Art service of the Evangelical Church

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The art service (also known as art service ) is an institution, partly institutionally and partly loosely connected to the German Protestant churches, of theologically and art-historically trained experts who are responsible for the production, care and renovation of all artistically relevant art, furnishings and furnishings for places of Christianity Proclamation provides advisory and mediation services.

Time of the Weimar Republic

The art service was founded in 1928 in Dresden, Walpurgisstraße 15, and set itself the goal of promoting, making known, disseminating and promoting expressions of life of an artistic nature, be it visual art, sound art, writing or monument art, which are created from the spirit of the Gospel to provide them with an appropriate position both in the Church and in society. Forms of work and methods for fulfilling this task were “informal get-togethers, lectures, musical evenings, exhibitions, amateur plays, conferences, etc. a. "called.

An association with similar goals gave it since the 1852 Association of Religious Art in the Protestant church was established, and the 1938 Confederation of Christian Art in the German Lutheran Church renamed and brought into line was.

Church historian Hans Prolingheuer writes about the intentions of the founders of Kunstdienst in January 1928 :

“The evangelical art lovers did not want to be constantly patronized by incompetent church leaders, as in the Association for Religious Art founded in 1852, no longer to be a church aid body whose main task is to collect donations for the preservation of the existing works of art, or as a care service to function in a church art that is tolerated at best as church decorations. "

Stephan Hirzel (later rector of the Kassel University of Applied Sciences), Sebök István (= Stephan Seinberg, later Vice President of the Association of Architects of Hungary) and Hermann Weidhaas worked in the Dresden studio of the architect Oswin Hempel from around 1925. They developed a high degree of appreciation for each other and cultivated a demanding intellectual, artistic and political communication with the Russian Prince Aleksej Obolenskij, who emigrated to Dresden, his mathematically gifted son Dimitrij, the philosopher Fedor Stepun , Nikolaus Arzenév, Sim.Frank, Sergej Hessen, Val. Bulgakov, Paul Tillich , Richard Kroner , Mary Wigman and others and encouraged Hermann Weidhaas to organize an art-oriented circle of encounters between Protestant and Orthodox Christians, from which the Art Service emerged in 1928. The founding members were:

Soon the following were added:

Under the direction of Stefan Hirzel, a lively exchange developed with the “Brücke”, the “Blauer Reiter”, the “Goldenen Vlies” and the Neue Sachlichkeit. Inspired by the “sample shows”, the art service enthusiasts organized large exhibitions and traveling shows from 1928 to 1932 such as: “ Rudolf Koch and his circle”, “Contemporary cult buildings”, “Contemporary church art” and “Dedication”. There was also the interdenominational traveling exhibition Cult and Form - New Evangelical, Catholic and Jewish Applied Art , which was first shown in Magdeburg in February 1929 and then in Hamburg and Berlin, where it was opened with a day before Paul Tillich ., And the exhibition “Death und Leben ”as a critical contribution to the growing lack of culture in the funeral world .

The association Kunstdienst e. V. was limited to 7 members on June 30, 1931 under the chairmanship of Stephan Hirzel and Gotthold Schneider and was based in the evangelical Johannis monastery in Berlin-Spandau, where the art office of the German Evangelical Church was subordinated to the association , which in turn gained direct access in 1933 the Nazi agencies opened.

Portrait of Otto von Kursell

time of the nationalsocialism

The connection of the Art Office of the German Evangelical Church to the association Kunstdienst e. V. made the latter dependent from 1933–1937 (phase I) on the art office, which in turn was linked to state-church organizations and this in the area of ​​tension between the competing followers of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, the Office of Rosenberg and Himmler's Ahnenerbe. The relatively calm period in terms of cultural policy during the 1936 Olympic Games paved the way for reorientation 1937–1945 (phase II).

