Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The 1985 German art exhibition at the Royal Academy, London [German Art of the
that the essence of Germanic culture was the good style of Expressionism. (The
Emil Nolde emerged as one of modern art's heroic victims of Nazi persecution, this
in spite of the fact that he was an anti-Semite and card-carrying member of the Nazi
party! History is much more complex than the Royal Academy is willing to
recognize.
history of twentieth century art ignores the visual artefacts of the Nazi period.
Exclusion is justified on the grounds that (a) Nazi material culture is not art; (b) or,
propaganda and art are mutually exclusive categories.) This is in spite of the fact
that these emblems and images appealed to millions of Germans (hence, they must
have had some visual power) and the fact that this material still continues to
fascinate many people including Pop musicians [such as Bryan Ferry], film-makers,
fashion designers, etc. (as the title of Susan Sontag's famous essay Fascinating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_chic
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simply omit such an important epoch from its survey exhibitions and books. Nor
ions of human culture which it finds alien or distasteful. The terrible fact to be
Another reason for studying Nazi art critically is the resurgence of fascist and
racist attitudes and behaviour in Europe. British racist propaganda and hate mail
uses the same kind of vile caricatures as did the Nazis. Knowledge of Nazi ideas is
thus important in educating people about the dangers of racism. Another valuable
lesson to be gleaned from the study of Nazi art, is that art is not necessarily a good
in itself - everything depends upon questions such as Good for whom? Serving
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officially approved German art which glorified the ideals of National Socialism and
secondly, an exhibition of so-called degenerate art which exemplified everything the
National Socialists detested. The two Munich exhibitions represented the yes and
no of art in Nazi Germany. I shall return to these two exhibitions towards the end
of this article but before then I hope to demonstrate the way in which art that is,
painting, sculpture, architecture, films, cartoons, symbols, all media were subject to
the dominant ideology of National Socialism, hence the title of this article - TOTAL
KULTUR.
Behind the surface appearance of every artwork is a set of ideas, assumptions and
values. We cannot understand an artwork unless we are familiar with that set of
ideas. To fully understand the meaning of the art produced in Germany in the
Socialism. These doctrines can be called ideology in that they were a false picture of
the real conditions of existence; however, an ideology can be false but still possess
coherence, it can still possess a logical structure. And we shall find that once a
fact were few in number, then the extermination of millions of Jews and others -
which may now seem a lunatic or arbitrary act - becomes a perfectly logical and
RACIAL THEORIES
At the centre of National Socialism were racial ideas. Their doctrine can be
The point of departure of National Socialist doctrine does not lie in the state but in the
Volk (that is, folk or people) ..... the German Volk. The community of people,
not only spiritual but real. The real bond is the common blood. The community of
blood creates Volkish-political unity of the thrust of the will against the surrounding
world ..... Its end is the preservation and promotion of a community of living beings
who are physically and psychologically alike. This preservation is first and foremost
concerned with racial stock and thereby permits the free development of all the
Note the emphasis on community. The Nazis claimed to end the class divisions of
society and the cultural divisions (such as that between intellectuals and the
people). However, the Nazis did not believe that the different races of mankind
were equal, on the contrary, they believed that there were superior and inferior
races and that Nature supported the victory of the stronger over the weaker. Also,
they believed that interbreeding between the races produced a pollution of racial
purity (they cited the spurious example that in the animal kingdom different
One of the world's superior races was the Aryan: In this world human culture
and civilization are inseparably bound up with the existence of the Aryan. His dying
off or his decline would again lower upon this earth the dark veils of a time without
culture. (Hitler) Thus, the ultimate value for the Nazis was their belief in culture,
the culture of their race was set above that of all other races. All the horrors of
their regime were committed in the name of culture. Some races were denied any
culture at all: The Jewish people ..... is without any true culture.
Hans Günter, a racial theorist serving the Nazis, explained how one could recognise
goal-determined, resolute person, or of a noble superior and heroic human being, man
or woman, he will in most cases create an image which more or less approximates the
image of the Nordic race. Actually, one could conceivably designate willpower, a
physical features of Nordic men. Such features can be intensified in individuals within
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What really matters in the portrayal of the naked human form and the Nordic racial
type is the manifestation - the exposure in the true sense - of an animate beauty, the
greatness and, last but not least, resurrected racial beauty. (Das Schwarze Korps)
Josef Thorak at work in his studio.
