Art under National Socialism

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Torchbearers (" The Party ") , bronze sculpture by Arno Breker , placed in the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin in 1939

Art under National Socialism does not designate a uniform style or direction. It is a collective term for the fine art accepted and exhibited by the Nazi regime during the time of National Socialism in the German Reich , which was propagated under the name German Art . Works by modern and avant-garde artists, as well as all works by artists with a Jewish background, were designated as degenerate art , removed from museums and publicly accessible collections, partially sold abroad or destroyed or stored.

prehistory

Die Toteninsel , oil painting by Arnold Böcklin, 1883, after being acquired by Hitler in 1936 initially in the Berghof , from 1940 in the New Reich Chancellery

In the party newspaper Volkischer Beobachter beat Alfred Rosenberg in 1922 to Expressionism before pioneering German style. Edmund Steppes violently contradicted this , calling for a return to old German art, for example in the style of Albrecht Altdorfer's Danube School .

In 1925, Adolf Hitler sketched the floor plan for a "German National Museum" with five rooms for paintings by Adolph von Menzel , three each for Moritz von Schwind and Arnold Böcklin , two for Anselm Feuerbach , one each for Wilhelm Leibl and Hans von Marées and common rooms for other painters of the 19th century. According to Albert Speer in his memoirs (1969), he considered the “late 19th century to be one of the greatest cultural epochs of mankind”.

National Socialist Art Concepts

In Mein Kampf , Hitler announced early on that, in view of the “pathological excesses of insane and depraved” artists, it must be the task of the National Socialist leadership to “prevent a people from being driven into the arms of spiritual madness”. The "ugly art" belongs in "medical custody", in a "suitable institution", since it represents a danger to the healthy mind of the people (Hitler at a cultural conference of the NSDAP , September 1, 1933).

"Art is always the creation of a particular blood, and the form-bound nature of an art is only understood by creatures of the same blood," added Alfred Rosenberg in his book The Myth of the 20th Century , published in 1930 . Rosenberg described modern art after 1918 as follows:

“ Mestizo claimed to represent its bastardian offspring, generated by spiritual syphilis and picturesque infantilism, as an expression of the soul. Lovis Corinth showed a certain robustness , but this butcher master of the brush passed away in the corpse-colored bastardism of the Syrian [meaning: Jewish] become Berlin [...] We see cultural Bolshevism with the subhumanity of Kollwitz , Zille , Barlach , the technical bungler Nolde , Schmidt-Rottluff , Chagall , in the nihilism of Dix , Hofer and Grosz [...] Jews, nothing but Jews. "

On March 23, 1933, Hitler announced in his government declaration on the Enabling Act : "Blood and race are once again the source of artistic intuition".

The National Socialist conception of art was not only characterized by the rejection of certain art movements, works were also rejected in terms of content: For example, works by Anton von Werner were rejected because of their conservative presentation, although the academic style of painting would have been acceptable to National Socialism. The portrait of a lady in black in front of a showcase by Ernst Oppler was damaged in the area of ​​the eyes because the person portrayed was believed to be a Jew.

Organization and control of art development

Deutsche Nothilfe stamp series , traditional costumes, Franconia , 1935, intaglio printing , designed by Karl Diebitsch

Immediately after the " seizure of power " on January 30, 1933, the entire cultural area was centralized by the National Socialists and covered with an all-encompassing control apparatus. The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda ( Joseph Goebbels ), established on March 13, 1933 , played a central role in this. The new ministry was responsible “for all tasks of intellectual influence on the nation, advertising for the state, culture and economy, informing the domestic and foreign public about them and the administration of all institutions serving this purpose” (Hitler's decree of 30 June 1933). With the law of September 22, 1933, the Reich Chamber of Culture, built according to the Führer principle , followed . Seven individual chambers covered all cultural areas: music, theater, literature, press, radio, film - including the fine arts ( Reich Chamber of Fine Arts ). Only members of these chambers were allowed to practice their profession. a. German citizenship and “ Aryan ” descent. Jewish, communist and “undesirable” artists were forced out of their offices as “degenerate” and were banned from practicing their profession (including Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, Otto Dix, George Grosz, John Heartfield , etc.). Many cultural workers left Germany , went into exile , or - if they were tolerated - resigned themselves to internal emigration . Jewish artists who were unable to flee Germany in time were murdered in the Holocaust . There were also artists whose work was shown, for example, in the exhibition “Degenerate Art” in 1937, but who were nonetheless attached to National Socialism, such as Emil Nolde and Franz Radziwill .

The occupation of large parts of Europe was seen as an opportunity to acquire art on a large scale. The director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum sold 630 works to buy stolen goods. To this end, he described his own works as “inferior” or “worthless”, including works as diverse as one by Max Liebermann and a large-format landscape by August Weber .

National Socialist representative buildings and related sculptures

When the National Socialists took power in January 1933, extensive construction work began - through the creation of state loans and public building contracts. Above all, state and party buildings, which mainly serve the self-portrayal of the NSDAP (representational architecture), some of which are gigantic in size, were built. The public building contracts also offered the opportunity to reduce high unemployment and stimulate the economy.

