Hitler, Rosenberg, Schultze-Naumburg, and the Nazi art critics despised the Futurist movement even though it was associated with Italian Fascism.  The Futurist movement at least seemed to show sympathy for Fascism and displayed contents fitting the Fascist ideology, but this was not enough for the Nazis, as its style was contradictory to that dictated by the Nazi politics of culture.

          The supporters of the volkish alternative, like those of the conservative revolution, described their politics of culture as progressive and not reactionary.  They claimed that it was meant to correct the deviance of degeneration and to return history to its proper course.

 

          The Nazi politics of culture was built on two main planks:  anti- modernism and the volkish alternative.  The boundaries of the former were laid out in a fairly clear manner, even if along the edges attempts were made by Goebbels and his followers to blur the category of degenerate art a bit for propaganda purposes.  Despite these attempts, there was general agreement over the types of art, aesthetics, and culture the regime was opposed to, as can be seen in the agreement over terms such as degeneration and alienation as characteristic of modern art, including Expressionism.  The volkish alternative, on the other hand, remained significantly more vague.  The historical, ideological, and political bases on which it was to be built remained ambiguous.  Rosenberg, Schultze-Naumburg, and the Nazi art critics did not agree over the proper view of some nineteenth-century artistic movements, to what extent they depicted the desired ideals for Germany, or how well they expressed the German spirit.  These disagreements were not extreme, as can be seen in the moderate tone used by Schultze-Naumburg to criticize Romanticism or Rosenberg in his criticism of Neo-Classicism.

          The platform suggested by the shapers of the Nazi politics of culture for the future volkish art rested on a consensus over the subjects to be depicted.  The limited number of works produced in the first years of Nazi rule and the apologetic tone used to explain why this art was only in its formative years made it easier to find a common denominator for the evaluation of these works as fitting the volkish ideal.

          The complexity of the National-Socialist politics of culture, the clear rejection of modern art, and the vague boundaries of the description of the volkish alternative led to what I think should be called a vague Gleichschaltung.  This term refers to the clear central ideas which were agreed on and which could be derived from various aesthetic explanations and evaluations, and does not contradict the idea of voluntary Gleichschaltung as suggested by Bracher, as he referred to the role of the intellectuals and the way in which the politics of culture was unified.

          I believe that this analysis of the development of the Nazi politics of culture supports the claim that the National-Socialist worldview drew on earlier German traditions, certainly in the area of culture;  these provided it with broad support.  The results of this study do not support views stating that ideology had little power in Nazism and see it as little more than an opportunistic improvisation imposed with totalitarian means.  A sophisticated explanation of the Nazi politics of culture, like any other similar one, must start from an interdisciplinary approach and not rest on analyses of politics, power, and the nature of the regime alone.  The attempts to understand the Nazi politics of culture mainly as an aesthetic philosophy with no discussion of its collective context and no examination of its mission and political role will also supply only a partial explanation for this complicated topic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1]Edelman used this expression to describe the importance of images in Western democracies. See Murray Edelman, From Art to Politics:How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3.

[2] Stern, following Langbehn, has suggested the term “the politics of art” to describe the attempt to bridge between aesthetics, culture, and politics.  However, he has also claimed that “the politics of aesthetics” would be more appropriate to describe the interest in definitions of aesthetics and culture in Germany in the age of “cultural despair”.  See Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 135.

[3]Merker’s book uses the expression “politics of culture” in its title but does not define it.  See Reinhard Merker, Die bildenden Künste im Nationalsozialismus: Kulturideologie, Kulturpolitik, Kulturproduktion (Cologne: Dumont, 1983).  Smith has defined “the politics of culture” as a tendency to see cultural terms and to rely on the science of culture as bases for a new approach to politics which started to develop at the beginning of the twentieth century.  He has claimed that the term has roots in German behavioral science of the nineteenth century.  See Woodruff D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840-1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 198.

[4]Before the Nazi period the term degeneration was used in Germany by the Romantics in the context of the art world. Friedrich Schlegel used the term in his lectures when referring to the Greek poetry he appreciated. For more on this topic, see Sander L. Gilman, “The Mad as Artist,” in The Prinzhorn Collection: Traces upon the Wunderblock, ed. Catherine de Zegher (New York: The Drawing Center, 2000), 38. The Nazis first used the term “degenerate” (entartete) art to refer to the artistic products of the avant-garde movements active in Germany, especially during the Weimar Republic.  With the establishment of the National-Socialist Party the term was expanded to describe all modern artistic movements, starting with Impressionism.

[5] Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 27-30.

[6]Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 4.

[7]Hobsbawm has claimed that the inability to copy the visual arts is one of the reasons for the failure of the avant-garde. See Eric Hobsbawm, Behind the Times: The Decline and Fall of Twentieth-Century Avant-Gardes (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), 16.

[8] For the importance of such events and the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung of 1939, see Robert Wistrich, Weekend in Munich (London: Pavilion, 1995), 70-83.

[9]Robert Pois, “Psychohistory and the National-Socialist Revolution,” Journal of Psychohistory 7 (1979-1980): 307-321;  Uriel Tal, “Nazism as a ‘Political Faith’,”  Jerusalem Quarterly 15 (Spring 1980): 70-90.

[10]For the Nazi use of symbols in general and the swastika in particular, see Malcolm Quinn, The Swastika: Constructing the Symbol (London: Routledge, 1994). For the nationalization of the holidays in Nazi Germany, see Rainer Stollmann, “Fascist Politics as a Total Work of Art: Tendencies of the Aesthetization of Political Life in National Socialism,” New German Critique 14 (1978): 41-60; Peter Reichel, “Festival and Cult: Masculine and Militaristic Mechanisms of National Socialism”, J. A. Mangan, ed., Shaping the Superman: Fascist Body as Political Icon – Aryan Fascism, London: Frank Cass, 1999, 153-168. For the liturgical aspects of Nazism, see George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: New American Library, 1975).

[11] When the “Degenerate” Art exhibition was recreated in Los Angeles in 1991, the argument was made that the full recreation of the exhibition, including the problematic way in which the pictures had been hung, was a sort of acceptance of the Nazi classification of modern art.  For this reason, after a long argument it was decided to include all of the pictures, but to hang them in an appropriate manner.  Some of the arguments are reflected in the catalogue.  See Stephanie Barron, ed., Degenerate Art: The Fate of Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (New York: Harry N. Abrams and L.A. County Museum, 1991).

 [12]Hobsbawn has claimed that the Nazis were right when they used this expression because of the Moscow-Berlin axis which shaped much of Weimar culture. See Eric Hobsbawn, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994), 187.

[13] Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 3. 

[14] Explanations for the centrality of the figures chosen for this book can be found in Joseph Wulf,  Die bildenden Künste im Dritten Reich (Gütersloh: Rohwolt,1963); Frank Wagner and Klaus Behnken, eds., Inszenierung der Macht: Ästhetische Faszination im Fascismus (Berlin: Nishen,1987); Barbara Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979); Peter Adam, Arts of the Third Reich (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992).

[15] Hitler’s art is included in Billy F. Price, Adolf Hitler: The Unknown Artist (Houston: Price, 1984); Enzo Collotti and Riccardo Mariani, Gli acquerelli di Hitler (Florence: Alinari, 1984). Hitler’s positions on art are discussed in Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983).

[16] The issue of the German Sonderwegfirst appeared in the literature during the 1940s and was at the center of the Bielefeld School studies. During the 1980s it was at the center of the Historikerstreit (historians’ debate). For more on both issues,see Geoff Eley, “Nazism, Politics and Public Memory; Thoughts on the West German Historikerstreit 1986-1987,” Past and Present  121 (1988):171-208; Richard Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (London: I.B. Tauris, 1989); Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Edward Arnold, 1989), 168- 191; Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust and German National Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); George Steinmetz, “German Exceptionalism and the Origins of Nazism: The Career of the Concept,” in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, eds. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 251-284; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit? Ein polemischer Essay zur ‘Historikerstreit’ (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988).

[17] Wistrich has claimed that Hitler’s rise to power would not have been possible without the carnage of World War I, the traumatic impact of German military defeat, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, the economic crises of the Weimar Republic, and the fear of Communist revolution. See Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust (New York: Modern Library, 2001), xiv.

[18]George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture (New York: Schocken, 1981); idem, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: New American Library, 1975), xxii; Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), xxiii; Steven E. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

[19] Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 19; Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, 293; Roderick Stackelberg, Idealism Debased: From Volkish Identity to National Socialism (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1988), xi.

[20]Wolfgang Emmerich, “The Mythos of Germanic Continuity,” in The Nazification of an Academic Discipline, eds. James Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 35.

[21] Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, xxii-xvi.

[22]Ibid., xxix.

[23]Ibid., 291-292.

[24] Karl D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London: Penguin,1973),184.

[25]Ibid., 167, 311.

[26]Ibid., 311-312.

[27] von Bismarck’s attempts during the 1870s to reduce the autonomy of the Roman Catholic Church were referred to as a Kulturkampf.  For more on the historical roots of the term, see Woodruff D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840-1920, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 54. For the Kulturkampf in the context of the Weimar Republic, see Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 291-292.

[28] Gay, Weimar Culture, 7. Attitudes towards democracy reflected this sort of Kulturkampf. For a fascinating account of this issue, see Zvi Bachrach, The Challenge: Democracy in the Eyes of German Professors and Jewish Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2000).   For culture in the Weimar Republic, see Rob Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 53-100; Anton Kaes et al., eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

[29]Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 262.

[30]Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 26.

[31]Ibid., 35.  Herf has claimed that the basic opposition used by conservative revolutionaries was that between Kultur and Zivilisation.

[32]Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich (London: Penguin, 1974), 422.

[33] Alan E. Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 7-9. Petropoulos has stated that there is no comprehensive work on the professions that comprised the art world. See Jonathan Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 6.

[34]Peter Viereck, Meta-Politics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), 4, 154-159.

 [35]Ibid., 3.

[36] Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 198, 239.

[37]Ibid., 237.

[38]Julius Langbehn was probably the first to introduce the concept of the artist-hero; he was influenced by the Sturm und Drang movement. For more on the concept of the artist as hero and genius, see Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, 133-134; Jacob L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt, Europe 1815-1848 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1967); Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1965); Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 120-152.

 [39]George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1978), 23.

[40]The race theorist Hans F.K. Günther was the initiator of a 1926 exhibition whose purpose was to identify the ideal Aryan head and face. The readers of the racist journal Volk und Rasse – Deutschlands Erneuerung were asked to send photographs of people who might fit the role. The result was a catalogue which provided a visualization of the Nazi ideal. See Eugen Fischer and Hans F.K. Günther, Deutsche Köpfe nordischer Rasse (Munich: J.F. Lehmanns, 1927).

[41] Hermann Bausinger, “Nazi Folk Ideology and Folk Research,” in Dow and Lixfeld, eds., The Nazification of an Academic Discipline, 13-14.

[42]Ibid., 27.

[43] Emmerich, “The Mythos of Germanic Continuity”, 34-35.

[44] Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 17.

[45]Ibid., 20.

[46]Ibid., 17.

[47] For the occult roots of Nazism, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1985); Jeffrey A. Goldstein, “Racism and Antisemitism in Occultism and Nazism,” Yad Vashem: Collected Articles 13 (1980): 45-59 (Hebrew).

[48]Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 31.

[49] Alex Scobie, Hitler’s State Architecture (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 133-134.

[50]Barbara Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 9.

[51]Paul B. Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (London: Routledge, 2000), 47.

[52] Mordis Eksteins, Rites of Spring (New York: Anchor Books – Doubleday, 1989), 77.

[53] Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 312.

[54] John H. Hanson , “Nazi Aesthetics,” The Psychohistory Review 9 (1981): 256.

[55]Giora Shoham, Antisemitism: Valhalla, Golgotha, and Auschwitz (Tel Aviv: Cherikover, 1992), 290-292 (Hebrew).

[56] Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London: Abacus, 1997).

[57] Classic examples of the dilemmas artists and creative individuals face may be found in Klaus Mann, Mephisto, Novel of a Career (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979, originally published in 1936). Mephisto is a scathing satire on Germany under Hitler; it tells the story of an opportunistic actor who puts his moral and political scruples behind him in order to rise to the top of the theater world. The Hungarian director István Szábo made an Academy Award-winning movie based on this novel in 1981.  Thomas Mann also wrote a novel on the subject: Doctor Faustus, The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, As Told by a Friend (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948).  The two are son and father.

[58]Robert Wistrich, Weekend in Munich (London: Pavilion, 1995), 10.

[59] Mosse, Nazi Culture, xx.  Mosse has described the “nationalization of the masses” in Nazism as a kind of new politics.  See idem, The Nationalization of the Masses, chap. 1.

[60]Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 311, 322.

[61]Dana Arieli-Horowitz, The Totalitarian Ideal: A Comparative Look at Art and Politics in Italy, the U.S.S.R., and Germany Between the Wars (forthcoming, 2004).

[62] Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 13-14.

[63] Nicos Hadjinicolaou, “Art History and Class Struggle,” in Modern Art and Modernism, eds. Francis Francina and Charles Harrison (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 244-245.

 [64]Ibid., 247.

[65] GeorgeFriedmann, The Frankfurt School (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 33.

 [66]Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (London: Heinemann, 1976), 166, 175-177.

[67]Ibid., 166.

[68] Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National-Socialism, 1933-1944 (New York: Harper & Row), 1966.

[69] Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 166.

[70]Ibid., 176.

[71] T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, The Frankfurt School (selections), eds. Michael Mey-Dan and Abraham Yasour (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Haartzi, 1993), 37 (Hebrew).

[72]Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970) , 243.

[73]Ibid.

[74]Two criticisms have been raised against Benjamin in this context.  Stollmann has stated that Benjamin reached his conclusions about the nature of Fascism mostly through an examination of literary texts and not through an analysis of socio- historical relations.  See Rainer Stollmann, “Fascist Politics as a Total Work of Art: Tendencies of the Aestheticization of Political Life in National Socialism,” New German Critique 14 (1978): 42. Hewitt has completely rejected Benjamin’s definition, claiming that the aesthetciization of politics means the aestheticization of illusion and kitsch; he does not accept an analysis which sees Fascism as disconnected from the avant-garde.  See Andrew Hewitt, Fascist Modernism (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993),  24- 25.

[75] Russell A. Berman, Modern Culture and Critical Theory: Art, Politics and the Legacy of the Frankfurt School  (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 34.

[76] For Lukács’ theory of realism, see Georg Lukács, “Realism on the Balance,” quoted in Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Fredric Jameson (London: Verso, 1988), 28-59; Pauline Johnson, Marxist Aesthetics: The Foundations Within Everyday Life for an Emancipated Consciousness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 22-33; Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 173-174.

[77] David Pike, Lukacs and Brecht (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), x.