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In the sculptures of male nudes by such artists as Arno Breker and Josef Thorak
carvings. In the image from the New Volk Calender of 1938 showing a man, woman
and child the ideal Aryan family is depicted. Racial theorists gave precise
specifications as to the facial features and body shapes of these figures, even though
the actual leaders of the German Volk did not resemble these ideal types in any
way. However, it was intended that these types would be developed by selective
breeding.
Arno Breker, The Army, 1939. Bronze outside the new Reich Chancellery, Berlin
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Breker was born in 1900 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf. He
worked in Paris from 1925 to 1933. In 1938 he produced designs for the heroic
statuary for Albert Speer's new Reich Chancellery building in Berlin. After the war
he was put on trial as a Nazi collaborator and fined about £12. In 1971 he was
visited by reporters from the Sunday Times. They found that he lived in a large
house set in a quarter of an acre of ground with its own swimming pool. Breker was
unrepentant about the years he spent serving the Nazis and apparently made a
good living producing statuary for patrons such as the King of Morocco. Besides
his noble nudes, Breker has produced a series of bronze portrait heads of artist
friends Maillol, Cocteau, Ezra Pound - which are more realistic and indebted to the
work of Rodin.
Albert Speer, in his autobiography Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), is frank about why he served Hitler: During the
twenty years I spent in Spandau prison I often asked myself what would I have done if
I had recognized Hitler's real face and the true nature of the regime he had
established. The answer was banal and dispiriting: my position as Hitler's architect
had soon become indispensable to me. Not yet thirty, I saw before me the most exciting
prospects an architect can dream of .... I felt myself to be Hitler's architect. Political
events did not concern me. My job was merely to provide impressive backdrops for
such events.
Speer also describes the way in which the Nazi state was organised so that
apart from Hitler, having an overall picture of events. Nevertheless, not all artists
complied with the Nazi regime. During the Nazis rise to power artists such as
Grosz, Dix and Heartfield criticised them but after 1933, the year in which the
Nazis took power in Germany, artists opposing the regime had to emigrate, to
In 1941 the popular film actor Joachim Gottschalk, who was married to a Jewess
and had a daughter, killed both himself, wife and child, rather than obey the
Gestapo's orders that his wife must leave him and be sent to the concentration
WOMEN
So far we have been looking primarily at male figures. What was the ideal Aryan
woman? The Nazi attitude towards women was that of the mid-nineteenth century
bourgeoise: man the master, woman's place was in the home caring for the
intelligent women. career women and politically active women. Blond hair and blue
eyes were characteristics looked upon with favour. Simplicity was preferred -
cosmetics and fashion were frowned upon - but some degree of prettiness and
Stuhrk
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In 1938 the Honour cross of the German mother was instituted: the most
important service a woman in Nazi Germany could perform was bearing children
(seven was mentioned as a good number); sons were preferred so that they could
become soldiers. The German woman was expected to be as healthy and fit as her
men folk, so consequently, great stress was laid on rhythmics, gymnastics and sport.
Entry to the professions was restricted: there was a quota system so that female
Although paintings depicting women show that they were revered, they seem to be
competition. The reverse side of this coin is that the full potential of women was
suppressed in Nazi Germany except in the rare instance of Leni Riefenstahl, the film
maker.
women were Ivo Saliger and Adolf Ziegler. The latter's skill at capturing detail
earned him the nickname ‘Master of the pubic hair’. His painting of the allegorical
subject The Four Elements (fire, water, earth, air) was a favourite work of Hitler's
similitude (no abstract art was possible, nor even figurative art in which painterly
technique was foregrounded; the painters always used art to disguise art, that is to
hide the means of production). Subject matter was similarly safe and generally
optimistic in character. That is to say, artists were not permitted to citicise the
regime or to point out any of its problems. (If one so much as repeated an atrocity
story one quickly found oneself the victim of an atrocity.) When we look at paintings
we must consider not only what they include but also what they leave out, and it is
precisely the dark underbelly of Nazi Germany which is repressed in Nazi art.
