What If the Nazis Had Embraced Modern Art?

Joseph Goebbels - Reichminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda -

pays a visit to the Exhibition of Degenerate Art in Munich (1937)

 

'We National Socialists are not unmodern; we are the carrier of a new modernity, 

not only in politics and in social matters, but also in art and intellectual matters.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

As everybody knows, the Nazis were on a mission to cleanse Germany of bolshevism in all its forms, including so-called cultural bolshevism, a term widely used to denounce progressive and experimental trends in the world of contemporary art, music, and literature.

 

Thus, after coming to power in 1933, the Nazis prevented many artists from working or taking up teaching posts, replaced museum curators with loyal Party members, and, most notoriously, organised mass book burning events.

 

However, I'm pretty certain I once read that at least some leading Nazis were in favour of embracing modern art - providing of course it was produced by artists of pure Aryan blood who held the appropriate political views. 

 

If it was okay for Mussolini to couple Fascism with Futurism, then why shouldn't they celebrate certain works of German Expressionism - such as those by Emil Nolde or Erich Heckel, for example, which were said to exemplify the Nordic spirit and had parallels with German medieval and folk art. 

 

Even Joseph Goebbels, not wanting to be seen as a narrow-minded defender of bourgeois values, was open to the argument and, in texts written prior to 1933, spoke enthusiastically of the new, the radical, and the revolutionary [2] - or what we might simply call the modern. 

 

Indeed, the soon to be Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda had several works hanging on the walls of his Berlin apartment that would be branded in 1937 as Entartete Kunst (the Nazi mistranslation, as some wag said, of avant-garde).

 

Hitler, however, was having none of it - as made clear in a speech in the autumn of 1934, wherein he denounced modern artists as criminal lunatics and declared that under no circumstances would their incompetent rubbish play any role in the cultural rebirth of Germany. As far as he was concerned, any work that didn't conform to the aesthetic values of the Classical world was Un-German and corrupted by the Marxist-Jewish spirit. 

 

Goebbels, one of Hitler's closest and most devoted acolytes, thus quietly removed any offending pictures from his walls and, in 1937, he conceived the idea of an exhibition of works from the Weimar period - which he termed the era of decay - that would contrast with the forthcoming Great German Art Exhibition intended to showcase work approved by the Führer; statuesque blonde nudes, idealised landscapes, etc.

 

Hitler loved the idea and on 30 June signed an order authorising Die Ausstellung Entartete Kunst ...

 

Goebbels appointed Adolf Ziegler - one of Hitler's favourite painters and head of the Reich Chamber of Visual Art - in charge of a small team who toured state galleries and museums in numerous cities seizing thousands of works they deemed degenerate and showing signs of racial impurity [3].   

The exhibition opened in Munich on 19 July - one day after the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung - and included 650 modernist pieces, chaotically hung and accompanied by notices encouraging the viewer to ridicule the work and vilify the artist responsible.

 

Ironically, however, over a million people visited this exhibition in Munich; three times more than visited the one consisting of the very best that German art had to offer. This is perhaps not surprising when one considers that works by many leading international artists - such as Klee, Kokoschka, and Kandinsky - were on display. When the show toured other German and Austrian cities, it attracted a million more visitors [4]. 

 

II.

So, finally, we return to the question asked in the title of this post: What if the Nazis had embraced modern art? 

 

In other words, (i) what would that have meant for the development of German culture during (and after) the Third Reich? and (ii) what would that have meant for the development of modern art and its reception within the rest of the world?  

Unfortunately, whilst it's always amusing to ask such questions, this one doesn't really fly unless you remove Hitler from the scenario. For the Führer's thinking on what constitutes great art - and what constitutes degenerate rubbish - was clear, consistent, and not open to debate. 

 

Hitler despised every innovative and non-representational style of art that had emerged during his lifetime; Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism ... you name it, he hated it - including, as we have seen, German Expressionism, even when produced by a devoted Nazi such as Emil Nolde.

 

So perhaps it's more productive to ask: What was the result of the Nazi rejection of modern art? 

 

Well, as one commentator rightly notes, being banned by the Nazis turned out to have a silver lining: 

 

"'This artwork became more attractive abroad, or certainly in anti-Nazi circles it gained value because the Nazis opposed it, and I think that over the longer run it was good for modern art to be viewed as something that the Nazis detested and hated.'" [5]

 

It's certainly the case that several of the artists featured in the exhibition are now considered among the greats not just of modern art, but within the long history and tradition of Western art. As another art historian writes, the "'stigmatization of modernism caused by the National Socialists is partly responsible for the current boom in modern art [... having] created a canon, so to speak, that had not existed previously.'" [6]  

Further - and crucially - as Peter Schjeldahl points out:

 

"The glamour of martyrdom came to halo modern artists with political virtues that few of them either sought or merited. This set the stage, in Cold War America, for the public acceptance of Abstract Expressionism as, for all its esoteric aesthetics, a potent symbol of liberal democracy [...]" [7]

I conclude, in agreement with Schjeldahl: "Divorcing our thinking about modern culture from the residual consequences of 'Degenerate Art' probably can't be done." [8]  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Joseph Goebbels, quoted by Peter Adam in Art of the Third Reich, (Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1992), p. 56.

 

[2] See the widely distributed pamphlet written by Joseph Goebbels entitled Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler: Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932), in which he attempts to make clear what is meant by National Socialism and why it is, in fact, first and foremost an uncompromising spiritual revolution. 