[78] Bloch has taken issue with the ideas of Lukács as published in his 1934 “The Rise and Fall of Expressionism”.  He has also sharply attacked Kurella, a student of Lukács, who published an article claiming that Expressionism led to Nazism. See Ernst Bloch, “Discussing Expressionism,” in Jameson, ed., Aesthetics and Politics, 17.

[79]Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 7-8.

[80] Ernst Bloch, “Discussing Expressionism”, 18-24. For a detailed discussion of the debate over Expressionism within the Frankfurt School see Jameson, ed., Aesthetics and Politics, 9-59.

[81]Brecht expressed similar views in a series of articles he published from 1937-1939. See, among others, Bertolt Brecht, “Die Expressionismusdebatte”, “Die Essays von George Lukács”, “Über den formalistischen Charakter der Realismustheorie,” reprinted in Über Realismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982), 38-53. See also Pike, Lukács and Brecht, x, 195-221.

[82]Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “Kulturindustrie: Aufklärung als Massenbetrung,” in Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt, 1969), 130.

(For an English version, see “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Cheating the Masses,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seaburg Press, 1972).

[83]Ibid., 134.

[84]Ibid., 154.

[85] Eagleton continues here a research tradition concentrating on the relations between art, society, and politics; it claims that the history of art could benefit from looking at art using the tools of ideology. See among others, Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (London: Routledge, 1968, first published 1951); Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art (New York: New York University Press, 1984).

[86]Eagleton, The Ideology of Aesthetic, 3. For more on Eagleton, see ibid.; Johnson, Marxist Aesthetics, 135-148; Martin Jay, Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique (London: Routledge, 1993), 71-83.

[87] Anson G. Rabinbach, “The Aesthetics of Production in the Third Reich,” Journal of Contemporary History 11 (1976): 43.

[88] Peter Adam, Arts of the Third Reich (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992), 10.

[89]Adam’s book is based on his 1990 documentary Art in the Third Reich.  Since then some very impressive documentaries dealing with art and politics have appeared, such as Peter Cohen, Architecture of Doom (Undergangens Arkitektur, Sweden, 1990). Luke Holland, Good Morning, Mr. Hitler (U.K., 1993) is probably the most fascinating, as the director uses color footage from the 1939 Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.

[90]Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will, “Aesthetics and National Socialism,” in The Nazification of Art, eds. Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990), 1-2.

[91]Ibid.,11-12.

[92]  Peter Selz, “Art and Politics: The Artist and the Social Order,” in Theories of Modern Art, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 456.  For the effect of symbols in democracies, see in particular Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964); idem, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988); idem, From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

[93]This sort of classic description of totalitarian dictatorships was first introduced by Friedrich at a conference in 1954. See Carl J. Friedrich, ”The Unique Character of Totalitarian Society,” in Totalitarianism, ed. Carl J. Friedrich (New York: Universal Library, 1954), 47-60.

[94]Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 2.

[95]Ibid., 20-21.

[96]Ibid., 3.

[97]Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 75.

[98]  For more on the looting of art in the Third Reich, see Craig H. Smyth, Repatriation of Art from the Collecting Point in Munich after World War II (Groningen: SDU Publishers, 1988); Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

[99]Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, 4-6.

[100]Idem, The Faustian Bargain, 3.

[101]Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression, 7.

[102]Ibid., 9.

[103] Roh has argued for a similarity between the aesthetics of National Socialism and that of Bolshevism. See Franz Roh, Geschichte der deutschen Kunst von 1900 bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1958), 151.

[104] Arieli-Horowitz, The Totalitarian Ideal.

[105] Harold Rosenberg, Discovering the Present (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), 95.

[106]Ibid., 97.

[107] Calinescu is quoting Fisher here. See Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), 203; Ernst Fischer, Art against Ideology (London: Allen Lane, 1969).

[108] See, for example, Dawn Ades et al., eds., Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930-1945 (London: Hayward Gallery, 1996).

[109] Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 9.

[110] Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art (London: Collins Harville, 1990), xiii.

[111]Ibid.

[112] For a brilliant discussion of these debates, see Régine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1992).

[113] Werner Haftmann, Banned and Persecuted: The Dictatorship of Art under Hitler  (Cologne: Dumont, 1987), 11-19.

[114]Ibid., 12.

[115] Idem, Painting in the Twentieth Century (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), 304.

[116] One of the definitions is “Sussliche, sentimentall Seheinkunst”. See Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, 234.

 [117]Ibid., 225-237.

[118]Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 307. For a discussion of kitsch in Kracauer’s works, see David Frisby, Fragments of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 132-133, 143.

[119]Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism, 27.

[120]Ibid., 26-27.

[121]Ibid., 135.

[122] Idem, “Kitsch and the Apocalyptic Imagination,” Salmagundi 85-86 (1990): 202.

[123]Ibid., 203.

[124]Ibid., 201-202. The kitsch law was enacted on May 19, 1933. A criticism of the exhibition appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitungon July 18, 1933. For more on the topic, see  Ralf Steinberg, ed., Nazi Kitsch (Darmstadt: Melzer, 1975), 80-82.

[125]Adam, Arts of the Third Reich, 305. Talmon has described the Romantic movement as a Sehnsucht. See Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt, 138.

[126]Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism,26-29; George L. Mosse, “Beauty without Sensuality,” in Degenerate Art: The Fate of Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, ed. Stephanie Barron (New York: Harry N. Abrams and L.A. County Museum, 1991), 25.

[127] Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 190.

[128]For more about the Biedermeier style, see Chapters XXX and XXX. For more on Biedermeier in general, see Geraldine Norman, Biedermeier Painting (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987); Georg Himmelheber, Biedermeier 1815-1833 (Munich: Prestel, 1989); Keith Hartley, chief ed., The Romantic Spirit in German Art, 1790-1990 (Edinburgh: South Bank Centre and National Galleries, 1994).

[129]Hermann Broch, “Notes on the Problem of Kitsch,” in Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste, ed. Gillo Dorfles (New York: Universe Books, 1970), 61.

[130]Ibid., 63.

[131]Ibid., 65.

[132]Ibid., 62.

[133]This is evident from his uncompleted Aesthetic Theory. See Thoedore W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 337- 341. See also Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, 228.

[134] Dwight Macdonald, “A Theory of Mass Culture,” in Mass Culture, ed. Bernard Rosenberg (New York: Free Press, 1964), 66.

[135] Idem, Against the American Grain (New York: Random House – Vintage Books, 1962), 14.

[136] In his fascinating discussion of the reasons for the decline and fall of the avant- garde, Hobsbawn claims that the visual arts failed to represent the avant-garde. Among other reasons, he believes that the failure was due to their increasing lack of technical ability. See Eric Hobsbawm, Behind the Times: The Decline and Fall of Twentieth Century Avant-Gardes (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), 12.

[137] Clement Greenberg, “The Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” reprinted in Dorfles, ed., Kitsch, 121.

[138]Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, 225.

[139]Ibid., 122.

[140]Ibid., 123-125.

[141] For Futurism and Novecento and their relationship with the Fascist regime, see Emily Braun, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Marla S. Stone The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996).

[142] Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 53.

[143] Wilfried van der Will, “The Body and the Body Politics as Symptom and Metaphor in the Transition of German Culture to National Socialism,” in Taylor and Wilfried van der Will, eds., The Nazification of Art, 18.

[144] Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 211.

[145]Idem, “Beauty without Sensuality”, 25.

[146]Ibid., 27.

[147]Ibid., 28. For more on the nude body as a tool in the shaping of the new man, see J.A. Mangan, ed., Shaping the Superman: Fascist Body as Political Icon – Aryan Fascism (London: Frank Cass, 1999).

[148] Rosenberg, Discovering the Present, 99.

[149] van der Will, “The Body and the Body Politics”, 34. An example of the body worship common in Germany during the 1920s can be found in Dora Menzler, Die Schonheit deines Korpers (Stuttgart: Dieck & Co., 1924). Sternhell and others argue that this type of body culture existed in Fascism as well. See Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, and Maia Asheri, The Birth of the Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 364.

[150]van der Will, “The Body and the Body Politics”, 50.

[151]Contemporary artists often tend to associate Nazism with pornography. Elke Krystufek, an Austrian artist, deals with male sexual exploitation in the Nazi context, as does the Israeli artist Roee Rosen in his work Live and Die as Eva Braun. Both works can be found in Norman L. Kleeblatt, ed., Mirroring Evil: Nazi Images/Recent Art (New York: Jewish Museum, 2002).

 [152] Shoham, Antisemitism: Valhalla, Golgotha, and Auschwitz, 291.

[153] Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies (Oxford: Polity Press, 1989), 2:434-435.

[154] Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder 1848-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 20-33.

[155] Mosse, Toward the Final Solution,  83-87.

[156] Stuart C. Gilman, “Political Theory and Degeneration:  From Left to Right, from Up to Down,” in Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, eds. Edward J. Chamberlain and Sander L. Gilman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 167;  William Greenslade, Culture and the Novel 1880-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 15; Dana Arieli-Horowitz, “Political Degeneration in National-Socialist Ideology: Origins, Influences, and Characteristics,” forthcoming.

[157] Gilman has claimed that the identification of artists with madmen began in ancient times, but that research on the subject only started during the nineteenth century. Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 219-222.

[158]Ibid., 232-233.

[159]Ibid., 236.

[160] Donald Kuspit, “Diagnostic Malpractice: The Nazis on Modern Art,” Artforum 25:3 (1986): 92.

 [161]Ibid., 92-93.

[162] Jazz was probably seen as the most degenerate form of music. See Michael Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (London: Macmillan, 1994).

[163] Frederick R. Karl, Modern and Modernism (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 86.

[164] For more on this topic, see ibid.; Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, 108-111; Steven Aschheim, “Max Nordau, Friedrich Nietzsche and Degeneration,” Journal of Contemporary History 28 (1993): 643-657.

[165]Karl, Modern and Modernism, 92.

[166]Karl claims that the role of the Jews in art has been exaggerated. Most of the forerunners of the modern movements were not Jews. See ibid., 36.

[167]Hewitt, Fascist Modernism, 5. For more on the relations between Fascism and the avant-garde, see Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 99-100.

[168] George Bussman, “‘Degenerate Art’ – A Look at a Useful Myth,” in German Art in the 20th Century (London, 1985), 115.

[169]Ibid., 124.

[170] Kuspit, “Diagnostic Malpractice”, 91.

[171] Wistrich, Weekend in Munich, 17.

[172] Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 28.

[173] Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” in Taylor and van der Will, eds., The Nazification of Art, 214. Wistrich and Friedländer point out that even outstanding historians of the Third Reich were sometimes led astray by their fascination with Nazi spectacle. See Wistrich, Weekend in Munich, 12; Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism.

[174] Stollmann, “Fascist Politics as a Total Work of Art”, 51-52.

[175]Ibid., 59.

[176] van der Will hints at the same thing in his article, but does not develop the argument sufficiently van der Will, “The Body and the Body Politics”, 29.

[177] Stackelberg, Idealism Debased, 155-160.

[178] Ibid., 1-2.

[179] Niall Ferguson, ed., Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (London: Papermac, 1997).

[180] Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936 Hubris (London: Penguin, 1998), xx.

[181]  Frederick A. Lubich, “Thomas Mann, 1875-1955”, in Encyclopedia of German Literature, ed. Matthias Konzett (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), 674.

[182]This essay was originally entitled “Ein Bruder”, but is frequently referred to as “Bruder Hitler”. See Thomas Mann, “Bruder Hitler” (1939), reprinted in Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Main, 1980-1986), 12:775. Translation taken from Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 49.  See also Thomas Koebner, ed., Bruder Hitler: Autoren des Exils und des Widerstands sehen den ‘Führer’ des Dritten Reich (Munich: W. Heyne, 1989), 24-31.

[183] Mussolini did not deal with art;  Lenin and Stalin were aware of its contribution to the process of legitimation, but had traditional tastes. None of these leaders dealt with art as intensively as Hitler did. See Marla S. Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Emily Braun, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944 (Oxford, 1996); Matthew C. Bown, Art under Stalin (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1991); idem, Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Dana Arieli-Horowitz, The Totalitarian Ideal: Art and Politics in Italy, the U.S.S.R., and Nazi Germany (forthcoming, 2004).

[184] Hitler’s sketch and design of the Volkswagen were presumably done in 1932 as he was dining at the Osteria Bavaria in Munich together with Jacob Werlin, head of the Daimler-Benz company. For the drawing, see Billy F. Price, Adolf Hitler: The Unknown Artist (Houston: Price, 1984), 225, no 601.

[185] Hitler listed his profession as artist on the forms for the residence in which he lived in Vienna and also when he moved to Munich.  In a November 29, 1921 letter (recipient unknown) containing his resume, he emphasized that he was a painter.  “With great difficulty I have succeeded in my spare time to be educated as a painter and I have made my living in this way since my twentieth year.  I became an architectural draftsman and a painter of architecture.”  See Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, eds., Hitler: Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 525.

[186]Rosenbaum has argued that Hitler continued to define himself as an artist even after his rejection by the academy. See Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil (New York: Random House, 1998), 216-217.

[187] For an example, see Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London: Penguin, 1978, originally published 1952).

[188] Edgar Alexsander, Der Mythus Hitler (Zurich: Europa-Velrag, 1937); Georg Lukács, Die Zerstörung der Vernuft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962).

[189] Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung: A Blueprint for Power (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1972), 23.

[190]Robert Wistrich, Weekend in Munich (London: Pavilion, 1995), 15.

[191] Michael Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919- 1945 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 186.

[192]Kershaw, Hitler, 7, 11; Fest,Hitler, 14; Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung, 112.

[193]Ibid., 116.

[194] Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, A Dictator’s Apprenticeship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 26.

[195] Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 3.

[196] Fest has repeatedly stressed the essentially apolitical nature of Hitler’s interests. See Fest, Hitler, 48, 58, 84-85; Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung, 116.

[197] Kubizek remembered that during 1908 “one day Adolf came home and announced decidedly ‘today I joined the Anti-Semite Union’”. Kubizek claimed that he was unaware of the existence of this Union before 1918. See August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1955), 251; Kershaw, Hitler, 62.

[198] George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1978), 205; idem, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: New American Library, 1975), 202; Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944), 362.

[199] Werner Maser, Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf (Esslingen: Bechtle, 1981), 100.

[200] Kershaw, Hitler, 30-36, 60-67; Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 19.

[201] Hitler mentioned von Schönerer several times in Mein Kampf.  See, for example, p. 98 where he complimented the former’s ideas or p. 101 where Hitler argued with him. See Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971).  Hitler also mentioned von Schönerer several times in speeches.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen.

[202] Hugh Trevor-Roper, Introduction to Hitler’s Table Talks, ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), xvii;; Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), 24; Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 184-191; Fest, Hitler, 159-160; Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung, 18-19.

[203]Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Bonanza Books, 1982), 42.

[204] Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963), 337.

[205] Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, 216.

[206] J.H. Hanson, “Nazi Aesthetics,” The Psychohistory Review  9 (1981): 257-259.