Despite the ideal of woman as a paragon of purity and the womb of the racial
female nudes. See for example, Paul Padua's Leda and the Swan. (Note also the
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The Nazi leadership argued that they were not puritans and had nothing to do
with old fashioned morality; several of them were womanisers; Hitler thought the
soldiers back from the filth of the Russian front needed to forget that experience by
The film Olympia was released in 1938 in two parts each lasting two hours. It was
a documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Leni Riefenstahl. This film glorified
Ancient Greece, Greek architecture, and the beauty of the nude body. It recorded
Hitler's presence at the games and the whole occasion was a propaganda
opportunity for the Nazis. Hitler was upset by the victories of the black American
athlete - Jessie Owens - and argued that such primitive races should be excluded
Although the Nazis claimed that Olympia was not an official propaganda film, as
one critic wrote: it was outspokenly fascistic in character ..... it celebrates sport as an
heroic, superhuman feat, a kind of ritual. The narration resounds with the words like
fight and conquest. It establishes the ideals of strength, beauty, hygiene, fittest of the
species, the need for endurance and the will to win which were to be demanded of
and manly spirit from lads in the classroom, in the section and in the squad, without
regard to person, it trains them in the virtues which constitute the foundation of the
Volk community ... Physical education develops and forms the body and soul, as the
To purify and strengthen the Aryan race the Nazis encouraged physical education
and planned to introduce selective breeding; these were positive measures. There
were also negative measures, that is, the removal of diseased progeny.
The German people were mentally prepared for such developments by the film I
suffering from an incurable disease. She pleads with her husband to release her
from further misery. He kills her and is accused of murder but is acquitted and, at
the end of the film, he speaks out against the representatives of outmoded opinion and
antiquated law. In other words, this film presented a favourable account of the
practice of euthanasia in the guise of a debate on the subject. While in the film the
woman requested her own death, in Nazi Germany the victims of the euthanasia
programme had no say over their own fate: Between the outbreak of war and 24
August 1941 some one hundred thousand German men, women and children were
killed by a group of doctors ..... under the direction of Dr Werner Heyde, professor of
neurology and psychiatry at the University of Wiirzburg. A variety of means were used,
including lethal injections, starvation, carbon monoxide and Cyclon B gas. The
selection was based on the law of 14 July 1933, designed to prevent the propogation of
congenitally diseased progeny and on the law of 15 September 1935 for the protection
of German blood and honour ..... The victims included certified alcholics, congenital
In the ideology of Nazism the land of Germany and the German peasantry
occupied a special place of honour. The principal advocate of the selective breeding
concept (on the analogy of animal husbandry) was Richard Walter Darré, an
Argentinian who studied agronomy in Germany, became a Nazi, and in 1933 was
the Life Source of the Nordic Race, Darré forwarded the theory that the earliest
German tribes could be divided into two types: settlers and nomads. It was the
settlers who provided Europe with warriors and aristocrats via the peasantry,
whereas the nomads were the source of other races, the Semitic, gypsies and trades-
man, with no fixed roots, and since they were always mobile they had scant respect
In his second book, the race and the land were presented as the source of the best
Nordic stock; this became known as the blood and soil doctrine. Emphasis on the
peasantry and the countryside was accompanied by criticism of the cities: The
metropolis is a dreadful thing. The metropolis is a confusion of old and new. The
metropolis is conflict, brutal conflict. Everything good should be left outside of big
cities ..... Where urbanism meets the peasantry, the spirit of the peasantry is ruined .....
it is the cities which attract the nomads and foreigners, Jews and negroes, and this
encourages interbreeding of races and causes the dreaded pollution of the purity of
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farmer's households and work on the land as entirely innocent, innocuous scenes.
These works must also be seen as part of a programme for a nationalistic style of
art: Style comes from the people. It is our nature to love our native land. There can be
no true culture that is international. True culture comes only from the maternal womb
LEADER CULT
So far we have considered the character of the Volk, but how was this community to
preparing the ground for the coming of a messiah: Someone will have to come along
who thinks very simply. Thinking today has become too complicated. An uncultured
man, a peasant as it were, would solve everything much more easily merely because he
would still be unspoiled. He would also have strength to carry out his simple ideas.
(Professor Tessenow ). The leader in his person united both state and V olk; he was
the living embodiment of the ideology and, through the state, the executor of actions
necessary to safeguard the innermost purpose of the race. (George L. Mosse, (ed) Nazi
Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, [London: W. H.
The leader's power was not considered a tyranny because it rested on racial
similarity between the leader and thc Volk. Hitler thought that he became dictator
primarily through an act of will, and he was convinced of his mission: Above all, a
man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is
conception, but soley to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with
this mission is an enemy of the people.
There was a romantic love-hate relationship between the leader and the led, in
one of his speeches Hitler said to the assembled host: That you have found me and
that you have believed in me, this is what has given your life a new meaning, a new
task. That I have found you, this is what has made my life and my struggle possible.
(Quoted in Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, [NY: Mentor, 1965]), page 385.)