Phase I: 1933-1937

In the course of the harmonization measures, Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned his State Commissioner Hans Hinkel in June 1933 , in consultation with Hitler's evangelical confidante , the future Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller , to create an “ Reich Office for Church Art in the German Evangelical Church” under the leadership of the Art Service . As an authority under public law, it should be divided into an office and a committee . Hinkel appointed nine men recognized in party, art and the Protestant church to this Reich Office:

  • Wilhelm Banke , senior consistorial advisor, executive board member of the Association for Religious Art
  • Hermann Wolfgang Beyer , professor, church and art historian at the University of Greifswald
  • Otto von Kursell , painter and professor
  • Horst Dreßler-Andreß , Ministerialrat and Head of German Broadcasting
  • Hans Hinkel, State Commissioner and Representative of the Reich Propaganda Minister
  • Dietrich Jagow , State Councilor and representative of the future Reich Bishop
  • Rudolf Koch, professor, type creator and work artist
  • Friedrich Peter , senior consistorial advisor and representative of the Reich leadership of the church party "German Christians"
  • Winfried Wendland , architect and "Reichsreferent for the fine arts of the German Christians" and "Consultant for NS-Art" in the Prussian Ministry of Culture (including architect of the Protestant Church in Wilhelmshorst )
Evangelical Johannesstift
Staircase of Niederschönhausen Castle

As an official office , the Art Service was appointed as the office manager under its chairman Gotthold Schneider. The seat of the office was now the Evangelical Johannesstift Berlin-Spandau in the Schönwalder Allee. The future Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller became the patron of the office and committee, and Rudolf Koch became the honorary president of the Art Service Honorary Council. At that time, Oskar Beyer, who was married to a Jewish woman, was already on the run from Germany.

Employees in the art service headed by Gotthold Schneider were:

In addition, an “Honorary Council of Art Service” was established. The council members present appointed to this honorary council:

After the formation of the "Evangelical Reich Community of Christian Art" in 1934, the Art Service became its official office and a department of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts endowed with state powers. Managing director Gotthold Schneider rose to become "Art Advisor to the Reich Government". Associated with this was the move of the art service to the office of the Reich Chamber at Berlin's Blumeshof 4–6 in the early summer of 1934. The art service now had its own halls in the Castle Niederschönhausen for exhibitions and concerts . This locality was later given a prominent role in the course of the “Against degenerate art ” campaign ordered by the Nazi leadership , in which over 16,500 works of art were stolen , including “afterkart” from museums that was denigrated as “ Jewish ” or “ Bolshevik ”, Galleries and homes of displaced Jewish families.

In 1934, after the death of Rudolf Koch, the National Socialist and architect Winfried Wendland, who was actively involved in the “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur” and was custodian of the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, took over the leadership of the art service. In art and culture magazines, including church-oriented ones, he positioned Protestant church art as a folkish and “species-appropriate” art that had to be permeated by the contemporary NS worldview. In his book Art and Nation he proclaimed:

“Art is race-bound… The pyramids of Egypt, the temples of Greece and the German cathedrals are racially determined. They all carry the spiritual content determined by the blood of the people, which tangibly shows again and again the Egyptian, Greek, Germanic, German, and furthermore points to a high-ranking mother race, which we call the Nordic ... "

Under Wendland's leadership, new administrative staff and freelancers were hired:

The main intention of the Protestant art service in these years was to reconcile the expressions of Christian church art with the rediscovery of the Germanic-ethnic feeling through National Socialism. Associated with this was a decided rejection of all radical lines of thought and efforts by Nazi propaganda leader Alfred Rosenberg , who postulated a new paganism (" neo-paganism ") to replace the Christian folk religion. The art service was able to take advantage of the rivalry between Rosenberg and Goebbels, because Goebbels was able to prevail against the anti-Christian usages of the neo-pagans against Hitler at least until 1938.