[207] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 18. Unlike Hitler’s version, Hamann has claimed that Klara Hitler admired her son’s watercolor paintings and drawings and supported his artistic ambitions, in opposition to his father. See Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 20.

[208] Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jew from Linz, who was at that time the family doctor, claimed that Hitler certainly did not have a serious illness. Hitler thanked the doctor after his mother’s death in 1907 and gave him a painting.  See ibid., 20, 36.

[209]Ibid.

[210]This caricature from June 23, 1900 is probably one of Hitler’s first works. See Price, Adolf Hitler, 97, no. 13.

[211] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 19.

[212]Quoted in Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 52.  See ibid., Appendix 2 for a partial list of the works Hitler submitted for the entrance exams.

[213] Price, Adolf Hitler, 104, no. 45. Hamann has claimed that plates 40-43 in Price’s book, described as some of the works he submitted for the examination, are fakes. See Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 411-412, note 146.

[214]Ibid., 33.

[215] Price, Adolf Hitler, 7; Werner Maser, Hitler (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 40.

[216] Manheim, trans. Mein Kampf, 20.

[217]Ibid.

[218]Ibid.

[219] George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York: Schocken, 1981), 295.

[220] Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 6.

[221]Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 21.

[222] Some of these watercolors are part of the collection of the Marquess of Bath, Wiltshire, who has been generous enough to give me permission to include them in the English edition of this book.

[223] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 35; Maser, Adolf Hitler, 41, 44.  Figures 2-6 includes a number of works done by Hitler in Vienna.  A list of most of Hitler’s works can be found in the Staatsarchiv Coblenz, NS 26/36.  The preferred subjects were the Parliament, the Theater, City Hall, the old Ferdinand Bridge, the “Fishermen’s Gate”, and a number of churches, includingSaint Stephen’s Cathedral, the Minorite and Scottish Church, Karl’skirche, Alserkirche, Michaelerkirche, and the Kirche Maria am Gestade.

[224]Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1980); James Shedel, Art and Society: The New Art Movement in Vienna, 1897-1914 (Palo Alto: Society for the Promotion of Science,1981); Kirk Varnedoe, Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture and Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986); Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and their Contemporaries (London: Phaidon, 1975).

[225]Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 45.

[226]Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, 116. For Hitler’s relationship with “Gustl”, August Kubizek, see Kershaw, Hitler, 21; Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 23-59; Franz Jetzinger, Hitler’s Youth (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 109-166.

[227]Price, Adolf Hitler, 7.

[228]Quoted in Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 53.

[229] For Hitler and Hanish, see Bullock, Hitler, 33-35; Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 164- 175.

[230]Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 34.

[231]Joachim Köhler, Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and his Disciple (Cambridge: Polity, 2000) 7.

[232] Stephen H. Roberts, The House that Hitler Built (London: Methuen, 1937), 9.

[233]Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 23-27, 68-72.

[234]Ibid., 23.

[235]Ibid., 23-24; Fest, Hitler, 22-23.

[236]Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, 133-142.

[237]Ibid., 188.

[238] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 20.

 

[240] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 19.

[241] Fest, Hitler, 47.

[242] Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 26.

[243] Werner Maser, Hitler’s Letters and Notes (London: Heinemann, 1973), 10. Kubizek proudly noted that he received two postcards that day (May 5, 1906).

[244] William Jenks, Vienna and the Young Hitler (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 202.

[245] Fest, Hitler, 56.

[246] Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, 239; Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 66-67.

[247] The text that Hitler added to his portrait of Wagner is included in Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1254. The painting appears in Price, Adolf Hitler, 106, no. 56.  Permission to reproduce the painting in this book could not be obtained. Levin has devoted an article to antisemitic themes in Die Meistersinger. See David J. Levin, “Reading Beckmesser: Antisemitism and Aesthetic Practice in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg,” New German Critique 69 (1996): 127-146.

[248] Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 57-58.

[249] Fest, Hitler, 49-50.

[250]Köhler, Wagner’s Hitler, 55. The Ring of the Nibelungen is probably Wagner’s best-known musical project. It includes four different operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung. The libretto is based on a popular tale dating back to medieval Iceland.  Wagner began to take an interest in the story in 1841.  He read ten different versions of the story and completed the work in 1848. The Ring cycle would become a mythological story of German’s history.

[251]Fest, Hitler, 49.

[252] Köhler, Wagner’s Hitler, 8; Manheim, trans. Mein Kampf, 213.

[253]George G. Windell, “Hitler, NS and Richard Wagner,” Journal of Central European Affairs 12 (1963): 483. Brearley also deals with the influences of Wagner’s antisemitism on Hitler. See Margaret Brearley, “Hitler and Wagner: The Leader, the Master and the Jews,” Patterns of Prejudice 22 (1988): 3-22.

[254] For a detailed discussion of Wagner’s influence on Hitler’s antisemitism as seen in Mein Kampf, see pp. XXX.

[255] Manheim, trans. Mein Kampf, 126.

[256]Ibid., 123.  Emphasis added.

[257]Ibid., 126.

[258] This early work (figure 8) by Hitler was found by Hitler’s search team on February 17, 1939 and purchased for the Fuehrer’s collection for 5000 RM. See Price, Adolf Hitler, 178, no. 384. Hitler may well have searched for it in particular as the location depicted hosted the first National-Socialist Party mass meeting on February 24, 1920. See Kershaw, Hitler, 141.

[259] Munich is considered the birthplace of the Nazi Party. See München: Hauptstadt der Bewegung (Munich: Münchener Stadtmuseum, 1993), 407-474.

[260]Biedermeier was a German artistic movement mostly expressed in furniture and decoration, but also in painting and sculpture.  The movement was active between 1815 and 1848, in parallel to Late Romanticism, and was characterized by a simple, clear, and non-aristocratic style.  One of its main painters was Karl Spitzweg, who was particularly loved by Hitler.  For the influence of the Biedermeier style on National Socialism, see Lutz Becker, “Aspects of Art in the Third Reich,” in The Romantic Spirit in German Art, 1790-1990, chief ed. Keith Hartley (Edinburgh: South Bank Centre and National Galleries, 1994), 390-393.

[261]Hitler’s admiration for Rudolph von Alt is recorded in Maser, Hitler’s Letters and Notes, 55. 

[262] Fest, Hitler, 33; Hanson, “Nazi Aesthetics”, 255.

[263] The Romantics viewed the art of the insane as an epitome of creative genius. See Hal Foster, ‘”No Man’s Land’: On the Modernity Reception of the Art of the Insane,” in The Prinzhorn Collection: Traces upon the Wunderblock, ed. Catherine de Zegher (New York: The Drawing Center, 2000), 9.

[264]For more on these artists, see Ulrich Finke, German Painting: From Romanticism to Expressionism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1974). Most of them enjoyed enormous popularity in Germany from the beginning of the 1930s. See, for example, George J. Wolf, Verlorene Werke deutscher romantischer Malerei (Munich: Bruckmann, 1931); A.E. Brinckmann, Landschaften deutscher Romantiker (Berlin: Woldemar Klein, 1935).

[265] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 23.

[266] Fest, Hitler, 63; Chaplin mocked Hitler on this point in the opening scene of the Great Dictator (1940).

[267] Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, 217.

[268] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 203.

[269]Kershaw, Hitler, 141.

[270] Ibid., 156-158.

[271] When Hitler and Eckhart met, the latter was the editor of Auf gut Deutsch, which was used as a platform for the antisemitic views of many authors, including the editor himself. See Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Bonanza Books, 1984), 61; Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, 297.

[272] Quoted in Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 67.

[273] Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, 296.  For more on Eckhart, see also Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1985), 220-223; Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, 24.

[274] For example, consider the recent debate over MAX, the movie (Lion Gates, 2002, Director: Menno Meyjes) in the United States, Canada and Germany.

[275] There are many and varied primary sources on this period.  Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn collected Hitler’s notes and speeches from 1919 to 1924; the first section of Mein Kampf was published in 1924 and the second in 1926, Hitler’s “second book” was written by 1928 (even though it was not published until 1961), Vollnhals collected Hitler’s speeches from 1925 to 1933, and Domarus finished the collection through 1945.  These three collections are comprehensive and detailed; they are based on the daily press of the period and on archives covering the Nazi regime.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen; Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf; Adolf Hitler, Hitlers Zweites Buch, ed. Gerhard L. Weinberg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1961); Clemens Vollnhals, ed., Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen – Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933(Munich: K.G. Saur, 1991-1994); Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945 (Wiesbaden: Lowit, 1973).

[276] The “culture speeches” (kulturreden) became well known after Hitler began to give longwinded speeches on the connections between art and politics at Party congresses.  Speeches given on “German art days” (Tage der deutschen Kunst) also fall into this category.

[277] A derogatory term used by Hitler to describe the time of the Weimar Republic

[278]George L. Mosse, The Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

[279]Frederick R. Karl, Modern & Modernism (New York: Atheneum, 1985), xix.

[280]Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 120; Price, Adolf Hitler, 8.  This explains the ambiguity of the Nazi relations to Nietzsche. See also Steven E. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 272-307.

[281]Hitler used the word degeneration from the beginning of the 1920s. See Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 126.

[282] Speech given on September 18, 1922.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 691.

[283] The shimmy was an American dance popular in Germany during the 1920s.

[284]Speech given on April 2, 1927.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 2:229.

[285]Adolf Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst als stolzeste Verteidigung des deutschen Volkes (Munich, 1934), 8. This is a special edition of his September 1, 1933 speech at the party’s congress on culture in Nuremberg.

[286] Idem, “Rede zur Eröffnung der ‘Großen Deutschen Kunstausstellung'” [speech given on July 18, 1937], reprinted in Nationalsozialismus und ‘Entartete Kunst’, ed. Peter-Klaus Schuster (Munich: Prestel, 1988), 243.

[287] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 260.

[288] Ibid.

[289] Ibid.

[290] In the early years after the Communist Revolution, Lenin, unlike Hitler, wanted to get rid of all the monuments of Tsarist Russia. The plan for monumental propaganda was based on an order issued in April 1918 which called on Communists to reject earlier cultural traditions.

[291] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 261.

[292]Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 219-224.

[293]For more on Nordau, see pp. XXX.  In his The Man of Genius (1891) Cesare Lombroso stated that a large percentage of the physical and mental disturbances which afflict the genius are the result of hereditary or accidental degeneration. Greenslade has claimed that The Man of Genius, together with works from the late 1880s and early 1890s which dealt with genius, especially the artistic genius as an insane type, created the conditions for the commotion over the appearance of Nordau’s Degeneration (1902). See William Greenslade, Culture and the Novel,1880-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1994), 95.

[294] Speech given on January 2, 1921.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 286.

[295] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 262.

 [296]Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 2:654.

[297]Ibid.

[298] Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst, 15.

[299] This annual series of exhibitions took place in Munich;  each of the following  (1938-1944) also opened on July 17.  They were held in the House of German Art, built especially for this purpose.  Around the time of the opening “German Art Days” were held.  These included a series of activities including processions, marches, and various cultural activities meant to extol German art.  The first of the exhibitions, which were meant to visualize the sort of art Germans should want, opened one day before the “Degenerate” Art exhibition.

[300] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 249.

[301] Schultze-Naumburg’s Die Kunst der Deutschen (1933) was found in Hitler’s library. See Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 9 and pages XXX of the present work. Gilman argues that Prinzhorn’s 1922 research may have influenced Mein Kampf. See: Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 234-235.

[302] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 250.

[303] Ibid.

[304]Ibid., 251. George Grosz’ pictures from 1935 and 1936, such as Progress and A writer, Is he? were included in his portfolio Interregnum (New York: Black Sun, 1936). Grosz depicted the nature of such visits, mocking the so-called law-enforcement authorities of the regime.

[305] In his criticism of modern art movements Hitler did not consider the Futurist movement differently from other avant-garde movements. “Second” Futurism (after 1918) helped the Fascist regime and worked to create state art.  In 1934, in an effort to normalize relations between Italy and Germany, a Futurist exhibition was held in Berlin. However, this exhibition did not change Hitler’s views; he continued to firmly criticize the Futurist movement while ignoring the fact that it was the art of an ally.

[306] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 249.

[307] The dictionary of National-Socialist German states, under cultural Bolshevism (Kulturbolschewismus), “The new proletarian-revolutionary art in the Soviet Union; used by the NS only as a pejorative for modern art and literature, especially that of the 1920s.”  See  Karl-Heinz Brackmann and Renate Birkenhauer, NS-Deutsch (Darmstadt: Straelener Manuskripte, 1988), 117.

[308] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 65.

[309] Ibid., 65.

[310] Christine Fischer-Defoy, “Artists and Art Institutions in Germany 1933-1945,” in The Nazification of Art, eds. Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990), 92.

[311] The November Group was a group of architects, writers, directors, sculptors, and painters founded as a result of the failed November 1918 revolution.  Central members included Bertolt Brecht, Lionel Feininger, Walther Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, and Max Pechstein.  The members of the group shared an enthusiasm for the revolution and opposition to World War I and the Kaiser.  Their activities included the funding of exhibitions, the organization of literary evenings, and the publication of catalogues which called on their Cubist, Futurist, Dadaist, and Expressionist “comrades” to take part in designing the image of the new German society which was then developing, and to work together to obtain a national consensus in favor of the revolution.

[312] George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde, and Otto Dix are a few examples of artists who became members of the German Communist Party. See Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party: Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1918-1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); W.L. Guttsman, Art for the Workers: Ideology and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).

[313]Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 258.

[314] Ibid.

[315]Ibid., 262.

[316] Speech given on September 12, 1923.  See Raoul de Roussy de Sales, ed., My New Order: Hitler’s Speeches (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941), 67.

[317] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 258.

[318]Ibid.

[319] Ibid., 259.

[320]Ibid.

[321] Ibid., 262.

[322]Speech given on September 12, 1923.  See de Sales, My New Order, 68.

[323] [Adolf Hitler], Die Reden Hitlers am Parteitag der Freiheit – 1935 (Munich: Eher, 1935), 29. Many speeches that were delivered at the Party congress are included in this leaflet,  but the quotes here refer to Hitler’s speech “On Art and Politics” delivered at the Kulturtagung (September 11, 1935), 28-42.

[324] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 25.

[325] Richard G. Evans, In the Shadow of Hitler (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Ofakim, 1991), 46 (Hebrew).

[326]Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung, 53.

[327] Kershaw, Hitler, 60.

[328] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 64.

[329]Theodor Fritsch, one of the most important early racist and violently antisemitic publicists, founded in 1887 the Hammer publishing house. His first publication was The Anti-Semitic Catechism, later called The Handbook on the Jewish Question. This book went through 40 editions before 1936. See Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, 296.

[330] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 290.

[331] Ibid., 286.

[332] Karl, Modern and Modernism, 36-37.

[333]For Wagner’s antisemitism, see Marc C. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Paul L. Rose, Wagner: Race and Revolution (London: Faber & Faber, 1996); Robert Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 37.