At the same time there was a sadistic/ masochistic relationship between the leader
and the led: .... what they (the masses) want is the victory of the stronger and the
annihilation or unconditional surrender of the weaker..... Like a woman ..... who will
submit to a strong man rather than dominate a weakling, thus the masses love the
ruler rather than the suppliant..... give them liberal freedoms and they feel at a loss
and deserted. (quoted in Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, [London: Routledge,
1941], page 192) Goebbels, in his 1929 novel Michael, uses the analogy of the artist:
the masses for the leader are ..... nothing more than stone is for the sculptor ..... that
HITLER
Who was this leader? He was a failed artist called Adolf Hitler (1889-1945, born
in Austria ) His father was a minor civil servant. Although his school record was
poor Hitler aspired to be an artist. However, he was rejected by the Academy on the
grounds that his drawing was not good enough. He was told that he should consider
becoming an architect but was rejected once more in 1908 by the Academy because
he lacked a school leaving certificate. In 1909-10 he lived in a doss house, sold the
odd watercolour and did low-level commercial art for local shops. Despite his
poverty and unemployment he did not develop any sympathy for the working class.
In 1914-18 war Hitler was a corporal who gained the iron cross for bravery. Hitler
once explained to his generals that the hardest decision of his life had been the
choice of a political career rather than an architectural career - but did he cease to
be an architect? Was he not presented as the master builder of the German nation?
Was it more exciting for an artist to work with flesh and blood rather than with
stone? In any case, once he became dictator he could plan and build architecture on
a scale which he could never have achieved as an architect working for others. The
deciding factor in his choice, Hitler said, was his gift for public speaking, that is
oratory, hence Hitler did not renounce art for politics, he placed the ancient art of
rhetoric in the service of politics. (He had been impressed by a novel by Bernhard
Kellerman called Der Tunnel (1913) [adapted for film in 1915 and 1933] in which
Hitler used to give his watercolours away as a sign of favour. He gave one to Speer
whose judgement was ..... it is executed in an extremely precise, patient and pedantic
style. No personal impulses can be felt in it; not a stroke of any verve. But it is not only
the brush strokes that lack all character; by its choice of subject, the flat colours, the
conventional perspective, the picture seems a candid witness to this early period of
Hitler. All his watercolours from the same time have this quality, and even the
watercolours done while he was an orderly in the first world war lack distinctiveness.
(Albert Speer, page 174). From time to time Hitler's watercolours are bought and
because his bride was the German people: at all marriages in the Third Reich a
copy of Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf was presented to the happy cou-
For many years Speer idolised Hitler and thought of him as a hero of ancient
had installed in the new Chancellery bas-reliefs portraying the legend of Hercules.
Fritz Erler's 1939 painting The Leader embodies the cult of the leader. In it Hitler
stands alone, slightly off centre, silhouetted against the darkness of a giant
rial eagle in one hand and a sword in the other. Harold Rosenberg, the American
art critic, has acidly described Hitler as part generalisimo, part apocalyptic chauffer.
We, the audience who look at the picture, occupy the position of the worshipping
Volk. Hitler intimidates us with his steadfast gaze and severe expression, he
dominates us because our eyelevel is situated at the level of his belt, like children we
look up to our father. Like a god or vampire on earth his body casts no shadow.
Blocks of stone and building implements at his feet signal his interest in
Rosenberg points out, the affinity between the academy and totalitarianism lies in
ANTI-SEMITISM
The drive towards the purity of Aryan blood was dogged by the fear of
contamination by foreign blood and foreign ideas which the Nazis believed would
cause chaos ..... epochs of catastrophe (Alfred Rosenberg). The contamination which
the Nazis abhorred above all was that of Jewish blood and they instituted a Reich
citizenship law to exclude Jews from the German nation: Only he who is a racial
comrade can be a citizen. Only one who is of German blood, no matter what his
religious faith. Therefore no Jew can live in Germany only as a guest and is subject to
special legislation for foreigners. (Walthar Buch declared, The Jew is not a human
Once the Nazis seized power they introduced gradually, step by step, laws and
synagogues, their freedom to work, to travel, to send their children to school, and
How did artists contribute to the persecution of the Jews? There were four major
In Jew Suss (September 1940) directed by Veit Harlan (who claimed that he made
the film under the threat that if he didn't he would be shot), the story concerns a
real historical character of the 17th and 18th centuries who was a money lender and
tax collecter for a German Duke; Suss was eventually hanged in 1738. The Nazi
film was a travesty of the actual history: Suss was presented as a rapist and as a
torturer besides being a money lender. The film was designed to generate the most
intense feelings of outrage and hatred towards Jews. One report declared: The
impact of the film on adolescents was enormous ..... in Vienna an old Jewish man was
trampled to death by a Hitler youth band which had just seen the film. It was no
coincidence that three anti-Semitic films were premiered in 1940: they were part of
the final solution of the Jewish question which was then beginning. Even after the
war, Jew Suss continued to serve an anti-Semitic function: in the 1960s prints of it
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Another film The Wandering Jew or The Eternal Jew, directed by Dr Fritz
Hippler, which appeared in November 1940, has been described as the most evil film
images of a crawling mass of black flies; the nomadic character of the Jews was
equated visually with the movement of a milling army of rats. The Jewish religion
was attacked by means of a sequence showing the slaughter of a cow in gory detail.
