Venus in court

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Movie
Original title Venus in court
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1941
length 90 minutes
Rod
Director Hans H. Zerlett
script Hans H. Zerlett
production Ottmar Ostermayr
music Leo Leux
camera Oskar Schnirch
occupation

Venus in front of a court is a German feature film by Hans H. Zerlett from 1941. The propaganda film tried to portray the topic of degenerate art from the perspective of National Socialism .

It is a reserved film from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation . It is part of the foundation's portfolio, has not been released for distribution and may only be shown with the consent and under the conditions of the foundation.

action

The sculptor Peter Brake, an early supporter of National Socialism , is an opponent of modern art , which he considers degenerate. To set an example, he creates a statue of Venus in the style of ancient Greece and buries it in the forest. When it was excavated in 1930, it was believed to be a two thousand year old, ancient statue that ended up as the so-called Venus vom Acker in the Berlin back room of the Jewish art dealer Benjamin Hecht. The latter ensures that the minister quickly buys it for the museum, which also has to do with the fact that the minister is connected to the Jewish dealer as a buyer of pornographic portfolios. This throws the young sculptor Brake into an uproar.

Brake declares in court that he is the creator of the statue, but they do not believe him and want to convict him of perjury . The only one who could testify to the truth is the young woman Peter modeled for the character. But since she is now married to a mayor, Peter does not want to cause any trouble and is silent. Only when she learns about the process does she make a statement.

Background of the film

In the film set in 1930, ie at the time of the Weimar Republic , which was hated by the Nazis , three years before the Nazis' seizure of power , works of "degenerate art" are shown; Otto Freundlichs Kopf (1925), the plastic dancer by Marg Moll (1930) as well as paintings by Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner , Ernst Heckel and Wassily Kandinsky , which were in the depots of the Nazi regime, previously confiscated as alien and in 1937 in the exhibition Degenerate Art . The head and dancer sculptures, believed to be lost, were rediscovered in the rubble of the Berlin sculptures in 2010 .

In the film, Brake functions as the alter ego of the Nazi model artist Arno Breker . He is portrayed as a “provocateur of a new art” who tries to “play a trick on the dilapidated art taste of his time” with a buried sculpture. ”In his defense speech in court, he accuses modern art :

"Today one no longer glorifies the beautiful body, but the ugly one, one breaks new ground in art when one depicts a woman as a female gorilla - that is modern, that is intelligent, that brings a name and, above all, money."

In addition, the film also conveys other stereotypes of what the National Socialists saw as a time of struggle or as a system : In one scene, Brake is visited by the bailiff. When the latter sees a swastika flag in Brake's studio, he leaves without having attached anything; when he parted, he smiled and raised his hand in the Hitler salute .

reception

The film received the rating “popularly valuable”.

In 2012, the film was shown as part of the exhibition Lost Modern Art at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg .

Erwin Leiser counts Venus in court with Karl Ritters Over Everything in the World , Gustav Ucicky's Homecoming and Arthur Maria Rabenalts ... rides for Germany to the films of 1941 in which Jews appear as opponents of the heroes, but only as harmless marginal characters and not, as was the case in 1940, as dangerous sub-humans (as in The Rothschilds , Jud Suss and Der ewige Jude ).

Catrin Lorch wrote on the occasion of the new screening of the film in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2012 :

“It is“ not entirely correct if you understand the uncomfortable comedy as accompanying propaganda or even as a justification for the immense Degenerate Art campaign . […] The film Venus in front of the court only packs the persecution of the Nazis during the early thirties on the already successfully distorted art history . And unlike, for example, the films by Leni Riefenstahl , in which the cult of the body and the obdurate modernity of fascism are manifested, the film that swaps perpetrators and victims is so dull - after all, it was only the artistic taste of the Third Reich that turned painting and plastic into crime - just a cultural testimony. "

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Catrin Lorch: Buried to stay . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 22, 2012, p. 13.
  2. ↑ Erwin Leiser : "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, pp. 16, 68.