[334] Köhler, Wagner’s Hitler, 87, 91-93, 94.

[335]Louis Snyder, Basic History of Modern Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 169-171.

[336] Speech given on August 13, 1920.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 196.

[337] Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 653.

[338]K. Freigedank [Richard Wagner], “Das Judenthum in der Musik,” Zeitschrift für Musik 33 (1850). Wagner’s article was first published anonymously in two parts, the first on September 3 (pp. 101-107) and the second on September 6 (pp. 109-112). In 1869 he published an appendix to his earlier essay, this time signed by him and even more radical. For more on “Judaism in Music”, see Jacob Katz, Richard Wagner in the Web of Antisemitism (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1986). Over the years there have been some surprising interpretations of Wagner’s essay.  For example, Rose claims that this essay is part of a cycle of revolutionary writings from 1848-1850, and that it has been taken out of context. See Rose, Wagner, 78. The following quotes are taken from the English translation by Ashton Ellis, included in Richard Wagner, Judaism in Music and Other Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 79-122 (this quote from p. 100).

[339] Speech given on August 7, 1920.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 178.  Emphasis added.

[340]Speech given on May 3, 1921. See ibid., 374.

[341]Wagner, Judaism in Music and Other Essays, 81.

[342] [Wagner], “Das Judenthum in der Musik”,  87.

[343] Ibid., 86.  Emphasis added.

[344] Ibid., 90.

[345] The expression “the Jew never had an art of his own” appeared in many speeches, such as those from July 28, 1922, November 2, 1922, and September 11, 1935.

[346] Speech given on August 13, 1920.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 188.

[347][Wagner], “Das Judenthum in der Musik”, 105.

[348] Richard Wagner, Judaism in Music and Other Essays, 84.

[349] Ibid., 85.

[350] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 307.

[351]Speech given on July 28, 1922.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 662.  Wisrich has described the relations between Wagner and Hitler on the issue of aesthetic rationale.   See Robert Wistrich, Antisemetism (London: Thames Methuen, 1991), 56-57.

[352]  Quoted inKöhler, Wagner’s Hitler, 87.

[353] [Wagner], “Das Judenthum in der Musik”, 99.

[354] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 325.

[355] Speech given on October 28, 1925.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 196.

[356] Speech given on April 22, 1927.  See ibid., 229.

[357] David C. Large,  “Wagner’s Bayreuth Disciples,” in Wagnerism in European Culture, eds. David C. Large and William Weber (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 130. For more on the interrelations between Wagnerism and Nazism, see Frederic Sports, Bayreuth:  A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 1994), chaps. 4, 5.

[358] Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in England and came to Germany to study philosophy and aesthetics in Dresden.  He settled in Bayreuth in 1908 after marrying Eva Wagner.  In 1896 he published a biography of Wagner and in 1899 Grundlagen der 19. Jahrhundert.  The latter appeared in 30 editions;  its influence has been compared to Spengler’s The Decline of the West.   Chamberlain was active in establishing intellectual and political contacts between the Wagner family and the National-Socialist Party.  He died in 1927 a fervent Nazi supporter.  For more on Chamberlain, see Zvi Bachrach, Racism: The Tool of Politics: From Monism towards Nazism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1985), 41-51 (Hebrew).

[359] Large, “Wagner’s Bayreuth Disciples”, 124-125.  See also Alistair Hamilton, The Appeal of Fascism (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 109. For a description of the meeting between Hitler and Chamberlain, see Roderick Stackelberg, Idealism Debased: From Volkish Ideology to National-Socialism (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1981), 118-119.

[360]Describing Hitler’s first visit to Bayreuth in 1923, Winfried Wagner later claimed that “he visited the Master’s grave alone, and came back in a state of great emotion, saying, ‘out of Parsifal I will make a religion’.” Quoted in Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 2.

[361] Large, “Wagner’s Bayreuth Disciples”, 322-323.

[362] Ibid., 131.

[363] In addition to the speeches already referred to, see those of July 25, 1925, October 28, 1925, April 2, 1927, June 26, 1927, March 6, 1934, September 11, 1935, July 18, 1937, May 22, 1938, and July 11, 1938.

[364]Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, 338. See also Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 53-54.

[365] Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 60.

[366] Domarus, ed., Hitler, 1:863. Hitler’s obsession with Wagner may explain some of the debates in Israel regarding Wagner’s music. For more on the topic, see Na’ama Sheffi, “Cultural Manipulation: Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss in Israel in the 1950’s,” Journal of Contemporary History 34 (1999): 619-639.

[367]One of them was Rienzi, who saved Rome by dissolving the corrupt Senate. See

Köhler, Wagner’s Hitler, 81; Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places: Life and Art in the 20^th Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), 477.

[368]Talk datedJanuary, 25-25,1942.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talks, 251.

[369] Speech given on November 2, 1922.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 717.

[370] Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 655.

 [371] Norman H. Baynes, ed.,  The Speeches of Hitler (London: Oxford University Press 1942), 570.

[372] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 243.

[373] Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 476.

[374] Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 233.

[375] Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, 476.

[376] The Haus der Deutschen Kunst was designed by Troost as a museum for the art exhibitions of the Reich in 1931.  It was built in a classical style often used by Troost.  The latter did not manage to complete the building, and his wife, Gerdy Troost, continued the work according to his plans after his death in 1934;  Gall, a student of Troost, took over the administration of the project.  Hitler gave the speech at the laying of the cornerstone on October 15, 1933;  the official opening was on July 18, 1937, with the opening of the first Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.  For more on Troost, see Alex Scobie, Hitler’s State Architecture (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 56-63.

 [377]Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 246.

[378]Talk datedSeptember 3, 1942.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talks, 688.

[379] Speech given on September 6, 1938.  See de Sales, My New Order, 501-502.

[380] Talk dated December 23/24, 1941.  See Trevor-Roper, ed. Hitler’s Table Talks, 151.

[381]Ibid.

[382] Talk dated April 27, 1942.  See ibid., 370.

[383]Ibid.

[384] Ibid., 371.

[385]Ibid.

[386] Talk dated June 30, 1942.  See ibid., 542.

[387]Speech given on July 17, 1939.  See Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Hitler, 606.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[388]Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 13.

[389] Gordon A. Craig, The Germans (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1982), 67. For Thomas Mann, “Bruder Hitler”, see this chapter, note 3.

[390]Talk dated January 25/26, 1942.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table-Talk, 250-251.

[391] Speech given August 13, 1920.  See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 186-187.

[392]Ibid., 187.  Emphasis added.

[393]Ibid.

[394] Speech given January 3, 1923. See ibid., 779.

[395]Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 2:653.

[396]Ibid.

[397] Speech given on October 15, 1933.  See Domarus, ed., Hitler, 1:377.

[398] Speech given on September 7, 1937. See ibid., 719.

[399]Ibid., 718.

[400] This can clearly be seen in his September 1, 1933 speech at the Party Congress.  See Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst (Munich, 1934).

[401] Speech given on September 11, 1935.  See [Hitler], Die Reden Hitlers, 30.

[402]Ibid., 30-31.

[403]Ibid., 32.

[404]Ibid.

[405] Stanley G. Payne, Fascism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 53.

[406] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 210-211.

[407]Speech given on July 1, 1923. See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds. Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 947.

[408] Speech given on September 2, 1923. See ibid., 992.

[409]Speech given on April 27, 1923.  See Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Hitler, 66.

[410] Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 655.

[411] Ibid.

[412] Ibid., 656.

[413] Speech given on September 1, 1933. See Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst, 15.

[414]Ibid.

[415]Ibid., 16.

[416] Speech given on July 17, 1939. See Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Hitler, 607.

[417]Ibid.

[418]Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 12-13.

[419]Ibid., 47.

[420] Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, 477.

[421] Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst, 13.

[422]Ibid.

[423] Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 34.

[424] This does not mean that he was not ready to use modern technology in other fields. For the case of the design and infrastructure of the new German society, see Rainer Stommer, “Triumph der Technik, Autobahnbrücken zwischen Ingenieuraufgabe und Kulturdenkmal,” in Reichsautobahn: Pyramiden des Dritten Reichs, ed. Rainer Stommer (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1995), 49-76.

 [425]Saul Friedländer, Kitsch and Death (Jerusalem: Keter, 1985), 35 (Hebrew).

[426] Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst, 16.

[427] Idem, Hitlers Zweites Buch, 70-71.

[428] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 118.

[429] [Hitler], Die Reden Hitlers, 41.

[430] Quoted in Scobie, Hitler’s State Architecture, 13,note 22.

[431] Hitler, Zweites Buch,56-57. Talk dated November 5, 1941.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talks, 116.

[432] Speeches given on May  21, 1930 and September  6, 1938. See Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Hitler, 502, 567.  See also Hitler, Die deutsche Kunst.

[433]Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 42.

[434] For more on Troost and Speer see notes XXX, XXX below. The Neo-Classicist style of Speer’s architecture is evident. For more on Speer see note XXX below.

[435] Joachim Winckelmann was the main representative of the Neo-Classical school in Germany.  In his books Gedanken über Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1756)  and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764) he emphasized the need to copy classical culture.  He saw the main mission of the visual arts as “the preservation of the look and image of the good-natured athlete”.  Winckelmann, like contemporary Neo-Classicists in France, believed in the existence of an objective world order. 

[436] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 82; Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses,  24-33.

[437] Friedrich L. Jahn, Deutsches Volksthum (Leipzig: Wilhelm Rein, 1813), 243.

[438] Ibid., 251.

[439] Peter Viereck, Meta-Politics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), 63; Moshe Zimmermann, “Continuity and Crises of German Nationalism,” in Crises of German National Consciousness In the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, ed. M. Zimmermann (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1983), 17.

[440] Jahn, Deutsches Volksthum, 25-26.

[441] Karl D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London: Penguin, 1973), 42.

[442] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 408. Emphasis in original.

[443]Ibid. Emphasis in original

[444]Speech given on December 16, 1925.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 257.

[445] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 250.

[446]Ibid.

[447] Speech given on January 16, 1925.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 257.

[448] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 247.  Emphasis in original.

[449] George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture (New York: Schocken, 1981),  3.

[450] Talk dated June 15, 1943.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talks, 707.

[451]J.L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt, 1815-1848 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1967), 139.

[452] Ibid., 139-145.

[453] Craig, The Germans, 209.

[454] Adrian Ludwig Richter was born in Dresden.  In his youth he was especially influenced by landscape painters;  he saw in them a synthesis of realism and poetic interpretation.  Richter was familiar with the Romantic works of Tieck and Schlegel and under their influence claimed that painting must “learn nature”.  The ideal world Richter depicted in his paintings mainly includes the harmonious life of the peasants and the villagers living in the shadow of nature.  His 1859 In June depicts lovers resting in the shadow and a family in a complete harmony.  The picture is characterized by a “popular” dimension and sentimental simplicity.  Richter did many illustrations for books of German legends, ballads, simple morality tales, and collections of folksongs.  These illustrations feature a simple and clear technique.

[455] Talk dated June 15, 1943.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talks, 707.

[456] Wolfgang Emmerich, “The Mythos of Germanic Continuity,” in The Nazification of an Academic Discipline, eds. James Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 45.

[457] Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 190.

[458] Moritz von Schwind was born in Vienna.  In 1828 he moved to Munich, where he was exposed to the works of the Nazarene artists who were influenced by the Lukasbrüder quasi-religious order;  their desire was to produce German Catholic art.  The themes in his works were mainly taken from medieval mythology, but he also gave great attention to nature, though not to depict it as it was but rather to use it to express fantasies, legends, and poems, and to translate them into painting.  In his 1855 The Honeymoon Journey, (figure 12) von Schwind painted himself as a new bridegroom saying goodbye to his best friend (also in real life), the composer Lachner.  The style of the picture is Romantic and it has an intimate and ideal atmosphere.  The old houses in the background are characteristic of provincial villages and emphasize the nostalgic style of the picture, which Hitler particularly liked. 

[459]See Jäckel and Kuhn, eds., Sämmtliche Aufzeichnungen, 196.

[460] Arnold Böcklin developed his style at a late stage of German realistic Romanticism. He devoted a great deal of attention to mythic figures and to landscapes, which he made through a direct approach to nature.  His works include themes which were treated repeatedly, such as the “villa by the sea”. Another work, the island of the dead, (figure 14) deals with an admired symbol of the end of the nineteenth century. This painting is a good example of Böcklin’s landscapes but mostly represent the fin-de- siècle atmosphere he was influenced by.

[461] Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 262.

[462] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 246.

[463]Hamann has stated that shortly before his suicide Hitler was sitting in the bunker of his Chancellery in front of his architectural plans for the Linz museum.  See Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 3.

[464]Price, Adolf Hitler, 10.  For the Fuerher’s taste in art see pp. XXX; Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 90-92; Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, chap. 8; Price, Adolf Hitler, 8-13; Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 41-44, 130-131, 177-179; Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 72-74.

[465] Entry dated May 17, 1941.  See Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1987), 652; Price, Adolf Hitler, 11.

[466] Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 179-307. For the Nazi looting of art see also Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

[467] Quoted in Maser, Adolf Hitler, 205; Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 5.

[468]Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 90.

[469] Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 92. Hitler’s private collection included works by

Breker, Spitzweg, Makarat, Böcklin, von Alt, Grutzner, Lenbach, Kaulbach, Stuck, von Schwind, Panini, Titian, and Botticelli.

[470] Maser, Adolf Hitler, 205.

[471] These artists were mentioned by Hitler. See Trevor-Roper, ed.,Hitler’s Table Talks, 688.

[472] Talk dated April 28, 1942.  See ibid., 444.

[473] Talk dated March 27, 1942.  See ibid., 372.

[474] Talk dated June 15, 1943.  See ibid., 707.

[475] Ibid.  Hitler adored Spitzweg’s painting The Poor Poet (figure 15) depicting a poet curled up in bed and sheltering under a big umbrella from the rain dripping into his squalid room. 

[476] Talk dated January 24/25, 1942.  See ibid., 241.

[477] Starting in 1935 considerable sums were invested in an attempt to locate works done by Hitler.  Two archivists were hired to find his paintings and verify his signature on them.  This collection program lasted about four years;  the regime was quite generous and paid between 5000 and 6000 Reichsmark for each painting.  By 1939 Hoffman published a portfolio including seven works by Hitler.  Hitler himself advised Hoffman as to which pictures to choose, claiming that his preferences were his best works from the years of World War I.  See Price, Adolf Hitler, 12.

[478]Manheim, trans., Mein Kampf, 290. 

[479]Ibid., 296.

[480] Speech given on May 11, 1935.  See Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Hitler, 579.

[481]Speech given on January 26, 1928.  See Vollnhals, ed., Hitler, 655.

[482]Speech given on March 23, 1933.  See Domarus, ed., Hitler, 279.

[483] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 244.

[484]Ibid.

[485]Ibid., 246.

 [486]Ibid., 250.

[487] Ibid.