The monthly journal of the Confessing Church , the Junge Kirche , also supported the Protestant Art Service's conception of art, according to which church art must be art appropriate to the species. She pleaded for a fusion of biblical-Christian motifs with the ethnic-Germanic ancestral heritage:

“The German work of art does not want to please the viewer or demand to be enjoyed; it fulfills a religious, moral mission . German art is first and foremost Christian art ... German art reveals national peculiarities in terms of work materials and technology ... The work in wood is characteristic of German art. Woodwork is inextricably linked to Germanic and German artistic creation ... Stone construction came to Germany with Christianity. And now something wonderful happens. Christianity does not suppress the Germanic artistic peculiarities, but confirms them, and our most splendid cultural monuments arise through diligence in faith ... Isn't it wonderful to mention that Thor and Freya, as deified peasants, must pale before the heroized peasantry of Christian donor figures? Isn't it a mockery of all neo-pagan endeavors that the heroic knights in Naumburg Cathedral embody at least as much discipline and warrior honor as they are attributed to Odin in the old Germanic mythology ? "

With the support of the art service, the Martin Luther Memorial Church was inaugurated in Berlin-Mariendorf in 1935, the first National Socialist total church artwork.

The Thuringian German Christians made a particular effort to make the symbiosis between Christianity and National Socialism publicly visible. Under their aegis , a swastika was placed on the towers of nine Thuringian churches instead of the Christ cross: u. a. on the church towers of Holzthaleben , Westerengel , Gera- Thieschitz , Gera- Pforten , Gera- Frankenthal and Gerstungen . The first in this series was the church of Holzthaleben, on whose tower the NS-Ortsgruppenführer and six other party comrades had suggested that the swastika should be placed. But all the protests by DC and party comrades did not help. After the promulgation of the new law for the protection of the designations of the NSDAP of April 7, 1937, Gauleiter Sauckel also had to submit to it and in 1939 ordered the dismantling of the symbols so coveted by the German Christians.

Phase II: 1937-1945

In 1937, the reorganization of the Reichskunstkammer led to only five specialist departments, leading to the elimination of the two ecclesiastical imperial communities in the offices at the Blumeshof. The art service was reorganized under Gotthold Schneider in Berlin-Tiergarten, Matthäikirchplatz 2, independently of the ongoing campaigns against degenerate art.

Matthäikirchplatz 2 had already been shown as a supporting program for the 1936 Olympic Games and these centrally located Berlin exhibition rooms were now used as a forum for the art service as part of a new program to promote industrial and craftsmanship Shaping. Accordingly, the letterhead of the art service lacks any reference to a church bond.

Industrial and craft design: the art service and German merchandise knowledge

Since February 1937, the Art Service under its old and new chairman Gotthold Schneider has now fulfilled the minimum size of the association of 7 members:

  • Gotthold Schneider
  • Stephan Hirzel
  • Martin Kautzsch
  • Günter Ranft
  • Herbert Redlich
  • Winfried Wendland
  • Karl Ruppel , lecturer in the "German Ahnenerbe"

Industrial and craft design is now the main focus of activity - through the publication of Deutsche Merenkunde in conjunction with the Advertising Council of the German Economy , the Reich Chamber and the Alfred Metzner Verlag Berlin - and through exhibitions in conjunction with the Kunstgewerbe-Verein zu Hamburg e. V. published by Riemerschmidt-Verlag. The forum for these workshop reports from the Art Service will be the building at Matthäikirchplatz 2 in the immediate vicinity of St. Matthew's Church (Berlin-Tiergarten) . Regular exhibitions took place here, for which well-known art historians published the numbered supplements 1939–1943 as a workshop report. The 15th workshop report from 1941 contains an overview of the activities of the art service. If you go through the list of names of the authors and exhibitors, you will find victims of the art dictatorship among them.