The terrible irony of this film is that the bestial conditions in which the Jews were
filmed had been created by the Nazis themselves. Some scenes of Jews were so
harrowing that they were deleted because the film-makers were affraid that
sympathy concerning the plight of the Jews would be aroused. Goebbels ordered all
units of the SS to see this film which was clearly intended to stiffen the resolve of
prided themselves on their ability never to show pity for their victims.
vicious racist weekly newspaper Der Stürmer (1923-45) edited by Julius Streicher.
not Trust a Fox in a Green Pasture or Take the Word of a Jew, by Elvira Bauer
(Nuremberg: Stürmer Verlag, 1936); it was reprinted seven times and sold 100,000
copies. In the illustration above three black-clothed Jews are compared to three
PROPAGANDA
To be a leader means to be able to move masses ..... (Hitler). This ability includes a
mastery of the techniques of propaganda. Two whole chapters of Mein Kampf were
devoted to an exposition of the ground rules of mass persuasion: ..... appeal to the
broad masses not to intellectuals - appeal to people's feelings not their reason - repeat
the same idea over and over again - tell lies, the bigger the better - never hesitate -
never retreat - be fanatical, the more extreme the better, this frightens off weaklings
and attracts the strong - use the spoken word rather than the written word for greater
emotional impact - speak to audiences in the evening because they are more open to
suggestion at this time of the day ..... One of the regime's major propaganda succes-
ses was the film Triumph of the Will directed by Leni Riefenstahl and commissioned
by Hitler as a documentary record of the 1934 Nuremberg rally. This film was a
In a secret speech to newspaper men in 1938 Hitler gloated about the way he had
and how he had been able to assess, on a day to day basis, the results of his
propaganda via the Czech telephone conversations which were being tapped. As a
result, Czechoslovakia fell into his hands without a war. Hitler exulted: ..... by
means of propaganda in the service of the idea, we have obtained ten million human
beings with over 100,000 square kilometres of land. That is something magnificent. He
went on to tell the press that they could only be powerful as an instrument of his
leadership, never criticising or arguing with the leader, always highlighting the
positive achievements of the regime rather than its negative features. In liberal,
pluralistic societies the press was weak and held in contempt because the papers
Poster showing a radio dominating the masses, “The whole of Germany hears the
USE OF RADIO
In 1933 a cheap, uniform radio set (Volksempfänger) was designed and by 1939
three and a half million sets had been sold. In 1939 seventy percent of German
households contained a wireless - this was the highest percentage in the world at
that time. Loudspeakers were introduced into the streets and into the factories;
therefore, listening was often compulsory. Goebbels, who was appointed minister
for propaganda in 1933, believed that broadcasting was more effective than
weapon of the totalitarian state. Marshall McLuhan argues that the radio revived the
Man, [NY: McGraw Hill, 1964], page 324.) In 1933, fifty political speeches by Hitler
were transmitted but they were not so effective as his rally speeches because Hitler
missed the direct rapport with a live audience. Radio was used as a propaganda
The combination of the Eagle with a swastika in an oak leaf garland constituted
the official emblem of the Third Reich. The eagle is a bird of prey which has been
used as a symbol of power and victory for centuries: it appeared on the standards of
the Roman legions, it was the emblem of the Czars of Russia, Napoleon, Imperial
Germany, as well as the United States of America. Hitler was very rarely original in
what he did, his talent lay in taking hold of existing stereotypes and endowing them
with new meanings. In this case he took over the National emblem of Imperial
The eagle was also chosen as the emblem of the Luftwaffe (naturally enough) and
the painting called On Guard by M. N. Keiser (1940) shows two eagles guarding a
rock surrounded by stormy seas (the Luftwaffe guarding the rock of Germany
whilst surrounded by enemies on all sides. There is a phallic shaped rock on the
The swastika, or Hakenkreuz (literally the hooked cross), was a symbol of crucial
emblems in the history of the world. Again it was a symbol which Hitler took over:
it was already being used as a symbol for anti-Semitism by various racist groups in
Austria and Germany. Hitler recognised that. .... an effective insignia can give the
first stimulus towards interest in a movement for hundreds of thousands ..... therefore
he commissioned designs for the swastika flag and selected one by Frederick Krohn,