 [488]Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 55, 68.  Mosse has noted the role of Moller van den Bruck’s The Prussian Style (1916) in creating a connection between classicism and monumentality.  For a discussion of monumentality, classicism, and nationalism, see Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 30.

[489]Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 69.

[490]Speech given on February 15, 1933.  See Domarus, ed., Hitler, 240.

[491] Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 246.  Emphasis added.

[492] Mosse, Nazi Culture, 3; Price, Adolf Hitler, 8.

[493]Ibid.

[494]Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 247.

[495] Speech given on September 7, 1937.  See Domarus, ed., Hitler, 718.

[496]Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 51; Price, Adolf Hitler, 11.

 [497]Speech given on July 10, 1938.  See Domarus, ed., Hitler, 877.

[498] Speech given on July 17, 1939.  See ibid., 1218.

[499]Ibid., 1219.

[500]Ibid., 1218.

[501]Ibid.

[502]Ibid.

 [503]Ibid., 1219.

[504] Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 356.

[505] Price, Adolf Hitler, 9.

[506] For the relations between Troost’s widow Gerdy and Hitler see Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 50-51. Troost herself published a book on architecture in Germany. See Gredy Troost, Das Bauen im neuen Reich (Bayreuth: Bayerische Ostmark, 1943).

[507]Domarus, ed., Hitler, 876, 1217.

[508]Ibid., 1032; Hitler, “Rede zur Eröffnung”, 248.

[509] Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 42.  For Hitler’s appreciation of Troost, see Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 184-185.

[510]For a biography of Speer, see Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (New York: Knopf, 1995).  For his architecture, see Albert Speer, Architecture, Arbeiten 1933-1945 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1995); Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression; Barbara Miller-Lane, “Architects in Power: Politics and Ideology in the Work of Ernst May and Albert Speer,” in Art and History: Images and Their Meaning, eds. Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 296-307.

[511] Speech given on January 30, 1937.  SeeDomarus, ed., Hitler, 676.  Includes the official appointment of Speer to the position of head “master builder” of Berlin.

[512] Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 102.

[513] Domarus, ed., Hitler, 1032.

[514] Ibid., 1035.

[515] Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 114.

[516] Quoted in Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, 481.

[517] See figure 7 above. Peter Adam, Arts of the Third Reich (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992), 199.

[518] See figure 17.  Both statues by Arno Breker were placed at the entrance to the new Chancellery in Berlin.  For more on Breker see chapter XXX, note XXX.

[519] Speech given on December 10, 1938.  See Domarus, ed., Hitler, 984.

[520]Talk dated May 30, 1942.  See Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talks, 506.

[521] Jonathan Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 218-241.

[522] Breker’s position after the war was far better than that of Leni Riefensthal, as he enjoyed a revival. His leading position during the Vichy years in France enabled him to continue his career after the war. His exhibitions in Paris and Berlin during the 1980s caused controversy and the question of his rehabilitation haunted him again.  See ibid., 242-253; Michele Cone, Artist Under Vichy: A Case of Prejudice and Persecution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Magdalena Bushart, “Überraschende Begegnung mit alten Bekannten: Arno Brekers NS Plastik in neuer Umgebung,” in NS-Kunst: 50 Jahre danach, ed. Berthold Hinz (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1989), 35-54.

[523] Arno Breker, Hitler, Paris et moi (Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1970).

[524] For the relationship between Breker and Speer, see Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain, 222-224, 229-230.

[525]Serge Lang and Ernst Schenck, eds., The Memoires of Alfred Rosenberg (New York:: Ziff Davis, 1949), p. 165.

[526]Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 163.

[527] Karl D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London: Penguin, 1973), 353.

[528] Georg Lukács, Die Zerstorung der Vernuft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962), 565- 566.

[529] Fritz Nova, Alfred Rosenberg: Philosopher of the Third Reich (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986),  1.

[530]Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler: His Worldview and his Mark on History (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1990), 10-16 (Hebrew).

[531]Alfred Rosenberg, Letzte Aufzeichnungen (Gottingen: Plesse, 1955), 65.

 [532]Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 35.

[533]Alfred Rosenberg, Schriften aus den Jahren 1917-1921 (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1943), 1:24.

[534] Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (London: B.T. Batsford, 1972), 19.

[535]Toward the end of 1919 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was translated into German for the first time from Russian.  In his articles from the time Rosenberg claimed that the source of the Protocols was the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, and that they had been written by a leading circle of Zionists including Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau.  Their goal was the destruction of the non-Jews.  In order to support his claims about the contents of the Protocols Rosenberg claimed that the British Museum had a secret copy of the document.  In 1923 he published a book on the Protocols.  See Alfred Rosenberg, Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion und die jüdische Weltpolitik (Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1923).  Rosenberg was also responsible for reprinting the Protocols in 1940.

[536]Idem, Schriften, 31.

[537]Ibid.

 [538]Ibid., 33.

[539] Ibid., 34.

[540]Ibid., 69.

[541] Robert Edwin Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won: Goebbels and the Nazi Propaganda Campaign (New York: Paragon House, 1987), 158.

[542]The first version of this organization was called the German Thule Cult and was founded in Leipzig in 1912.  Only those of “Aryan blood” could join, and they were required to fight against the Jews and seek revenge against those who had betrayed the German people.  In 1917 von Sebottendorff took over the leadership of the Bavarian branch and in 1918 there was a general reorganization during which the name was changed to the Thule Gesellschaft;  at that time there were about 1500 members.  For more on the Thule Gesellschaft, see Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 108-109.

[543]Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 166.

[544]Originally Rudolf Glauer.

[545]Quoted in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1985), 145.  For more on von Sebottendorff, see Wolfgang Emmerich, “The Mythos of Germanic Continuity,” in The Nazification of an Academic Discipline, eds. James Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 48-49.

[546]Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, 149.

[547] Rudolf von Sebottendorff, Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundliches aus der Frühzeit der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung (1933). Quoted in ibid., 146.

 [548]Article dated February 22, 1921.  See Alfred Rosenberg, Kampf um die Macht: Aussage von 1921-1932 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1942), 19.

[549] Article dated July 17, 1921.  See ibid., 60.

[550]Max Weinreich, Hitler`s Professors (New York: YIVO, 1946), 103.

[551]These two articles are considered below.  See pages XXX.

[552] Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 169.

[553]Michael Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 32.

[554]Ernst Barker, Reflections on Government (London,  1942), 88-89.  This definition appeared as part of a discussion of political parties with autocratic ideologies.  He claimed that there could also be political parties with a totalitarian or total nature in democratic states.  See ibid.

[555]Jäckel, Hitler, 10.

[556] Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 2; Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race, 61.

[557] The English translator of Mein Kampf chose the word “philosophy” for Weltanschauung. See Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 506.

 [558]Entry dated May 24/25, 1925.  See Alfred Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre: Ein Kampf für deutsche Wiedergeburt, Reden und Aufsätze von 1919-1933 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1935), 201.

[559]Idem, “Nationalsozialismus, Religion und Kultur,” in Die Verwaltungs- Akademie (Berlin: Spaeth & Linde, 1934), vol. 1, group 1, p. 1.

[560] Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 120-121; see also Weinreich, Hitler`s Professors, 23.

[561] Speech given on February 22, 1934.  See Alfred Rosenberg, Gestaltung der Idee: Reden und Aufsätze von 1933-1935 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1938), 25.

[562][Idem], Völkischer Beobachter, January 9, 1934, quoted in Franz L. Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National-Socialism, 1933-1944, New York: Harper and Row,46.

[563]Alfred Rosenberg, “Grundlagen volkischer Kulturarbeit” Der Weltkampf 16 (November 1925): 721.

 [564]Ibid., 733.

[565]Idem, “Nationalsozialismus, Religion und Kultur”, vol. 1, group 1, p.8.

[566]Speech given on Reichsparteitag, 1938.  See idem, Tradition und Gegenwart: Reden und Aufsätze, 1936-1940 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1941), 152.

[567]Speech given on June 7, 1935.  See idem, Gestaltung der Idee, 331.

[568]Idem, Tradition und Gegenwart, 146.

[569] Günther’s influence on Rosenberg, evident in Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, is discussed by Nova. See Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 62-63.

[570] Alfred Rosenberg, Houston Stewart Chamberlain als Verkünder und Begründer (Munich, 1927).

[571]Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre, 217.

[572] Article dated February 26-27, 1928.  See idem, Kampf um die Macht, 614.

[573] Chamberlain’s influence on Rosenberg is discussed in great detail by Nova. See Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 11-17.

[574]Geoffrey G. Field, Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 453.

[575] Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944), 363.

[576] Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 160.

[577] Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 11.

[578] Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 364.

[579] Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race, 101;  see also Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 7.

[580] The Deutsche Nationalbibliographie (no. 36) states that by September 1941 about 950,000 copies of the book had been sold.  The last edition in 1943 added about another 125,000 copies to the total. See Weinreich, Hitler`s Professors, 24.

[581] Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 8.

[582] Ibid.

[583] George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: New American Library, 1975), 10.

[584] Willenhaftigkeit, Ästhetischer Wille, and Rassenchaos are just three of the words Gros explained.  Gros did not just deal with the expressions Rosenberg invented but also provided details about the figures from German history, race theory, schools of art, and other topics mentioned in the book.  See Otto Gros, 850 Worte ‘Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts’ (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1938), 7, 68 and throughout the book.

[585] Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, 143-167; Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race, 120.

[586] Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 353; Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 168.

[587] Entry dated February 27, 1942.  See Louis P. Lochner, ed., The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943 (New York: Doubleday & Co.,1948), 104.

[588] Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 168.

[589] Ibid.

[590] Entry dated April 11, 1942.  See Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talks, ed. Hugh Trevor- Roper, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 422.

[591] Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 131.

[592] Nova, Alfred Rosenberg, xiv, 8; Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970).

[593] Quoted in Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 167.  Emphasis in original.

[594] Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1935), 278.  Emphasis added.

[595] Ibid., 278-279.

[596] Ibid.

[597]Ibid., 282.

[598]Ibid., 305.

[599]Ibid.

[600]Ibid., 304.

[601]Ibid., 308.

[602]Ibid., 300.

[603]Ibid., 299.

[604] See the section on Hitler, pages XXX.

[605]Rosenberg, Der Mythus, 299.

[606]Ibid., 301.

[607]See Chapter XXX, pp. XXX.

[608]Ibid., 298.

[609]Ibid.

 [610]Ibid., 299.

[611]Ibid., 293;  idem, “Grundlagen völkischer Kulturarbeit”, 742.

[612]Idem, Der Mythus, 302.

[613]Ibid., 294.

[614]Ibid.,  321.

[615]Ibid., 321-322.

[616]Idem, “Nationalsozialismus, Religion und Kultur”, vol. 1, group 1, p. 6.

[617]Ibid., 7.

[618]Speech given on Reichsparteitag 1938.  See idem, Tradition und Gegenwart, 148.

[619]Ibid., 150.

 [620]Karl D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London, 1973), 352-354 Emphasis in original. See also George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture (New York, 1981), xx.

[621]Craig has defined Gleichschaltung as an engineering term meaning “putting into the same gear”.  See Gordon A. Craig, The Germans (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1982), 326.

[622]Rosenberg, “Grundlagen völkischer Kulturarbeit”, 727.

[623] Idem, “Der Schicksalskampf der deutschen Kultur,” Der Weltkampf 53 (May 1928): 194.

[624] Article published on November 30, 1926.  Reprinted in idem, Kampf um die Macht, 478.

[625] Idem, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst? (Munich: Eher, 1934), 12.

[626] The German sociologist Tönnies was probably the first to make the distinction between Gemeinschaft andGesellschaft in his 1887 book. The distinction became a very common one during the conservative revolution of the 1920s and later as part of the Nazi worldview. For more on this distinction, see Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society, trans.  C.P. Looms (New York: Harper and Row, 1963); K. Bullivant, “The Conservative Revolution,” in The Weimar Dilemma, ed. A. Phelan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 47-70; Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 30-36.

[627]The NS Kulturgemeinde was established by Rosenberg in June 1934. This quote is taken from his speech in Düsseldorf on the day of its establishment. Speech given on June 7, 1934.  See Rosenberg, Gestaltung der Idee, 331.

[628]Ibid.

[629]Idem, “Grundlagen völkischer Kulturarbeit”, 741.

[630] George Bussman, “‘Degenerate Art’ – A Look at a Useful Myth,” in German Art in the 20th Century, eds.  Christos Joachimides et al. (London: Prestel, 1985), 116.

[631] Rosenberg, “Der Schicksalskampf der deutschen Kultur”, 210.

[632]Ibid., 211.

[633]Ibid., 212.

[634]Ibid.

[635] Alfred Rosenberg, “Die Kulturkrise der Gegenwart,” Volkischer Beobachter (Munich edition), (February 27, 1929).

[636]Barbara Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 149.

[637]Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich (London: Penguin, 1974), 531.

[638]Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 170.

[639] Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 54.

[640] Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 150. For more on the Bayreuth Circle, see also Frederic Sports, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 159-188; Michael Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 24.

[641] Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art Under A Dictatorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 41.

[642] Petropoulos has claimed that at least twenty such groups were active in 1930 in Saxony, Bavaria, and Baden alone. See Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, 28.

[643] See, among others, [Alfred Rosenberg], “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur,” Völkischer Beobachter (October 30, 1929); idem, “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur,”, ibid. (November 12, 1930).  For Schultze-Naumburg’s lectures as an active member of the League, see page XXX, note XXX.

[644] Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder, Im Terror des Kunstbolschewismus (Karlsruhe: Müller, 1938).

[645] Reinhard Merker, Die bildenden Kunste in Nationalsozialismus: Kulturideologie, Kulturpolitik, Kulturproduktion (Cologne: Dumont, 1983), 78-79.

[646]Quoted in Peter Adam, Arts of the Third Reich (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992), 32-33.

[647]Feistel-Rohmeder, Im Terror des Kunstbolschewismus, 4.

[648]Ibid., 8.

[649]Ibid., 83.

[650] Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Kunst und Rasse (Munich: J.F. Lehmanns, 1928).

[651]Ibid., 140. Translation in Bettina Brand-Clausen, “The Collection of Works of Art in the Psychiatric Clinic, Heidelberg – from the Beginning until 1945,” in Beyond Reason: Art and Psychosis, Works from the Prinzhorn Collection, eds. Bettina Brand-Clausen et al.(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 17.

[652]Feistel-Rohmeder, Im Terror des Kunstbolschewismus, 123.

[653]Ibid.

[654] For more on the “November Group” see the section on Hitler, pages XXX.

[655]Feistel-Rohmeder, Im Terror des Kunstbolschewismus, 72.