The following workshop reports appeared:

  1. Th. A. Winde, working in wood
  2. Hugo Kükelhaus: Julius Schramm
  3. Rolf Hetsch : Siegfried Möller , Faience
  4. Fritz Hellwag: Wilhelm Wagenfeld . Shaping of industrial goods. Metal. Glass. Porcelain, Berlin 1940
  5. Hellmut Mebes: Siegfried Prütz , the master blacksmith and skilled craftsman
  6. Adolf Reichwein : Harro Siegel . Hand puppets and marionettes
  7. Walter Passarge : Alen Müller-Hellwig . Carpets and wall hangings
  8. Erich August Greeven: Johannes Gerbers. Bookbinding
  9. Marie Schuette : Karl Hentschel. Großschönau workshops.
  10. Theodor Heuss : Hermann Gretsch . Industrial design
  11. Wolfgang von Wersin : Bruno Mauder . Glass production and finishing
  12. Diez Brandi: Hermann Mattern . Planning and design of gardens
  13. LF Richard Schulz: Fritz Kühn . Ironwork
  14. Eberhard Hölscher: Sigmund von Weech . Drafts, graphics, textiles
  15. The art service. A work report, Berlin 1941
  16. Otto Heuschele : Herbert Post . Writing and printing
  17. Martin Kautzsch: Wilhelm Nauhaus . Book covers
  18. Hugo Sieker : Josef Arnold . Metal device
  19. Wernher Witthaus: Elisabeth Treskow . Goldsmith work
  20. Heinrich Bulle: Martin Seitz . Stone cuts
  21. Henri Nannen : Johann Michael Wilm , the goldsmith
  22. Hermann Gretsch : Margret Hildebrand . Industrial textile design
  23. Carl Georg Heise : Albert Renger-Patzsch , the photographer
  24. Gerhard dealer: Carl Crodel . Mosaics, stained glass, wall hangings, ceramics, glass decor
  25. Eberhard Freiherr Schenk zu Schweinsberg: Otto Lindig . Ceramics
  26. Renate Jaques: Editha Klein-Köppen. Embroidery, quilting
  27. Rohi hand weaving mill, Berlin 1943
  28. Sigfried Asche: Eugen Widamann. Tin device
  29. Marie Schuette: Hablik-Lindemann hand weaving mill

In addition, through the art service, namely by Hugo Kükelhaus and Stefan Hirzel in conjunction with Friedrich Emil Krauss- Schwarzenberg, Wilhelm Lotz , EW Maiwald, Robert Poeverlein and Heinrich Wichmann, the German commodity knowledge , which has been published since January 1939 : The everyday things, the one Having intellectual rank and dignity, gradually following a certain scheme based on material and purpose, to compile in illustrations and text to a kind of encyclopedia, which has to prove itself in the practical and spiritual, is the goal of German merchandise. (Preface Art Service).

Art Office of the German Evangelical Church and the Degenerate Art campaign

Due to the original subordination of the Art Office to the Art Service Association according to the statutes of June 30, 1931, personal involvement in the actions of the Rosenberg Office and the offices of the Reich Propaganda Ministry remained.

On June 30, 1937, Hitler, through his Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels, authorized the President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, Adolf Ziegler , to sort out all works of "German decadent art" since 1910 and to secure them for an exhibition. Ziegler formed a selection committee, which u. a.

belonged to. This selection committee confiscated a large number of works, including top-class works by Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , Ludwig Gies and Max Pechstein, and supplied them for the design of the exhibition “Degenerate Art”, which opened on July 19, 1937 in Munich . On the advice of the deputy academy president Georg Schumann , Ernst Barlach and Ludwig Gies previously resigned from the Prussian Academy of the Arts .

From January 1, 1938, Goebbels provided the previous supervisor of the art depot in Köpenicker Strasse, Franz Hofmann, with the lawyer and art historian Rolf Hetsch , who had written a book about Paula Modersohn-Becker in 1932. These two now arranged the 16,500 works of art brought together by the exhibition “Degenerate Art” by registering them and giving them a number. They were recorded in extensive lists and awarded dollar prices. Now it became the task of Gotthold Schneider and the "travel agent" Günter Ranft to sell the collected works of art to foreign buyers at closed sales exhibitions in the Castle of Niederschönhausen. The art service was only responsible for presentation and interim storage. The sales were made by the Propaganda Ministry, the proceeds were paid into the special “Degenerate Art” (“EK”) account. On June 6, 1938, the freelance exhibition maker Gertrud Werneburg - a Protestant Christian of the Confessing Church - was won over to present the works of art .