a dentist, who was an ex-member of the Thule society and who was writing a
The swastika - the word is sanskrit for good fortune and well being - is an ancient
Trojan, Roman, Buddhist and even Jewish culture. According to Danish scholars it
was the sign of the Nordic God of War Thor. The device has various connotations: a
whirligig, a wheeling cross, the wheel of the sun (hence the cycle of life), the four
winds, the supreme deity. In India the direction in which the hooks faced was
The colours of the flag were not arbitrary. They were in fact the colours of
Germany's national flag from 1867 to 1919. Again, Hitler incorporated the values of
tradition into his new order. For Hitler the formal components of the flag had
precise significations ..... As National Socialists, we see our programme in our flag. In
red we see the social idea of movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika
the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan men, and, by the same token,
the victory of creative work which as such always has been anti-Semitic ..... (quoted in
Penguin, 1975], page 132). In his book on the mass psychology of fascism Wilhelm
Reich claims that the success of the swastika as a device was in part due to an
unconscious symbolism - that is, the swastika is two interlocking figures; hence, an
What the example of the swastika also illustrates is the fact that signs do not have
meanings which are fixed for all time. The meaning of a sign can change according
to the way in which it is used, meaning is in use. Hitler took a sign which stood for
light and well-being and by his use of it turned it into a sign for cruelty, evil and
darkness.
PARAMILITARY STYLE
The use of flags, banners, uniforms and parades gave the Nazi regime an overall
paramilitary style. While such a style is not enough in itself to indicate fascism,
fascism was distinguished by the ability to transform this style typically and to make it
the hallmark of the whole party and, ultimately, of the whole population. (Nolte, page
369-370).
stage performances of the Tiller Girls (and later exemplified in films such as
Triumph of the Will and the 1930s’ Hollywood musicals by Busby Berkeley) and
factories and offices, which in turn reflected the rationality of the capitalist
economic system. (There is a shot in Triumph of the Will in which a line of goose-
stepping storm troopers wheels into view just like a line of high-kicking chorus
girls.)
HITLER YOUTH
Once the Nazis had secured political control they could afford to reflect on the
growth of the party and its early struggles. One of the earliest Nazi feature films
Hitlerjunge Quex by Hans Steinhoff (1933) tells the story of a heroic boy Quex
(Mercury), or Heini, whose parents are communists. Quex is attracted to the Hitler
youth: their healthy outdoor activities, their order and discipline, their neat
uniforms, their songs and banners. Eventually Quex becomes a Hitler youth and a
district of Berlin. This film represented the struggle for the German soul between
National Socialism and Communism. In 1933, the battle was won by the Nazis: all
chambers and prison camps which later were to become the extermination camps.
THE SA: STURM ABTEILUNG (STORM TROOPERS)
This body of men were originally formed to act as a defence squad at Nazi
criminals, and the unemployed. Violence and terror were weapons which Hitler
used quite self-consciously to defeat rival political factions and to attract new
recruits. By 1934 the SA numbered over two million men but by that time the SA
and its leadership had become an embarrassment to Hitler, especially the head of
the SA (the notorious homosexual Ernst Rohm). So, in June 1934 the leadership of
the SA - three to five thousand men - were murdered by the SS (Hitler's personal
Paintings by Elk Eber show the bandaged SA (indicating their battle scars)
marching in the streets or getting themselves ready for action. Note the iron jaws,
the firm set of the lips, the fearless determined gaze towards the task to be done
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Impressions of the Party’s day of Honour, Nuremberg, 1936 in which the SS and SA
are depicted marching in tandom. This is one of the few Nazi paintings that
demonstrates some degree of compositional originality and formal drama due to the
For loyal party members theatrical spectacles were produced which provided a
carefully organised and stage managed. Speer was one of the chief designers and
architects involved in the rallies. For one rally, which took place at night, Speer
provided a display of light made from 130 searchlights directed towards the night
sky. Even foreign observers were stupified by the effects produced, for example, the
Nuremberg rallies testify to the emotional character of these mass spectacles which
were equivalent to Wembley cup finals with their scarves and singing.