 

[3] Over 5000 works were initially seized, including 1052 by Nolde, 759 by Heckel, 639 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and 508 by Max Beckmann, as well as smaller numbers of works by such artists as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. It is interesting to note that only six of the 112 artists featured in the Degenerate Art Exhibition were Jewish. 

 

[4] Of course, whilst some came because they realised it would be their last chance to see great works of modern art in Germany, many also came to mock and be scandalised; for when it comes to modern art, public opinion isn't all that different from Hitler's - it's obscene, blasphemous, pretentious, infantile, etc.

 

[5] Jonathan Petropoulos, professor of European History and author of several books on art and politics in the Third Reich, quoted by Lucy Burns in 'Degenerate art: why Hitler hated modernism', on the BBC news website (6 November, 2013): click here.

[6] Ruth Heftig, quoted by Peter Schjeldahl in his essay 'The Anti-Modernists', The New Yorker, (March, 2014): click here to read online.  

[7] Peter Schjeldahl, op. cit. 

[8] Ibid.

Operation Werewolf

Meine Werwolfzähne beißen den Feind

Werwolf was the brilliantly sinister codename for a plan to create a resistance force operating behind enemy lines that would strike terror into the hearts of the Allied forces as they advanced into Germany, similar - in the Nazi imagination - to the way in which their barbarian forefathers had struck terror into the hearts of the Romans who dared venture into the dark forests north of the Rhine only to find the skulls of their dead comrades nailed to the trees.

Who came up with the codename is unknown, although Hitler clearly had a penchant for names containing the word wolf and regarded the creature as his totem animal. It's also possible that Werwolf alluded to a novel by Hermann Löns, popular with figures on the far-right, including the Nazis.
          

What we do know is that in the late summer of 1944 Himmler ordered the formation of an elite force of volunteers drawn from the SS and Hitler Youth and trained to engage in clandestine activities and guerrilla warfare. The Allies soon got wind of this and Time magazine ran an article speculating on how the Nazis would attempt to prolong hostilities indefinitely by going underground and establishing sleeper cells.

Seeking to heighten and exploit such fears - whilst obviously realising that the game was up - Goebbels gave a speech on 23 March, 1945, in which he urged every German citizen to fight to the death and effectively become a werewolf. This would later cause problems for the Allies when seeking to identify those responsible for attacks; were they coordinated and carried out by trained fighters as part of a commando unit, or by lone wolves acting independently.  

Shortly afterwards, Radio Werwolf began broadcasting from outside Berlin. Each transmission would open with the sound of a wolf howling and when not encouraging every German to stand their ground and offer total resistance, it issued threats of revenge upon those who collaborated with the enemy.

These broadcasts further spooked the occupying forces, particularly the Americans, who were encouraged by their commanders to believe that every German was a monster in disguise. Unfortunately, this resulted in unnecessarily draconian measures being introduced and atrocities committed against German civilians by Allied troops during and immediately after the War.

Ultimately, like so much else about Nazi Germany, Werwolf was essentially a potent mix of medieval myth and modern propaganda; a mad fantasy which lacked any real bite or strategic value (not to mention material resources). The German people were all too willing to work with the Allies and there was no serious resistance, even if there were a handful of Nazi fanatics hiding here and there in forest huts - much as there were a few old Japanese soldiers holding out on tiny Pacific islands long after the War had ended. 

That's fascism ... fascinating - but fraudulent (and, who knows, perhaps fascinating because fraudulent).

Existence is Elusive 1: In Memory of Irmgard Keun and The Artificial Silk Girl

Irmgard Keun (1905-1982)
Photo: Ullstein Bild / Getty Images

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but there doesn't seem to be any similar kind of objection to judging a work by its title and Irmgard Keun's 1932 novel has such an absolutely fabulous title - Das Kunstseidene Mädchen - that I immediately ordered a copy on Amazon.

In part, The Artificial Silk Girl was inspired by Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) - a work that created a literary sensation at the time and which is still regarded today as one of the most important works of German modernism. Keun had met Döblin at a literary event in Cologne and he encouraged her to write, rightly recognising that her narrative skills and extraordinary powers of observation would bring her success as an author.

However, it's important to also acknowledge the influence of Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925). Keun was determined to write the German equivalent to this bestselling American novel and to create a strong female character to rival the young flapper Lorelei. In Doris, who heads to the Big City wearing a stolen fur coat and a pair of knickers held together with seven rusty safety pins in order to become a movie star, I believe she did so. The book was an instant smash.

Unfortunately, the Nazis were not impressed and not amused by The Artificial Silk Girl. Not only did they ban its sale, but they destroyed every copy they could lay their paws on. Joseph Goebbels and friends at the Reich Chamber of Culture thought the work degenerate and un-German; a prime example of what they termed asphalt literature filled with low-life characters who deserved to be placed in concentration camps rather than made sympathetic.

Amusingly - and to her immense credit - Keun didn't take this lying down; she attempted to sue the Nazi regime for loss of income. Sadly, she was unsuccessful in this and, in effect, the Nazis had terminated her career as a writer. She left Germany - and her Hitler supporting husband - in 1936, and spent the following years drifting around Europe in search of a new start. Alas, despite having many famous friends and lovers in the literary world, a life of anonymity, alcoholism, and homelessness followed.

In 1966, Keun was committed to the psychiatric ward of Bonn State Hospital, remaining there until 1972. It was only after an article appeared in Stern magazine in 1977, that the public rediscovered her and new editions of her books were published. By this time, however, she was too old and too ill to really care.

Keun died of lung cancer in 1982.

Note: a sister post, in which I review the novel in more detail, can be read by clicking here.