For example, the Königsplatz in Munich, which was transformed into a “party forum” from 1933, was erected numerous new buildings: “ House of German Art ”, “ Führerbau ”, “ NSDAP administration building ”, “Ehrentempel” (for the dead of the attempted Hitler coup in November 1923) are among the earliest architectural projects of the National Socialists. The Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg was Albert Speer line to the largest building site in Germany (30 km² Total / 16.5 square kilometers built-up area) with "March Fields", "Zeppelin Field", "Deutsches Stadion" and "Congress Hall". A system was to be created, "to the greatest extent ... a document of a style-defining kind" (Adolf Hitler). A "word made of stone" (Adolf Hitler).

The buildings were raised to the sphere of the architectural work of art. “Never in German history have larger and more noble buildings been planned, started and executed than in our time.” (Adolf Hitler 1938) Sculpture and building-related sculpture played an important role in this. The sculptures by, for example, Arno Breker or Josef Thorak should "together with the dignified architecture create a majestic impression." The law on art in buildings - it still exists in a modified form today - prescribed a percentage of the construction costs of public buildings for art. Josef Thorak was seen and referred to as a "state sculptor".

According to a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels , Fritz Klimsch was considered “ the most mature of our sculptors. A genius. How he treats the marble. “Hitler put Klimsch on the special list of the God- favored lists and saw him among the twelve most important visual artists.

  • In Sun and Wind , bronze sculpture by Fritz Klimsch, 1936

  • Torchbearers , shell limestone - relief by Willy Meller for the Nazi Ordensburg Vogelsang , 1938

  • Striding Horses , bronze sculpture by Josef Thorak, placed in front of the New Reich Chancellery in 1939. Art in architecture was shown here as an example.

Programmatic exhibitions

The " House of German Art " in Munich was opened on July 18, 1937 with the first " Great German Art Exhibition ". The works had been selected by a commission of art politicians, headed by the President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts Adolf Ziegler . Hitler was also involved in the selection. This exhibition was intended as a sales exhibition. This was intended to promote the artists of the "German Art" based on the blood and soil ideology . The exhibition was repeated every year until 1944. A list of the exhibited artists can be found in the article Great German Art Exhibition .

At the opening exhibition on July 18, 1937, Hitler gave a keynote speech in which he stated, among other things:

“Before National Socialism came to power there was a so-called modern art in Germany, i. H. so, as it is in the essence of the word, a different one almost every year. National Socialist Germany wants German art again, and like all creative values ​​of a people this should and will be eternal. "

- Hitler

In addition, the annual German Art Day was held in Munich until 1939 . Associated with this was the awarding of titles to people from the art scene by Hitler.

Parallel to the first major German art exhibition, the “Degenerate Art” exhibition, which opened on July 19, 1937, took place in Munich . In this way, the NSDAP, with its conception of art, demarcated itself in a polemical way from the conception described as degenerate art , especially from the Expressionism of the 1920s.

After 1945 there was hardly any substantive debate in art history and the media about what “National Socialist art” was. Numerous works were no longer shown and also not shown. The Central Institute for Art History made all eleven thousand works from the Munich NS exhibitions accessible online in October 2011 in order to facilitate a social and art-historical debate.

  • Opening of the House of German Art in Munich, 1937

  • Crossing on the Upper Rhine , oil painting by Wilhelm Sauter , shown at the Great German Art Exhibition in 1942

  • Youth work , oil painting (a picture postcard here) by Willy Exner , 1944 at the art show of the Reich Labor Service in Prague shown

Programmatic journal

From January 1937, Alfred Rosenberg published the monthly magazine Die Kunst im Third Reich . It was published in August 1939 under the title Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich . The main editor was the art journalist Robert Scholz . The magazine was very large and contained numerous illustrations. A double issue was published for each of the major annual art exhibitions.