ARCHITECTURE
Hitler and Speer jointly built monumental public buildings and planned many
more including the wholesale redevelopment of the centre of Berlin ..... Hitler liked
to say that the purpose of his building was to transmit his time and its spirit to
posterity. Ultimately all that remained to remind men of the great epochs of history
would serve to remind a nation of past glory during its periods of weakness, hence it
was essential for all monuments to be imposing in size and built of permanent
materials. Speer developed a theory of ruin value, that is, he used special materials
so that his buildings would resemble Roman ruins when their turn came to decay.
In his autobiography Speer acknowledges that his work resembles the sets for Cecil
B. De Mille's Hollywood film epics, that it had a fantastic quality, a cruel element
All monuments which Hitler planned were to be larger in size than anything
comparable in the world, the purpose of this architecture was to overwhelm the
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world domination long before he dared to voice any such intention even to his closest
associates ..... today it strikes me as rather sinister that in the midst of peacetime while
buildings expressive of an imperial glory which could be won only by war ..... (page
as spies). Hitler was totally uninterested in housing for the workers or other social
hostels, farmhouses and surburban housing in a variety of regional folk styles. this
was part of the anti-urbanism of National Socialism, the blood and soil doctrine.
Hitler's aim in attacking Poland and Russia was to acquire, by conquest, vast
intellectuals, could be settled by Nordic Germans who would farm the land while
retained in a slave condition as a cheap source of labour. This was not a flight of
fancy, the extermination part of the scheme was executed, but it turned out that the
Germans who lived in the West had no desire to leave their homes to settle in the
East. Conventional studies of Nazi architecture tend to ignore the types of buildings
which exemplified the regime's true significance, that is, the concentration/
extermination camps and gas chambers. The inner meaning of Nazism was death.
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AUTOBAHN
Roads might be considered as civil engineering projects of social use, but in Nazi
Germany even the new road system (whose building was supervised by Fritz Todt)
had to reflect the dominant political ideology ..... The new road of Adolf Hitler, the
Autobahn, is in keeping with the essence of our National Socialism. We wish to fix our
goal far ahead of us, we want to achieve our aims directly and in a straight line. We
build bridges over crossroads; unnecessary connections are alien to us. We do not
create switchbacks; we create for ourselves a road that leads only forwards, since we
need a road which permits us to maintain a speed that suits us. (Todt) The roads were
seen as the embodiment of the unity and authority of the new Reich, a power
binding the Volk together. Their purpose was to integrate all aspects of German life
by linking cities together as well as cities and the rural areas; they also served
Troost, the architect of the House of German Art was, for example, ..... a minor
participant in the progressive historicist movement of the pre-war period and his use of
Limestone surfacing material and the dominant classical colonnade ..... reflected a
desire to match the masonry styles of the past but.. ... the museum's blocky masses
and flat surfaces, free of all ornament save minimal base and cornice projections, and
the horizontal orientation of the building, proclaimed its debt to the radical modern
Germany, 1918-1945, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968], page 191.)
was the first of Hitler's own buildings and also it was a showcase for Nazi painting
and sculpture. 1t was therefore consistently described in the press and in party
publications as Hitler's work ..... it served as a symbol.. ... of the artistic creativity of
the new regime. (Lane, page 212.) Hitler laid the foundation stone in 1933 with a
silver hammer specially designed by Troost - it broke when Hitler used it! (An
ominous sign.) Greek culture, that is to say that of the Doric era, was thought by the
The Official German Art Exhibition in Munich was opened by Hitler in July
1937. Hitler's speech was interesting because (as Ian Dunlop points out) it
expresses in emotional and vituperative language what many people secretly think
about modern art. In the speech Hitler laid down the criteria for good German
art: Art based on people not time; good German art can only be made by racial
be logical and also, above all, to be true ..... Hitler also expressed the belief that
great art is not the achievement of a collective but of gifted individuals and he
predicts in the realm of art the highest value of a personality as an individual will
make a triumphant reappearance. But for most of the speech Hitler attacked the
Degenerate art being shown, simultaneously, in another building: All those
order of the times,' 'original primitivism,' etc. - all these dumb, mendacious excuses,
anybody has a strong will or an inner experience, he will have to prove through his
work, and not through gibberish. And anyhow, we are all much more interested in
quality than in so-called will ..... 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 as rotten
cretins; who, on principle, see meadows blue, skies green, clouds sulphur yellow, and
so on, or, as they say, experience them as such. I do not want to enter into an
argument here about the question of whether the persons concerned really do or do
not see or feel in such a way; but in the name of the German people, I want to forbid
these pitiful misfortunates who quite obviously suffer from an eye disease, to try
vehemently to foist these products of their misinterpretation upon the age we live in,
or even wish to present them as 'ART'. No, here there are only two possibilities:
Either these so-called 'artists' really see things this way and therefore believe in what
unfortunates can only be pitied; in the second case, they would be the object of great
interest to the Ministry of Interior of the Reich which would then have to take up the
eyes cannot at least be checked. 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.