When in May 1938 the Protestant theologian and senior consistorial councilor Oskar Söhngen was elected as the new chairman of the still existing parallel company "Association for Religious Art", the Art Service now had those representatives who had to act as advisors to the three Reich ministers concerned with church art: for Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels - Gotthold Schneider and Stephan Hirzel, for Reich Education Minister Rust - Winfried Wendland, for Reich Church Minister Kerrl - Oskar Söhngen.

On September 1st, Gertrud Werneburg took over the first 175 oil paintings from the stolen art fund. Werneburg put the already mentioned church historian Prolingheuer on record:

“I started with these 175 oil paintings that gradually grew to 6,000. 7,000! Knauer (the company's furniture van) kept coming and brought new pictures. And then came the watercolors and all the 'Brücke' people. (Works) from Franz Marc to Christian Rohlfs, from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to Otto Dix ... From then on some art dealer kept coming ... And all the people were constantly there and looking for pictures ... I had two large rooms. I had layered all of the pictures there. Almost 60 Rohlfs alone ... It was a nice job ... "

The church struggles between German Christians and confessional Christians, between the so-called "intact" and the DC church leaderships, as well as between all of them with the anti-church Rosenberg supporters and the more moderate advocates of " positive Christianity ", which reached a climax in 1938, could help the art service did not do much harm, because its actors were at home in all of the ideological wings mentioned.

The guardian and exhibition organizer Werneburg, who was selected for the art presentation, occasionally encountered irregularities in the soon overwhelming task of offering the many works to foreign buyers, which increased over the years - especially in the war years. Government celebrities like Hitler's personal physician, Karl Brandt , who simply took a picture from the wall and let it go with them, “served” themselves . Or, on the express instructions of Goebbels, she had to publish sculptures and pictures to Wilhelm Lehmbruck's widow , only some of which were classified as “legally stolen”. Later, art service employees also used the works of art themselves, the amount of which cannot be quantified because there is no written evidence of this. Only Werneburg reported to the intensely researching Prolingheuer that z. For example, the art service pastor Christian Rietschel financed his house for retirement in the Federal Republic with an original Feininger graphic.

On March 20, 1939, thousands of paintings and drawings from the Köpenicker Strasse depot were burned at the main fire station in Berlin. Werneburg registered these works of art by order of Ministerialrat Hofmann before they were destroyed. Since word got around about the art- auto- da, the demand from collectors and patrons from abroad has increased. Art dealers from the USA and Switzerland turned the handle in the castle. When 125 works of art marked “degenerate” were delivered to Switzerland and auctioned there in May and June 1939, there was also an exchange of images (including “degenerate” Germans for classic Dutch), for which German gallery owners and art dealers were commissioned by the Reich leadership.

Since May 1939, art service employees, including Rolf Hetsch and Günter Ranft, have been putting pictures, graphics and sculptures on the site for themselves or good friends. Hundreds of works of art were withdrawn from the sale offer and countless were simply removed. This was made possible by the rich and influential art dealer Bernhard A. Boehmer .

Portrait of Otto Abetz

In addition to the art expert Gotthold Schneider and the aforementioned Boehmer, Otto Abetz was added at the beginning of the French campaign , which made the exploitation of French works of art another field of work of the art service after the robbery. As the German ambassador to the Pétain government, Hitler had ordered Abetz to “secure and record public art, and also private and, above all, Jewish art”.