literature

  • Peter Adam: Art in the Third Reich (original title: Art of the Third Reich , translated by Renate Winner). Rogner and Bernhard at Zweiausendeins, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-8077-0259-8 .
  • Sabine Brantl: House of Art , Munich. A place and its history under National Socialism (= Edition Monacensia ), Allitera, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-86520-242-0 .
  • Hildegard Brenner: The Art Policy of National Socialism (Rowohlt's German Encyclopedia; 167/168) Rowohlt, Reinbek 1963
  • Erika Eschebach (Red.): German Art 1933–1945 in Braunschweig: Art under National Socialism. Lectures on the exhibition (1998–2000) . Series: Braunschweiger Werkstücke, 105.Braunschweig : Stadt Braunschweig, 2001, ISBN 3-927288-32-2 .
  • Frankfurter Kunstverein & Working Group of the Art History Institute of the University of Frankfurt (ed.): Art in the Third Reich. Documents of submission . Verlag 2001, 4th edition 1980 (The book is based on an exhibition catalog that was published in 1974 for the exhibition "Art in the Third Reich - Documents of Submission" at the Frankfurter Kunstverein)
  • Elke Frietsch: The cultural problem of women. Images of Femininity in the Art of National Socialism . Cologne u. a .: Böhlau 2006, ISBN 3-412-35505-4 .
  • Hermann Hinkel: On the function of the image in German fascism , Anabas, Steinbach 1975, ISBN 3-87038-033-0 .
  • Berthold Hinz : Painting in German Fascism - Art and Counterrevolution , Hanser, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-446-11938-8 .
  • Reinhard Müller-Mehlis : Art in the Third Reich , Heyne, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-453-41173-0 .
  • Hannes Obermair : Art, Culture - National Socialism . In: Carl Kraus , Hannes Obermair (Ed.): Myths of dictatorships. Art in Fascism and National Socialism - Miti delle dittature. Art nel fascismo e nazionalsocialismo . South Tyrolean State Museum for Cultural and State History Castle Tyrol, Dorf Tirol 2019, ISBN 978-88-95523-16-3 , p. 30-43 .
  • Werner Rittich: Architecture and Building Sculpture of the Present . Berlin: Rembrandt-Verlag, 1. – 3. Edition 1938
  • Hans Sarkowicz (Hrsg.): Hitler's artist: the culture in the service of National Socialism (after a series of the Hessischer Rundfunk). Frankfurt am Main u. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-458-17203-3 .
  • Birgit Schwarz: Mania for genius. Hitler and art. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78307-7 .
  • Birgit Schwarz: Hitler's Museum. The photo albums Gemäldegalerie Linz. Documents on the “Führer Museum” . Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-205-77054-4 .
  • Braunschweig Municipal Museum and University of Fine Arts (ed.): German Art 1933–1945 in Braunschweig. Art under National Socialism. Catalog of the exhibition from April 16 to July 2, 2000 . Hildesheim u. a .: Olms 2000, ISBN 3-487-10914-X .
  • Robert Thoms: Great German Art Exhibition Munich 1937–1944 . Directory of artists in two volumes, Volume I: painter and graphic artist. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-937294-01-8 .
  • ders .: Great German Art Exhibition in Munich 1937–1944. Directory of artists in two volumes, Volume II: Sculptors. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-937294-02-5 .
  • Eva Atlan, Raphael Gross , Julia Voss (eds.): 1938. Art, artists, politics . Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1412-2 .
  • Paul Westheim : Cardboard with columns: anti-fascist art criticism (= Gustav Kiepenheuer Bücherei , Volume 59), ed. and with an afterword by Tanja Frank. Kiepenheuer, Leipzig-Weimar 1985, DNB 860268349 Table of contents .

University publications

  • Tobias Ronge: The image of the ruler in painting and graphics of National Socialism: an investigation into the iconography of leaders and functionaries in the Third Reich (= art history , volume 89), Lit, Berlin / Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10856- 2 (Dissertation University of Tübingen 2009, III, 543 pages with illustration, 22 cm).
  • Elisabeth Vorderwülbecke: Home - Region - Nation: Art under National Socialism using the example of Schleswig-Holstein , three volumes, 1994, DNB 949819352 :

Web links

Commons : Art under National Socialism  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Isabella Studer-Geisser, Daniel Studer: The Sturzeneggersche Gemäldesammlung. Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen 1998, p. 17.
  2. ^ Reinhard Müller-Mehlis: Art in the Third Reich. Heyne, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-453-41173-0 , p. 83.
  3. ↑ Albert Speer: Memories. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Wien 1969, p. 56. Quoted from Georg Bollenbeck : The inglorious end of a contradicting story. Hitler as the executor of the educated bourgeois art semantics. In: Gérard Raulet (ed.): Historicism, Sonderweg and third ways. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2001, ISBN 3-631-37305-8 , pp. 311-327, here p. 322.
  4. ↑ Mein Kampf , p. 283.
  5. ↑ Ute Haug, Maike Steinkamp: Works and Values: About Trading and Collecting Art under National Socialism , p. 161.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 77, p. 311, p. 326 and p. 613.
  7. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 312.
  8. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 311.
  9. ↑ Christina Threuter: Naked Heroes. In: vogelsang ip non-profit GmbH (ed.): »Torch bearers of the nation«. Elite education in the Nazi order castles. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20554-6 , pp. 95–119, here p. 109.
  10. ↑ Quoted in Stefan Koldehoff: The pictures are among us: The business with Nazi looted art . Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8218-5844-9 , p. 57.
  11. ↑ Deutscher Reichsanzeiger and Prussian State Gazette No. 162 of July 17, 1939
  12. ↑ Julia Voss: A taboo is broken. , faz.net October 17, 2011 , accessed October 19, 2011.
  13. ↑ GDK Research - Image-based research platform to the Great German Art Exhibitions 1937-1944 in Munich , Central Institute for Art History in cooperation with the German Historical Museum and the Haus der Kunst; 2011, accessed April 29, 2016.
  14. ^ "Art for the People". In: dhm.de. German Historical Museum , accessed on February 13, 2020.
  15. ↑ See Christian Fuhrmeister: Review In: ArtHist, March 2006, on naxos.bsz-bw.de, accessed on April 30, 2016.