[656]The Malik Press was actually a Marxist publisher even though it refused to accept direct support from Moscow.  The head of the firm was Wieland Herzfelde, the brother of the German painter and photomontage expert John Heartfield.  “The little revolutionary library” published by Malik between 1920 and 1923, included political- social publications, including a biography of Lenin and books by Tolstoy, Gorkii, Trotsky, Lukács, and Brecht.  George Grosz, the leading German satirical draftsman, published there collections of his works, among them Gott mit uns (1919), Des Gesicht der Herrschenden (1921), and Ecce Homo (1923).  For more on the Malik Press, see Ulrich Faure, In Knotenpunkt des Weltverkehrs: Herzfelde, Heartfield, Grosz und der Malik Verlag, 1916-1947 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1992); Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party: Art and Radicalism in Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

[657] The manifesto is included in Feistel-Rohmeder, Im Terror des Kunstbolschewismus, 181-184.

  [658]In January 1932 the League had 2100 members, drawn almost exclusively from the elite sections of the German bourgeoisie. 12% were university instructors, 19% professionals, 15% artists and intellectuals, 6% businessmen, and 6% middle- to high-ranking civil servants. By the end of 1932 membership rose to 38,000. For more on the topic, see: Alan E. Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 23, 32.

[659] Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg, 39-54.

[660] Alan E. Steinweis, “Weimar Culture and the Rise of National Socialism: The Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur,” Central European History 24 (1991): 403.

[661]Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race, 110.

[662]Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 352.

[663]Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) was part of Robert Ley’s Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front). This organization, formed as an imitation of the Fascist Dopolavoro (After Work), was designed to increase morale among the workers. The basic idea of the Front was to make art available to the masses, and stemmed from a Romantic legacy. The Front was meant to bring German workers to higher levels of productivity through the use of mass tourism, sports, and recreational activities. Some nine million German workers were active in its organized leisure;  it became, as Wistrich has claimed, “an important weapon in the modern Nazi version of ‘bread and circuses’”. See Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Bonanza Books, 1982), 191; idem, Weekend in Munich (London: Pavilion, 1995), 16.

[664]Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race, 113.

[665] Beaufträgter des Fuehrers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei.

[666] Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors, 25; Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 162; Reinhard Merker, Die bildenden Künste in Nationalsozialismus: Kulturideologie, Kulturpolitik, Kulturproduktion (Cologne: Dumont, 1983), 103.

[667] The NS Bund Deutsche Bühne was formed on March 21, 1933. It was the only theater organization allowed by the Nazis.

[668]NS Kulturegemeinde.  See Alfred Rosenberg, Das Politische Tagebuch 1934-1935 und 1939-1940 (Munich: DTV Dokumente, 1964), 49. In his dairy he claimed that the first meeting was held in Eizenach on July 5, 1934, and that he spoke in front of an audience of 20,000.

[669]Ibid., 37.  Emphasis in original.

[670]In February 1934 the German Labor Front was placed under the authority of Goebbels’ Reich Chamber for Culture.  Ley and Goebbels agreed that the members of the Chamber did not have to be members of the Labor Front.  As a result, Rosenberg’s League, which had already been made part of Ley’s organization, lost its ideological control over “cultural products” because of the seniority of the Chamber.  The League was now at the bottom of a three-level hierarchy, and was reduced in influence as a result.

[671]Barbara Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics, 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 182.

[672] Ibid.;see also Merker, Die bildenden Künste in Nationalsozialismus, 138. The cultural communities published a magazine first entitled Die Völkische Kunst. During January 1936 its name was chanced to Kunst und Volk;  it stopped publication in 1938. Werner Rittich was a leading journalist at Kunst und Volk.

[673]Lochner, ed., The Goebbels Diaries, 13.

[674]Rosenberg, Das Politische Tagebuch, 48.

[675]For more on the Schreiber group, see pp. XXX.

 [676]Alfred Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre, 248.

 [677]Ibid., 249.

[678]Ibid., 250.

[679] Rosenberg was referring here to Barlach’s Magdeburg Memorial to the soldiers of  World War I; it contains six wooded figures.Paret’s book has enriched our understanding of Barlach’s early years, the period surrounding the war, and this work in particular.  See Peter Paret, German Encounters with Modernism, 1840-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 144-184.

[680] Alfred Rosenberg, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst?(Munich: Eher, 1934), 8.

[681]Ibid.

[682]Idem, Blut und Ehre , 250.

[683]Idem, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst?, 7.

[684]Ibid.

[685]Ibid., 13.

[686] Idem, Blut und Ehre, 250.  Rosenberg was referring here to Otto Braun, the leading Social Democratic politician in Weimar Germany.

[687] Idem, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst?, 8.

[688] Speech given on November 1, 1936.  See idem, Tradition und Gegenwart, 38; speech given on June 7, 1935.  See idem, Gestaltung der Idee, 331.

[689]Ibid., 332.

[690]Ibid., 335.

[691]Quoted in Bussman, “’Degenerate Art’”, 118.

[692]Quoted in Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 36.

[693]The journal Die Kunst im deutschen Reich was founded in 1937; in 1938 its name was changed to Die Kunst im Dritten Reich.  It was first published in about 8000 copies, but this soon increased to around 50,000.  The format of the journal was particularly elegant and expensive;  the helmeted goddess Athena appeared on the cover.  Rosenberg was the chief editor, assisted by Robert Scholz, Werner Rittich, and Walter Horn.

[694]Rosenberg tried to persuade Himmler to confiscate this promodernist journal before it was closed, but the latter, aware of Goebbels’ views, refused to do so.  See Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, 45.

[695] Serge Lang and Ernst Schenck, eds., The Memoirs of Alfred Rosenberg (New York, 1949), 165. Emphasis in original

[696] Alfred Rosenberg, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst? (Munich: Eher, 1934), 8.

[697]Ibid.

[698]Idem, Blut und Ehre, 251.

[699]For more on Biedermeier, see chapter XXX, note XXX and chapter XXX, note XXX.

[700]Speech given on November 1, 1936.  See idem, Tradition und Gegenwart, 37.

[701]Article published on May 10, 1923.  See Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre, 198-199.

[702]Ibid., 199.

[703]Idem, “Grundlagen völkischer Kulturarbeit”, 733.

[704]Article published on May 10, 1923.  See idem, Blut und Ehre, 200.

[705]Ibid., 251.

[706]Idem, “Der Neuen Romantik entgegen,” in Kampf um die Macht, 674.

[707]Ibid., 675.

[708] Idem, “Nationalsozialismus, Religion und Kultur”, vol. 1, group 1, p. 8.

[709]Idem, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst?, 13.

[710] Article published on May 10, 1923.  See idem, Blut und Ehre, 200.

 [711]Idem, “Grundlagen völkischer Kulturarbeit”, 733. Emphasis added.

[712]Ibid.

[713]Idem, Der Mythus, 434.  Emphasis added.

[714]Ibid., 448.

[715]Ibid., 450.

 [716]Ibid., 448.

[717]Idem, Revolution in der bildenden Kunst?, 12.

[718]Article published on September 11, 1930.  See idem, “Der Neuen Romantik entgegen”, 707.

[719]Idem, “Nationalsozialismus, Religion und Kultur”, vol. 1, group 1, p. 8.

[720]Speech given on Reichsparteitag 1938.  See idem, Tradition und Gegenwart, 146.

[721]Jonathan Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 169.

[722]See for example speeches given on August 7 and 13, 1920.  See Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, eds., Hitlers Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 178, 196.

[723]Annegret Janda, “The Fight for Modern Art: The Berlin Nationalgalerie after 1933,” in Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, ed. Stephanie Barron (New York: Harry N. Abrams and L.A. County Museum, 1991), 116.

[724]The Kronprinzen Palais is the National Gallery in Berlin.  In 1897 it became the first museum in the world to purchase a painting by Paul Cezanne.  Early in the twentieth century the Palais boasted the most representative collection of contemporary German art in the world.  The progressive views and policies of the various directors of the museum led Goebbels to order the closing of the galleries of modern and contemporary art on October 30, 1936, immediately after the end of the Olympic Games.  For a detailed treatment of the subject, see ibid., 105-120.

[725]The “Degenerate” Art exhibition in Munich, which opened on July 19, 1937, displayed some 650 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and books by major artists from Germany and elsewhere.  The Nazis intended the exhibition to stigmatize the art of the modern era as “degenerate” and explain the nature of the artistic style to be avoided in the Third Reich.  Over two million visitors saw the exhibition between late July and the end of November 1937, which embarrassed the Nazi leadership.

[726]Barbara Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany: 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press ,1985), 269, note 60.

[727] Ibid., 156; Elaine S. Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 76.

[728] Ibid., 77.

[729]Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Das ABC des Bauens (Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung, 1927), 24.

[730]  Idem, “Wer hat Recht? Traditionelle Baukunst oder Bauen in neuen Formen,” Uhu (April 1926), quoted in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, eds. Anton Kaes et al., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 444.

[731]  Ibid.

[732]Paul Schultze-Naumburg, “Zur Frage des schragen und des flachen Daches bei unserem Wohnhausbau,” Deutsche Bauzeitung 60 (1926): 761-766.  Emphasis added.

[733] Hellmut Lehman-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 40.

[734] Many recommended reading lists were published during the Third Reich.  Two of the lists incorporating the works of Schultze-Naumburg are Rudolf Kummer, Die Rasse im Schrifttum (Berlin: Alfred Mentzner, 1934), 32; Erich Unger, Das Schrifttum zum Aufbau des neuen Reiches (Berlin: Junger & Dünnhaupt, 1934), 54.

[735] For the complementary comparison between “degenerate” and volkish art, see figure 24 taken from Adolf Dresler, Deutsche Kunst und Entartete “Kunst” (Munich: Deutscher Verlag, 1938).  This comparison was one of the chief features of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition in Munich in 1937 and also of a number of other exhibitions.

[736]Among the members were Paul Bonatz, Professor Paul Smitthenner, and other prominent architects from southern Germany.  See Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 140.

[737]The manifesto appeared in Die Baukunst 4(5) (1928): 128.

 [738]Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Das Gesicht des deutschen Hauses (Munich, 1928), 90.

[739]Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 156.

[740]Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 39.

[741] H.F. Schmidt, “Moderne Baukunst,” Völkischer Beobachter (March 27, 1930).

[742]Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 150.

[743]This medieval sculpture was seen by the Nazis as the ultimate portrayal of the Nordic idea of beauty which they wished to emulate.

[744] See, for example, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Kampf um die Kunst (Munich: Nazionalsozialistische Bibliothek, 1932),  14; idem, Kunst und Rasse (Munich: J.F. Lehmanns, 1928), 68-69; idem, Nordische Schönheit: Ihr Wunschbild im Leben und in der Kunst (Munich: J.F. Lehmanns, 1937), 159.

[745]Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 159.

[746]Paul Rener, Kulturbolschewismus? (Munich, 1932), 8-10.

[747]“Schultze-Naumburg in München im ‘Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur’,” Völkischer Beobachter (February 10, 1931); “Schultze-Naumburg und die zünftige Kritik,” ibid. (March 13, 1931); “Schultze-Naumburg spricht in Wiesbaden,” ibid. (March 17, 1931); “Schultze-Naumburg in Darmstadt und Frankfurt,” ibid. (March 24, 1931).

 [748]Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 159.  Kunst und Rasse was published anonymously by the Combat League for German Culture in 1932.

[749]“Alfred Rosenberg auf der Tag des ‘Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur’ in Weimar,” Völkischer Beobachter (June 13, 1930); “Ein Rückblick auf die Pfingsttagung des Kampfbunds zum Schutze der deutschen Kultur,” ibid. (June 17, 1930).

[750]Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 9.

[751]Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 133.

 

[752]See respectively Stuart C. Gilman, “Political Theory and Degeneration:  From Left to Right, from Up to Down,” in Degeneration:  The Dark Side of Progress, eds. Edward J. Chamberlain and Sander L. Gilman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 167;  William Greenslade, Culture & the Novel 1880-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 15.

[753] George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution:  A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1978), 83;  Lehman-Haupt, Art Under a Dictatorship, 40;  Stephanie Barron, “1937: Modern Art and Politics in Prewar Germany,” in Barron, ed., Degenerate Art, 12.

[754] Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, 1848-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 133-135.  Marten has studied the path leading from racism and Social Darwinism to Aryan supremacy. See Heinz-Georg Marten, “Racism, Social Darwinism, Anti-Semitism and Aryan Supremacy,” in Shaping The Superman : Fascist Body as Political Icon – Aryan Fascism, ed. J.A. Mangan (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 23-41.

[755] Greenslade claims that Hugh Diamond was among the first in England to use photography to document the physiognomy of the insane, as in his 1856 lecture ‘On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomenon of Insane’.  See Greenslade, Culture & the Novel  99; Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 95-99;Sander L. Gilman, ed., The Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1976).

[756] Cesare Lombroso, The Man of Genius (London: Walter Scott, 1891), 5-37.

[757] Ibid., 314.  Francis Galton, the father of English eugenics, also dealt with the genius in his 1892 Hereditary Genius.

[758] Greenslade, Culture & the Novel,  95.

[759] Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York: Appleton, 1902), 17.

[760]Ibid., 24.

[761]Ibid., 27.

[762]Idem, “Rückschluss aus der heutigen Kunst auf die Rasse,” in Kunst und Rasse, 90-99.

[763]  Foster developed this argument, claiming that “the Romantics had also viewed the art of the insane as an epitome of creative genius”. See Hal Foster, ”’No Man’s Land’: On the Modernity Reception of the Art of the Insane,” in The Prinzhorn Collection: Traces upon the Wunderblock, ed. Chatherine de Zegher (New York: The Drawing Center, 2000), 9.

[764]  Bettina Brand-Claussen, “The Collection of Works of Art in the Psychiatric Clinic, Heidelberg – From the Beginning until 1945,” in Beyond Reason; Art and Psychosis, Works from the Prinzhorn Collection, eds. Bettina Brand-Claussen et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 9.

[765]Hans Prinzhorn, Artistry of the Mentally Ill (New York: Springer, 1972), 270.

[766]Ibid., 271.

[767]Brand-Claussen, “The Collection of Works of Art”, 17.

[768] Weygandt dealt with insanity by 1906. His Über die Idiotie (1906) and Abnorme Charaktere bei Ibsen (1907) are examples of his works on the topic..

[769]  Wilhelm Weygandt, “Kunst und Wahnsinn,” Die Woche (June 1921), quoted in Brand-Claussen, “The Collection of Works of Art”, 17.

[770]Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 234-235; see also idem, “The Mad as Artist,” in de Zegher, ed., The Prinzhorn Collection, 37.

[771]  When the Prinzhorn collection was shown in Munich in 1931, the Nazi art critic Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder asked if  the exhibition of “mad art” was the  “last desperate attempt to demonstrate the inherent lunacy of certain artistic movements?”. See Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder, Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz (June 1931). Reprinted in idem, Im Terror des Kunstbolschewismus (Karlsruhe: Müller, 1938), 140.