During the victory celebrations after the quick end of the French campaign, Pastor Christian Rietschel invited to an “Art Service Week for Young Theologians” in June 1940 in Berlin. One of the speakers, Rolf Hetsch, remembered in 1943

“... that in my remarks I have shown above all the Germanic meaning and the popular connection of the German masterpieces (Bamberg riders, Naumburg donor figures, triumphal crosses, mystical devotional images, etc.). For the sake of historical truth, it seemed to me necessary to seize the welcome opportunity, especially in front of young German theologians, to emphasize this fact, which the Church has largely misunderstood, in order to deepen their awareness that the legendary motifs of German medieval art are not can be viewed as 'Jewish-Oriental' origin, but in reality embody an enlivening of the ancient symbols of our ancestors (Heliand-Heiland). I agree in my opinion not only with my teacher, Privy Councilor Pinder , but also with the technical advisor of the 'Ahnenerbes' Ruppel, who informed the Reichsführer SS (Himmler) about these questions. "

Employees of the art service also worked on the anti-Semitic correction of the appearance of existing Christian works of art that were not to be sold. Winfried Wendland suggested that the parishes eradicate Hebrew inscriptions in ritual spaces:

"So there is z. For example, on some baroque altars or doors the word 'Javeh' in Hebrew letters; we shall remove it without harm and replace it with e.g. B. can set a symbol of the Trinity or a Christ monogram. This in no way detracts from the Christian faith. On the contrary!"

At the end of the second year of the war, on December 6, 1941, the exploitation commission for the works of “degenerate art” drew this balance sheet: After the sales made so far, the inventory of these art objects only amounts to 2,979 looted items, 1,360 of which are drawings and graphic sheets , 1,519 sheets of printmaking in 59 portfolios, along with 95 paintings and five pictorial works.

After the sales exhibition in Niederschönhausen Castle, Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels had a thatched half-timbered house built in Güstrow for the evangelical art service he favored , very close to the residence of the sculptor and top art dealer Bernhard A. Boehmer, a so-called "art house" Due to the war, it was not fully completed until 1944.

But already on New Year's Eve 1943, the Protestant Art Service celebrated the move from Niederschönhausen to Güstrow, which was now in progress - mainly because of the bombing raids on Berlin - together with numerous guests. Countless files, archival goods and works of art found their place there. The new housemother was Margarete von Wittich , who was already the telephone operator at Matthäikirchplatz. In the course of 1943, the foreign exchange broker Boehmer had a remainder of 3,000 works of art stored in the cellar of the Propaganda Ministry brought to the katen by truck.

A real danger for the continued existence of the art service in its personal and ideal proximity to the Protestant denomination seemed to arise when the new president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, Wilhelm Kreis, decided to investigate the saw reproaches made against the art service: z. B. the connection to the "modernist" Otto Bartning and the proximity to the Protestant official church. In his final report, Kreis came to the opinion that the art service employees were politically reliable even if they did not belong to the party. The only aim was to replace those NS members who were missing due to being drafted into the Wehrmacht, such as Winfried Wendland. But Gotthold Schneider had already planned for this by suggesting Ambassador Abetz and the cultural functionary of the Todt Organization , Tino Schmidt , to the President . SS man Schmidt even got his own office.

The last major work of the art service before the end of the war was the production and archival storage of thousands of color slides. With the so-called guide order monumental painting , color photos of fresco cycles and wall decorations in churches, monasteries, castles and other secular buildings in Germany, Austria, Poland and Russia (East and West Prussia) and the Czech Republic (Bohemia and North Moravia) were made. The objects that might be lost as a result of the war should at least be preserved as images for posterity. The approx. 40,000 slides still preserved today are kept as a historical color slide archive for wall and ceiling painting . Rolf Hetsch was in charge of the organizational and technical management of this photo campaign.