This House, in any case, has neither been planned, nor was built for the works of
this kind of incompetent or art criminal ..... But far more important is the fact that
the labour performed here on this spot for four and a half years, the maximum
achievements demanded here of thousands of workers, were not intended to serve the
purpose of exhibiting the production of men who, to top it off, were lazy enough to
dirty a canvas with colour droppings in the firm hope that, through the daring
advertisement of their products as the lightning birth of genius, they could not fail to
produce the needed impression and qualifications for their acceptance .. No, I say.
The diligence of the builder of this House and the diligence of his collaborators must
Beyond this, I am not the least bit interested in whether or not these 'also-rans' of
the art world will cackle among themselves about the eggs they have laid, thereby
The Exhibition of Degenerate Art was held in the annexes of the Archaelogical
Institute, Munich, in July 1937. It attracted 187,160 visitors - 25,000 a day! Works
included were largely selected by Professor Adolf Ziegler. His authorisation from
Hitler and Goebbels ordered him to select works of decadent art in the sphere of
painting and sculpture since 1910 from those owned by the German state, provincial
and municipal authorities. In two weeks Ziegler and his party collected 700 works
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from museums throughout the country. Some 113 artists were represented in the
examples, New Objectivity was in strength. The first room was labelled
‘Sponsored by the centre for the insolent mockey of religious experience‘. The
degeneracy.
8: Jewish artists.
The hanging was deliberately poor to make the works seem crude and
incoherent (and, ironically, this made the show seem like a Dada exhibition).
added "German Peasants as Seen by the Yids." Some Nazis were embarrassed
about the inclusion of Frans Marc because he had fought for his country and had
died at Verdun. More visitors came to the Degenerate Art Show than went to the
official show. However, visitors who lingered and appeared to be appreciating the
After the show the purge of museums continued. Certain artists were forbidden
to paint or were forced into exile. Some works in the show were sold in Zurich to
raise foreign currency, some were burnt by the Berlin fire brigade.
EXPRESSIONISM
The fact that Hitler rejected most varieties of modern art does not mean that all
modern art was alien to Nazism. Consider, for example, the case of Expressionism.
The German Expressionist painter Emile Nolde 1867-1956 (an eighty-nine year
lifespan) came from farming stock and he believed the blood and soil doctrine. He
joined the Nazi party and he believed that his work was genuinely nationalistic and
expressionistic - it was Nordic, marked a return to the primitive, it also lost some of
its best people in the first world war, it spoke in the name of youth, it was linked
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morbid rather than healthy, because it favoured distortion rather than naturalistic
depictions of reality. However, Speer hung Nolde watercolours in his new buildings
but since, in the Third Reich, the leader was the ultimate arbiter of taste when
Hitler said get rid of them, they were removed. The irrationalism of Expressionism
is seen by some critics as part of the soil which nourished National Socialism.
will single out the work of John Heartfield who used the radical technique of
photomontage to expose the horrors of the Nazi regime in a manner which has
never been surpassed. Heartfield's Montages were published on the cover of the
Left-wing
weekly AIZ (up to a half million circulation). His savage images stung the Nazis
and in 1933 when they came to power Heartfield had to flee to Czechoslovakia as
the SA occupied his home, for he, as were so many others, was on the Nazis' wanted
list.
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-This article is based on a lecture I gave for many years in British art colleges in the
1970s and 1980s, and is a revised version of an article that was first published in the
British magazine AND: Journal of Art and Art Education, no 9, 1986, pp. 3-9. Since
this article was published many more books and articles have been published on the
subjects it addresses and many images have appeared on the web, e.g. see
http://schikelgruber.net/naziart2.html
John A. Walker is a painter and art historian. He is the author the book Art in the
Age of Mass Media, 3rd edn (London & Sterling VA: Pluto Press, 2001) and the book
review about the film-maker Leni Riefenstahl 'Can art be evil? Portrait of a Nazi
Propagandist', The Art Book, vol 15, no 1, February 2008, pp. 5-6. He is also an
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