[772]Entartete “Kunst”. Ausstellungsführer (Munich/Berlin: Roters, 1937).  This catalogue of “degenerate” art includes a photograph with the following caption: “This head of a girl is a work by an incurable madman in the psychiatric clinic in Heidelberg.  It is understandable that such works have been made by a mad non-artist.”  A photograph of a sculpture by Hoffman has been placed underneath for comparison.   See ibid., 27. Similar comparisons including works by patients in mental asylums are reproduced on pages 25 and 31 of the catalogue.  For paintings from the Prinzhorn collection, see also Christoph Zuschlag, “An ‘Educational Exhibition’: The Precursors of Entartete Kunst and its Individual Venues,” in Barron, ed. Degenerate Art, 92.

[773] Brand-Claussen, “The Collection of Works of Art”, 17-18.

[774] Schultze-Naumburg, Nordische Schönheit, 139.

[775] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden (Leipzig: Seemann, 1934), 23.

[776] Ibid.

[777]Ibid., 32-33.

[778]Ibid., 33.

[779] Idem, Nordische Schönheit, 142.

[780]Ibid.

[781] Ibid.

[782] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 45.

[783] Ibid., 34.

[784]Ibid.

[785]Ibid., 12-13.

 [786]Ibid., 6.

[787] Ibid.

[788] Ibid., 7.

[789] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 33.

[790] Ibid., 34.

[791]Ibid.

[792] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 34.

[793]Ibid., 37.

[794] Idem, Kunst und Rasse, 100.

[795] Ibid., 133.

[796]Ibid.

[797]Ibid., 102.

[798] Ibid., 87.

[799]Ibid.; idem, Nordische Schönheit, 16.

[800]Ibid., 101.

[801]Ibid., 102.

[802] Ibid., 140.

[803]Ibid., 201.  The examples cited here refer to illustrations 155 and 156 on page 195.

[804] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 11.

[805]Ibid., 12.

[806]Ibid., 38.

[807]Ibid., 10.

[808] Völkischer Beobachter (March 13, 1931).

[809] Schultze-Naumburg, Kampf um die Kunst, 21.

[810] See pages XXX for Rosenberg and pages XXX for Goebbels. The latter surrounded himself with sculptures by Barlach and paintings by Nolde.  See Barron, “1937”, 12.

[811] Schultze-Naumburg, Nordische Schönheit, 191.

[812] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 46.

[813] Idem, Kunst und Rasse, 55.

[814] Schultze-Naumburg added illustrations of Nordic and non-Nordic types in Greek art to make his point.  See ibid., 61-63.

[815].Ibid., 70.

[816].Ibid., 69.

[817]Schultze-Naumburg discussed the Bamberg Rider in ibid., 68.  See also Chapter XXX, note XXX.

[818] Ibid., 65.

[819] Kunst und Rasse includes several examples of Homo alpinus.  See ibid., 68.

 [820]Ibid., 70.

[821] Idem, Nordische Schönheit, 1937, 138.

[822] Ibid., 139.

[823] Ibid.

[824] Idem, Rassegebundene Kunst (Berlin: Brehm, n.d.), 25.

[825] Idem, Nordische Schönheit, 139.

[826] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 25. Schultze-Naumburg refers here to Alfred Rethel (1816-1859) famous Another Dance of Death (1848-1849) which is a series of six woodcuts describing the events of 1848 revolutions. For further reading see: Peter Paret, Art as History,Episodes in the Culture and Politics of Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 104-120.

[827] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 41.

[828] Ibid., 32.

[829] For more on Richter and von Schwind, see Chapter XXX, notes XXX.

[830] Schultze-Naumburg, Nordische Schönheit, 190.

[831] Ibid.  Richter’s picture (see Figure 23) is taken from ibid.

[832] Idem, Rassegebundene Kunst, 13.

[833] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 34.

[834] Ibid., 5.

 [835]Ibid.

[836] Ibid., 45.

 [837]Ibid., 45.

[838] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 36.

[839] Ibid., 37.

[840] This culture speech was given on September 1, 1933.

[841] Schultze-Naumburg, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 45-46.

[842] Ibid., 35.

[843] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 45.

[844] Quoted in Lehmann-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship, 40.

[845] Schultze-Naumburg, Kunst und Rasse, 70-71.

 [846]Ibid., 96.

[847] Ibid., 100.

[848] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 19.

[849] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 24.

[850] Idem, Kunst und Rasse, 55.

[851] Lehman-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship, 39.

[852] Schultze-Naumburg, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 6.

[853]Ibid.

[854]Ibid., 3.

[855]Ibid., 4.

[856]Ibid., 17.

[857]Ibid., 18.

[858] Idem, Nordische Schönheit, 80.

[859] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 26.

[860] Ibid., 42.

[861] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 40.

[862] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 26.

[863] Idem, Nordische Schönheit, 201.

[864] Ibid., 191.

[865] Ibid., 201.

[866] Idem, Kunst und Rasse, 74.

[867] Ibid., 81.

[868] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 42.  The exhibitions Schultze-Naumburg is referring to took place during the Weimar Republic.

[869] Ibid.

[870] Ibid., 14; Idem, Nordische Schönheit, 100-102.

[871] Richardson, “The Nazification of Women in Art,” in The Nazification of Art, eds. B. Taylor and  W. van der Will (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990), 66.

[872] Schultze-Naumburg, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 42.

[873] Idem, Kampf um die Kunst, 39.

[874] Idem, Kunst aus Blut und Boden, 47.

[875]The Reichskulturkammer as a mechanism of power of the totalitarian regime is discussed in Ernest Kohn-Bramsted, Goebbels and the National-Socialist Propaganda, 1925-1945 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,1965), chap. 3; Christine Fischer-Defoy, “Artists and Art Institutions in Germany,” The Oxford Art Journal 9:2 (1986): 16-29; Robert E. Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won: Goebbels and the Nazi Media Campaign (New York: Paragon House, 1978); Alan E. Steinweis, Art, Ideology and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 19-50.

[876]The topic of his dissertation was “Wilhelm von Schütz als Dramatiker”. His advisor was Professor Friedrich Gundolf, a Jewish literary historian and Goethe scholar and biographer, a close disciple of the poet Stefan George.  Goebbels thought that Gundolf was an “extraordinarily charming and agreeable man”. Quoted in Ralf G. Reuth, Goebbels (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 37. See also Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Bonanza Books, 1984), 96.

[877]Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 84. Bracher has claimed that Goebbels suffered from the burden of a university background and intellectualism.  See Karl D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London: Penguin, 1973), 354; Michael H. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 187.

[878]Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 174.

[879] Joseph Goebbels, Michael: Ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblätern (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1929)  The original title was Michael Voormann: Ein Menschschicksal in Tagebuchblätern. For changes in the title and contents, see Reuth, Goebbels, 46-48.

[880]Mosse, Nazi Culture, 94.

[881]Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 41.

[882] Although his economic situation was far from satisfactory Goebbels moved from one university to another until he finally finished at Heidelberg. Bullock and Reuth have both described his education. See Alan Bullock, Preface to the The Early Goebbels Diaries, ed. Alan Bullock (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), 19; Reuth, Goebbels, 19-39.

[883] Ibid., 408, note 51.

[884] Entries dated August 29, 1924 and January 14, 1929.  See Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Sämtliche Fragmente (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1987).

[885]Goebbels, Michael, 23.

[886]Ibid., 21.

[887]Speech dated May 8, 1933.  See Joseph Goebbels, Revolution der Deutschen (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1933), 186-187. Speech dated June 17, 1935.  See Helmut Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1971), 1:220.

[888]Goebbels, Michael, 10.

[889]Ibid., 18.

[890]Ibid., 73.

 [891]Ibid., 84.

[892]Ibid., 74.

[893]Ibid., 86.  For the attack on art for art’s sake see pages XXX below.

[894]Ibid., 83.

[895]Ibid.

[896]Ibid., 77.

[897]Ibid., 81.

[898]Ibid.

[899] In the preface to the novel Goebbels states that it is dedicated to the memory of his friend Richard Flisges, a leftist activist, killed “as a brave soldier of work” in a mine on July 19, 1923.  Some of the biographical details attributed to Michael were taken from the biography of Flisges, who unsuccessfully tried, after being released from the army during World War I, to be accepted to the university.  After that he started working in the mines.  Flisges introduced Goebbels to the works of Marx and Engels, Dostoyevski, and Rathenau.  The friendship between the two came to an end in 1922 due to disagreements between them, but Goebbels still dedicated the book to him.

[900]Ibid., 112.

[901]Ibid., 141.

[902]Ibid., 121.

 [903]Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 44.

[904]Goebbels, Michael, 118.

[905]George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture (New York: Schocken, 1981), xxviii.

[906]Goebbels, Michael, 57.

[907] This experience may explain why Goebbels attacked the Berliner Tageblatt and referred to it as a “Jewish” newspaper. Speech dated January 9, 1928.  See Joseph Goebbels, “Erkenntnis und Propaganda,” in Signale der neuen Zeit (Munich:  Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1934), 45.  Speech dated February 28, 1940.  See idem, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1941), 244.

[908]Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 9.

[909]Bullock, Preface, 22.

[910]Ibid., 23.

[911]Kater, The Nazi Party, 32.

[912] Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 174.

[913]Ibid., 176.

[914] Goebbels, “Erkenntnis und Propaganda”, 28.

[915]Welch has made the distinction between a “direct lie” and a “lie indirect”. He has claimed that Hitler wanted to exploit film purely for propaganda purposes, while Goebbels was in favor of the “lie indirect” from the beginning of his career.  See David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 44-45.  His claims do not fit Goebbels’ early diaries and writings, as I have shown above.

[916]Goebbels, Signale der neuen Zeit, 31.

[917]idem, Der Kongress zu Nürnberg vom 5-6 September 1934, quoted in Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 321.

[918] Speech given on May 8, 1933.  See Goebbels, Revolution der Deutschen, 183.

[919]Speech given on November 5, 1934.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:168.

[920] Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler (London: Westhouse, 1947), 75.

[921] For Le-Bon’s influence on Goebbels, see Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 58- 60; Reuth, Goebbels, 112; Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 304.

[922] Le Bon mentioned Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and the French Revolution. Goebbels gave the same examples and added the case of Cromwell in England.  For the English translation of Le-Bon’s work, see Gustave Le-Bon, The Crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind (London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1952), 69;  see also Goebbels, Signale der neuen Zeit, 30.

[923]Le-Bon, The Crowd, 41.

[924]Ibid., 68.

[925]Jay W. Baird, “Goebbels, Horst Wessel and the Myth of Resurrection and Return,” Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 634

 [926]Le-Bon, The Crowd, 49.

[927]Baird, “Goebbels, Horst Wessel and the Myth of Resurrection and Return”, 634.

[928]Le-Bon, The Crowd, 51.

[929] For an example of such articles, see Joseph Goebbels, “Die Fahne Hoch!,” Der Angriff, reprinted in idem, Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1942), 268-271.

[930]Hans Schweitzer joined the Nazi Party in 1926, but even before that he had already been working as a cartoonist for right-wing publications.  His cooperation with Goebbels started soon thereafter;  he became one of Goebbels’ close assistants. Among the places where his work appeared were Der Angriff, Der Illustrierte Beobachter, a weekly supplement to the Völkischer Beobachter, and Das Buch Isidor (1928), a vicious polemic against Bernhard Weiss, the vice president of the Berlin Police. In the latter Schweitzer signed his work with the pseudonym “Mjölnir”, the name of the hammer possessed by the Donner in Wagner’s Ring.  See entries dated January 8 and October 16, 1926 in Bullock, ed. The Early Goebbels Diaries; Russel Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky , 1994), 27-28. Paret has provided a thorough description of Schweitzer; he has argued that Schweitzer was one of the agents of Hitler’s rise to power and that Schweitzer’s images were acts of terror. See Peter Paret, German Encounters with Modernism, 1840-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 202-228.

[931] Saul Friedländer, “Kitsch and the Apocalyptic Imagination,” Salmagundi 85-86 (1990): 204.

[932]Kohn-Bramsted, Goebbels and the National-Socialist Propaganda, 49.

[933]Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 33.

[934]Entry made on March 28, 1931. See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 40.

[935] Anton Kaes et al., eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 143.

[936]This sort of move could not have been made without Hitler’s approval.  Rosenberg appointed Robert Scholz to serve as editor. For more on the topic, see Jonathan Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 122-123.

[937] Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970), 29.

 [938]For Rosenberg’s “Romanticism of Steel” see pp. XXX.

[939] Speech given November 15, 1933. See Joseph Goebbels, “Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Ausgaben,” in Signale der neuen Zeit, 332.

[940] Speech given on May 8, 1933.  See idem, Revolution der Deutschen, 194.

[941]Speech given on November 5, 1934.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:171.

[942] Goebbels, “Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Ausgaben”, 3.

[943]Speech given on June 17, 1935.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:227. Emphasis in original.

[944]Speech given on May 8, 1933. See Goebbels, Revolution der Deutschen, 185.

[945]Ibid., 196;  see also speech given on June 17, 1935.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:219.

[946]Ibid., 1:220.

[947] Speech given on May 8, 1933.  See Goebbels, Revolution der Deutschen, 186; see also speech given on June 17, 1935.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:220.

[948]Ibid.,1:187.

[949]Speech given on November 5, 1934.  See ibid., 1:171.

[950]Ibid., 1:172.

[951] Goebbels, “Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Ausgaben”, 3.

[952]Speech given on November 5, 1934.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:171.

[953]Entry dated June 14, 1933.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 433.

[954]Völkischer Beobachter, July 18, 1937.

[955]Entry dated June 6, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 167.

[956]Entry dated June 19, 1937.  See ibid., 178.

[957]Entry dated July 12, 1937.  See ibid., 200.

[958] This holiday spirit can be seen in Luke Holland’s film Good Morning, Mr. Hitler (UK, 1993).  It is also discussed by Wistrich, whose book deals, among other issues, with the special atmosphere in Munich prior to these exhibitions.  See Robert Wistrich, Weekend in Munich (London: Pavilion, 1995);Peter Reichel, “Festival and Cult: Masculine and Militaristic Mechanisms of National Socialism,” in Shaping The Superman : Fascist Body as Political Icon – Aryan Fascism, ed. J. A. Mangen  (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 153-168.

[959]Hitler’s speech is discussed in detail on pp. XXX.

[960] Entry dated July 19, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 206.

[961]Ibid.; see also Völkischer Beobachter, July 18, 1937.

[962] Wistrich, Weekend in Munich, 70. For more on the festive calendar of the Third Reich, see Reichel, “Festival and Cult”, 153-168.

[963]Speech given on July 27, 1940.  See Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 313.

[964]Völkischer Beobachter, July 18, 1937.

[965]Hilmar Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda: Film and National Socialism 1933-1945 (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996), viii.

[966]Quoted in ibid.

[967] Welch has prepared a table with the percentage of films exhibited from 1934 to 1944. The number of political films was reduced toward the end.  See Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 43.