The full-time art service employees Otto Abetz, Tino Schmidt and Gotthold Schneider who remained after the war-related reduction, organized their post-war existence in the western zones of liberated Germany in 1945. In a convoy of two trucks with SS escorts, hundreds of boxes with the slides, but also with the treasures of fine art accumulated in the art box, were placed in hiding places over winding paths to the area around Constance and St. Blasien . The slides were not identified again until later. The works of art that were carried along were put to personal use by the acting board members.

Time of the allied occupation and the two German states

After 1945, the art service directors found new opportunities: Gotthold Schneider founded an “Institute for New Technical Form” in Darmstadt ( Federal Republic of Germany ) in 1952 . Winfried Wendland became church building officer in the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg in Potsdam (GDR) and, through Bishop Dibelius, headed the re-established art service for the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) in 1962. After 1945, Oskar Söhngen was primarily active as an author on the history of church music. Ludwig Gies, who designed bronze eagles as the National Socialist emblem for the Berlin Reichsbank building , became the creator of the federal eagle in Bonn's first parliamentary hall in 1953.

The Evangelical Art Service was re-established in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony in 1950. The current director is Frank Schmidt. In addition to the exhibition and educational work, the art service is an advice center for the Saxon parishes. He is available to advise and mediate the parishes, church works and institutions as well as the regional church office for the field of fine arts (painting, graphics, sculpture) and handicrafts (vasa sacra, paramentics, other equipment).

As an institution of the Evangelical Churches of the Union (EKU) there was an art service in Erfurt from 1964 to 1997 . It was brought into being by Waldemar Wucher , advised communities on design issues and organized exhibitions and lectures. The theologian and art historian Karl-Heinz Meißner retired as the last head of this position in March 1997 . The “Evangelical Art Service Erfurt e. V. ”was founded on March 22, 1997 in the Predigerkloster in Erfurt. The first chairman of the association until 1999 was Frank Hiddemann . According to its own statement, the association wants to preserve and continue what the art service has built up. The association's chairman is currently Holger Lübs .

In individual cases, the regional church art service was given up. The Union of Evangelical Churches (UEK) decided on November 13, 2010 to integrate it into the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Work areas of the church alliance such as the Protestant Art Service would be given up, said the UEK chairman, the Baden regional bishop Ulrich Fischer .