[968] During the summer of 1933 Goebbels referred more than once to meetings with “Leni” late at night, sometimes in his apartment. Salkeld has claimed that “the last thing he wanted was to have to share his importance and power”.  See Audrey Salkeld, A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl (London: Pimlico, 1997), 116.

[969]Entry dated December 1, 1929.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 464.  Dr. Arnold Fanck, the master of the Bergfilm (mountain films made during the Weimar Republic), is considered by many to have been a proto-Nazi and a forerunner of Nazi aesthetics.  See Sigfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 257; Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, 128-131; Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and its Afterlife (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 31-38.

[970]Entries dated May 17 and 26, 1933.  See Fröhlich, ed. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 421,424. Meissner has claimed that Riefenstahl used to “come and go in Goebbels’ house on the Reichkanzlerplatz”. See Hans-Otto Meissner, Magda Goebbels: The First Lady of the Third Reich (New York: Dial, 1980), 130. 

[971]Riefenstahl described her meeting with Hitler in detail. “He told me he had seen all the films I had appeared in. ‘The film that made the strongest impact on me was The Blue Light – above all, because it is unusual for a young woman to win out against the hostility and prejudices of the motion-picture industry’. Now that the ice was broken Hitler asked many questions, and I could tell he was well informed about the latest films.” See Leni Riefenstahl, A Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 106. Riefenstahl blamed Jewish critics for the devastating failure of The Blue Light and railed against their inability to understand German culture. See Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, 45, 316 note 75.

[972]Entries dated October 5 and 9, 1935.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 523, 524.

[973]Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, x.

[974] Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 301-302. For more on The Triumph of the Will see also  Wistrich, Weekend in Munich, 53-55.

[975]Riefenstahl’s memoirs were published in English on her 90^th birthday. She wrote about her first meeting with Hitler, saying “I wanted to meet him personally; I wanted to form my own opinion of him. Was he a charlatan or truly a genius?” (Riefenstahl, A Memoir, 103)  She attacked Susan Sontag, arguing that her accusations were false. “Susan Sontag is equally outrageous when she writes about my documentaries. For instance she makes the absurd claim that the Nuremberg Party Rally of 1934 was staged specifically for my film Triumph of the Will.… What a pity Susan wasn’t around when I was working on the film” (ibid., 622).   In Ray Müller, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefensthal (1993), Riefenstahl claims that she does not understand what is fascist about her movies. “I was just thinking about the artistic effects. I did the best that I could, if it’s about vegetables or politics I couldn’t care less.”

[976]Olympia was a three-hour film divided into two parts, The Celebration of the People and The Celebration of Beauty. Both parts were screened for the first time on Hitler’s birthday in 1938. For more on Olympia, see Graham McFee and Alan Tomlinson, “Riefenstahl’s Olympia: Ideology and Aesthetics in the Shaping of the Aryan Athletic Body,” in Mangan, ed., Shaping the Superman, 86-106.

[977] Riefenstahl’s work has been the subject of numerous studies and endless arguments. Kracauer started this line of argumentation in the late 1940s, claiming that she had been the creator of Nazi aesthetics. See Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 301-303.  In 1974 Sontag published her essay “Fascinating Fascism”, claiming that Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will – [is] a film whose very conception negates the possibility of the filmmaker’s having an aesthetic conception independent of propaganda” (Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” in The Nazification of Art, eds. B. Taylor and W. van der Will [Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990], 206). In Sontag’s eyes, Riefenstahl’s work on the Nuba tribes “are continuous with her Nazi work” (ibid., 209).

[978] For Goebbels’ position on the Olympic Games, see Reuth, Goebbels, 212-217; R. D. Mandell, The Nazi Olympics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987);  D. Hart-Davis, Hitler’s Games (New York: Century, 1986); Peter Reichel, Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reich, Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1996), 255-272.

[979]Speech given on June 17, 1935.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:224.

[980]Entry dated March 1, 1942. See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, .

[981]Speech given on May 1, 1939.  See Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 119.

[982] Ibid.

[983]Idem, Der steile Aufstieg (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1944), 341.

[984]Speech given on May 1, 1939.  See idem, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 119-120.

[985]Speech given on November 27, 1939.  See ibid., 220-221.

[986]Speech given on July 27, 1940.  See ibid., 311.

[987]Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 12, 195-196.

[988] Joseph Goebbels, “Richard Wagner und das Kunstempfinden unserer Zeit,” in Signale der neuen Zeit, 191.

[989]Ibid., 192-193.

[990]Idem, “Die deutsche Kultlur vor neuen Ausgaben”, 328.

[991]Ibid.

[992]Speech given on June 17, 1935.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:220.

[993] Goebbels, “Die deutsche Kultlur vor neuen Ausgaben”, 329.

[994]Ibid.

[995]Idem, “Vor der Presse,” in Signale der neuen Zeit, 130

[996]For more on the Jews and the Reich Chamber for Culture, see Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany. For more on the question of his less closed positions on culture, see Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 89; Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 97; Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 50.

[997]Speech given on July 15, 1939.  See Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 207.

[998]Ibid.

[999]Ibid.

[1000]Speech given on May 8, 1933.  See idem, Revolution der Deutschen, 189.

[1001]Speech given on June 17, 1935. See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:221.

[1002]Speech given on  July 4, 1942.  See Joseph Goebbels, Das eherne Herz (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Eher, 1943), 378.

[1003]Speech given on May 8, 1933.  See idem, Revolution der Deutschen, 190.

[1004] Speech given on June 17, 1935.  See Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1:220.

[1005]Speech given on July 15, 1939.  See Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 206.

[1006]Idem, “Was ist Politik?” in Signale der neuen Zeit, 17.

[1007]Speech given on July 15, 1939.  See idem, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 209.

[1008]Ibid., 208.

[1009]Speech given on July 4, 1942.  See idem, Das eherne Herz, 380.

[1010]Speech given on July 27, 1940.  See idem, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 312.

[1011]Entry dated June 5, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 166.

[1012]Entries dated June 18, 19, 30, 1937.  See ibid., 177-179,189-191.

[1013]Peter-Klaus Schuster, ed., Die ‘Kunststadt’ München 1937: Nationalsozialismus und “Entartete Kunst” (Munich: Prestel, 1987), 92. In his diaries Goebbels included the original order that enabled Ziegler to confiscate works of art. See entry dated June 30, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 190.

[1014]The members of the committee were the Count Klaus von Baudisin, Hans Schweitzer, Walter Henzen, Wolfgang Willrich, and Robert Scholz.  It appears that Ziegler had a personal relationship with Hitler dating to 1923.  See München: Hauptstadt der Bewegung (Munich: Münchener Stadtmuseum, 1993), 323.

[1015] Among the cities visited were Berlin, Bielefeld, Bremen, Breslau, Cologne, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Jena, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Königsberg, Leipzig, Mannheim, Munich, Stuttgart, Ulm, Weimar, and Wiesbaden.  From Mannheim, for example, the committee took 18 paintings, 5 statues, and 35 graphic works straight to Munich.  See H.J. Buderer, ed., Entartete Kunst: Beschlagnahmeaktionen in der Stadtischen Kunsthalle Mannheim – 1937 (Mannheim: Städische Kunsthalle, 1988).  For more on the “Degenerate” Art exhibition,  see Stephanie Barron, ed., Degenerate Art: The Fate of Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (New York: Harry N. Abrams and L.A. County Museum, 1991).

[1016] Entry dated November 5, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 325. Goebbels was paraphrasing the title of Willrich’s 1937 Säuberung des Kunsttemples, which he may have read earlier that year. On June 11, 1937, he noted in his dairy that he intended to make such a purge.  See ibid., 171.

[1017]Entry dated June 30, 1937.  See ibid., 190-191.

[1018]Entry dated July 15, 1937.  See ibid., 203.

[1019] Entry dated July 21, 1937.  See ibid., 208. The complete version of Ziegler’s speech is included in Schuster, ed., Die ‘Kunststadt’ München 1937, 217-218.

 [1020]Entry dated July 24, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 211.

[1021]Entry dated July 17, 1937.  See ibid., 204.

[1022] Entry dated July 25, 1937.  See ibid., 212.

[1023] Entry dated July 28, 1937.  See ibid., 215.  The law approving the entire confiscation process was also passed after the fact.  See entries dated January 14, 15, 1938.  See ibid., 401-403.  The full text of the law can be found in Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945 (Wiesbaden: Lowit, 1973), 1:871.

[1024]Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press:, 1954), 78.

[1025]Entry dated September 22, 1937.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 257.  For the public auction in Switzerland, see Stephanie Barron, “The Galerie Fischer Auction,” in Barron, ed., Degenerate Art, 135-170.

[1026] Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 89;  Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 97.

[1027]Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, 28.

[1028]Reuth, Goebbels, 191; Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 53, 67.

[1029] Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 50.

[1030]Elaine S. Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 119.

[1031] George Bussmann, “’Degenerate Art’ – A Look at a Useful Myth,” in German Art in the 20th Century, eds. Christos Joachimides et al. (London: Prestel, 1985), 117.

[1032]Entry dated November 21, 1929.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 458.

 [1033]Entry dated January 21, 1930.  See ibid., 502.

[1034]Entry dated August 29, 1924.  See ibid. , 78.

[1035]Ibid. In ancient German, a Berserker was a hero or warrior wearing a bear’s pelt.

[1036]Ironically enough, Dalles is the Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew word for poverty.

[1037] Speech given on May 8, 1933.  See Goebbels, Revolution der Deutschen, 191. Herzstein has noted that Goebbels was probably the only Nazi leader who constantly used Yiddish words. See Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won, 61.

[1038]Entry dated July 2, 1933.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 194.

[1039] Entry dated July 28, 1933.  See ibid., 137.

[1040]Reuth, Goebbels, 226.

[1041] Joseph Goebbels, “Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Aufgaben,” in Signale der neuen Zeit, 334.

[1042]Entry dated August 21, 1935.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 505-506.

[1043]Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Bonanza Books, 1982), 27.

[1044]Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, 71.

[1045] The case of Emil Nolde is particularly interesting. He started his artistic activity in Die Brücke and continued with the Expressionist movement.  Although he defined himself as apolitical he was troubled by social questions and in 1907 voted for the Socialist Party.  After he went to New Guinea in 1913 as part of a doctors’ mission sent by the German colonial office, Nolde started to voice anti-colonial views. Fascinated with native art, he claimed that  tribal cultures were being raped by the superpowers who claimed to represent “civilization”. The emotional and cultural shock of World War I and the fact that large portions of his native Schleswig were returned to Denmark moved Nolde gradually to the right. He later referred to the return of Schleswig as the “tearing of my Heimat”. In 1920 he joined the Danish branch of the National-Socialist Party in North Schleswig. His ideas on the natural superiority of the Nordic type were developed into a call for racial purity. They appear in his 1935 biography Jahre der Kämpfe, which he rewrote in 1945. For more on the topic, see Robert Pois, Emil Nolde (New York: University Press of America, 1982),115, 187; Bussmann, “’Degenerate Art’ – A Look at a Useful Myth”, 158. For more on Ernst Barlach, see Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 3-5.

[1046] Bussmann, “’Degenerate Art’ – A Look at a Useful Myth”, 118; Fischer-Defoy, “Artists and Art Institutions in Germany, 1933-1945”, 23.  

[1047]The works of Nolde actually support the claims made here.  The other members of Die Brücke called Nolde “the primitive of nature” because he emphasized his special connection to the soil of the homeland in his works.  Lloyd has claimed that in this way he expressed the paradox of a combination of primitivism and modernism.  Bradley, following the same sort of argument, has analyzed Nolde’s works in the context of volkish ideology.  SeeJill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), chap. 9, 161-188; W.S. Bradley, Emil Nolde and German Expressionism: A Prophet in his own Land (Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Research Press, 1986), 19-26.

[1048] Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich (London: Penguin, 1974), 423. For more on the issue of Nordic elements in Expressionism, see Reinhard Merker, Die bildenden Künste im Nationalsozialismus: Kulturideologie, Kulturpolitik, Kulturproduktion (Cologne: Dumont, 1983), 131-137;  Bradley, Emil Nolde and German Expressionism, chap. 2.

[1049] Pois, Emil Nolde, 193.

[1050] Annegret Janda, “The Fight for Modern Art: The Berlin Nationalgalerie after 1933,” in Barron, ed., Degenerate Art, 107.  The Thirty German Artists exhibition organized by members of the student organization included works by Barlach, Nolde, Schmidt- Rottluff, Macke, and others.  It was severely criticized by nationalist groups connected to the League and Rosenberg even before it opened.  The demonstration organized by Schreiber only heated things up; Wilhelm Frick ordered the exhibition “temporarily” closed only three days after the opening.  For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Christoph Zuschlag, “An ‘Educational Exhibition’: The Precursors of Entartete Kunst and its Individual Venues,” in Barron, ed., Degenerate Art, 96; Fischer-Defoy, “Artists and Art Institutions in Germany, 1933-1945,” 23.

[1051] The April 15, 1934 issue of Kunst der Nation opened with a reference to the Futurist exhibition opening that month in Berlin. For this article, see Otto Thomas, Die Propaganda-Maschinerie: Bildende Künste und Öffentlickeitsarbeit im Dritten Reich, (Berlin, 1978), 345. On the cover of the 1934 winter issue of Kunst der Nation was a statue by Barlach.  See Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, 533.

[1052] Goebbels, “Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Aufgaben,” 334.

[1053]Ibid., 333.

[1054]Hochman, Architects of Fortune, 165.

[1055]Brandon Taylor, “Post-Modernism in the Third Reich”, in The Nazification of Art, eds. B. Taylor and W. van der Will , 131.

[1056]Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 50.

[1057]Speech given on July 15, 1939.  See Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, 210.

 [1058]Entry dated May 9, 1936.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 609.

[1059] Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, 424.

[1060]Bussmann has claimed that Hitler only reached this decision on the eve of the “Degenerate” Art exhibition. See Bussmann, “’Degenerate Art’ – A Look at a Useful Myth”, 116.

[1061] Expressionist paintings were shown in Germany until 1936;  after that artists like Nolde were forced to hide if they wanted to paint.  Nolde’s series of paintings from this period was therefore called “the unpainted pictures”.  See M. Urban, Die ‘Ungemalten Bilder’ von Emil Nolde (Stuttgart: Württembergische Kunstverein, 1988), 115.

[1062]Entry dated November 17, 1935.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 541.

[1063]Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 174.

[1064] Entry dated November 22 and April 16, 1936.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 733-734, 600.  Ziegler was more conservative than Eugen Höning, but he did not agree with the ultra-conservative line of Schultze-Naumburg. Höning had been chosen by Goebbels because the latter was hoping to “grant some ‘freedom to develop’ to German artists”. Höning was attacked for a long time for granting too much latitude to supposedly degenerate elements in his Chamber and refusing to take action against members of Schreiber’s group.  See Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 48, 56.

[1065]Ibid.,  58.

[1066] Entries dated February 3, 1937 and January 13, 1938.  See Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 32, 399-400.

[1067]Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), 79.