literature

  • Hans Prolingheuer : Hitler's pious iconoclast. Church & art under the swastika . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-33-3 .
  • Dorothea Körner: Between all stools. On the history of the art service of the Evangelical Church in Berlin 1961-1989 . Berlin 2005.
  • Christian Wessely (Hrsg.): Art of Faith - Faith of Art . Regensburg 2006.
  • Andreas Hellgermann: From design to the point. A fundamental theological investigation into dealing with things . Munster 2006.
  • Konstantin Akinscha, Grigori Koslow: Looted Art - On a Treasure Hunt in Russian Secret Depots . 1995.
  • Wilhelm F. Arntz: Iconoclasm over Germany. III: The fate of the pictures . 1962.
  • Stephanie (H.) Barron: “Degenerate Art” - The fate of the avant-garde in Nazi Germany (catalog). 1992.
  • Rainer Beck , Rainer Volp, Gisela Schmirber (eds.): The art and the churches. The controversy over the pictures today , 1984.
  • Reinhard Bollmus : The Rosenberg Office and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule , 1970.
  • Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War , 1998.
  • Conrad Gröber (Ed.): Christian Art of the Present - Conference Reports of the Catholic Reich Community of Christian Art , 1938.
  • The art of the churches, 1941.
  • Jonathan Petropoulos: Art theft and collector madness. Art and Politics in the Third Reich , 1999.
  • Ernst Piper : National Socialist Art Policy. Ernst Barlach and the "Degenerate Art". A documentation . 1987.
  • Christian Rietschel : Symbols of Faith . 1985.
  • Winfried Wendland : Art under the Sign of the Cross. The artistic world of Protestantism of our time . 1934.
  • Joseph Wulf : The fine arts in the Third Reich. A documentation . 1966.
  • Reunited in the DOMizil . In: Berliner Zeitung , April 29, 2000; 50 years of art service in the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Call of a working committee of the art service, 1928. In: Hans Prolingheuer: Hitler's pious iconoclasts. Church & art under the swastika . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 2001, facsimile p. 79, ISBN 3-920862-33-3
  2. ^ Hans Prolingheuer: Hitler's pious iconoclasts. Church & art under the swastika . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-33-3 , p. 35
  3. ^ Poster by Walter Dexel , MoMA
  4. ↑ Paul Tillich: Cult and Form. In: Die Form 5 (1930), pp. 578-583; Collected Works Volume IX, pp. 324–327
  5. ^ Monthly for worship and church art , issue 1, 1934
  6. ^ Winfried Wendland: Art and Nation . P. 18f
  7. ^ Young Church , Volume 6, 1935
  8. ↑ Thomas A. Seidel (Ed.): Thuringian ridge walks . Contributions to the seventy-five year history of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia, Leipzig 1998, p. 92, ISBN 3-374-01699-5
  9. ↑ And at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937, the German Christian Hans Schwippert commissioned the German Christian Hans Schwippert to build a Chapel in which a mosaic of the Archangel Michael as the “patron saint of the Germans” was erected as an altarpiece. The “German soldier piety” of this “heroic altar” was emphasized in a prospectus. The Catholic Archbishop Conrad Gröber reports on this (Ed.): Christian Art of the Present - Conference Report of the Catholic Imperial Community of Christian Art . 1938
  10. ↑ Consultant for monuments and cemetery affairs as a member of the chamber.
  11. ↑ Himmler's German Ahnenerbe was the umbrella organization of the Braunschweig Institute for Craft and Industrial Design, cf. W. Dexel: Wooden device and wood form: on the importance of wooden forms for the German device culture of the Middle Ages and modern times . Berlin 1943, 67 p., Numerous. Ill. Publication of the Braunschweig Institute for Craftsmanship and Industrial Design = German Ahnenerbe: Series B: Department of works on Indo-European building and art research.
  12. ↑ Paul Ortwin Rave: Art dictatorship in the Third Reich . 1949. Reprint, edited by Uwe M. Schneede, Berlin o. D.
  13. ^ Hans Prolingheuer: Hitler's pious iconoclasts. Church & art under the swastika . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-33-3 , p. 133
  14. ^ Hans Prolingheuer: Hitler's pious iconoclasts. Church & art under the swastika . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-33-3 , p. 260
  15. ↑ Augsburger Allgemeine from March 20, 2009: The date, see also: Paul Ortwin Rave: Kunstdiktatur im Third Reich (1949), reprint, edited by Uwe M. Schneede, Berlin undated , p. 124
  16. ↑ Der Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor, order of August 3, 1940, paragraph I, 7; quoted by Hans Prolingheuer: Hitler's pious iconoclasts. Church & art under the swastika . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-33-3 , p. 184.
  17. ^ Federal Archives Potsdam, holdings R 55 / 168.9
  18. ↑ Winfried Wendland: The art of the church . P. 28
  19. ↑ Paul Ortwin Rave: Art dictatorship in the Third Reich . 1949, p. 130
  20. ^ Otto Thomae: The Propaganda Machine - Fine Arts and Public Relations in the Third Reich. 1978, pp. 186f.
  21. ↑ See also Christian Fuhrmeister, Stephan Klingen, Iris Lauterbach, Ralf Peters (eds.): “Führer mission monumental painting”. A photo campaign 1943–1945 (= publications of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich. Vol. 18). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2006, ISBN 3-412-02406-6
  22. ^ Ulrich Pantle: Concept of Reduction: Contributions to Church Building in Germany from 1945 to 1950 . In: Universität Stuttgart 2003 (Ed.): Dissertation 2003 .
  23. ↑ evlks.de
  24. ↑ ev-kunstdienst-erfurt.de
  25. ↑ kirche-mv.de