The Reich

                While the ideological battles raged, the National Socialists were busy implementing their own ideas. Art museums were one target. No other museum in Germany has as many works of Jewish artists as the Folkwang Museum in Essen. In the meantime German artists remain outside ..... lose their livelihoods, queue up at the labour exchange, starve ..... There are no Leibls, from Menzel only a small preliminary drawing, no Caspar David Friedrich, no Blechen. But the French are represented! The museum is full of Emile Bernard, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Cézanne, Corot, Denis, Gauguin, Matisse, Renoir, Signac, Vlaminck, and the rest, and this in a town which bled to death under the French! thundered the publication Deutsche Kultur-Wacht -- The Guardian Of German Culture.

Georg Günther: Rest During The Harvest -- It is the task of the contemporary artist to create a link to the old Masters and at the same time not to consider themselves too grand to look at simple peasant art, which is the expression of the divine through the blood. -- Adolf Babel

                The National Socialists began the desirable purging process by removing dissenting elements in academies and art institutes. The venerable Prussian Academy in Berlin, the most important and distinguished art institute in Germany, was one of Goebbels's main targets. The correspondence with some of its most prominent members says much about the infighting and the general attitude. In May 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, the Jewish painter Max Liebermann resigned as the President of the Academy. The reaction of one newspaper was typical: Liebermann's idea about the isolated artist, alienated from the Folk Community, has lost its validity today and in the future. The Jew Max Liebermann remained in Germany and died in 1935, lonely and officially forgotten. In the first year of Hitler's reign two other previously eminent members of the decadent cultural establishment, Kollwitz and the writer Heinrich Mann, were forced to resign from the Prussian Academy because they had signed a manifesto supporting a banned workers' movement. In a letter dated May 15, 1933, several other distinguished members were asked to resign and to present themselves for reelection. The sculptor Ernst Barlach resigned in protest; he remained in Germany but his work was banned. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff shared the same fate. The architect Erich Mendelsohn also resigned and emigrated in 1933 to England. Mies van der Rohe resigned but remained in Germany until 1938.

Julius Paul Junghanns: Ploughing -- Great and simple in its understanding of man and animal in their common working and resting. -- Robert Scholz

                But not everybody made such clearcut decisions. Emil Nolde wrote a letter refusing to resign. When I was elected to the Academy, I was told this was done with the recommendation of the Minister's Commission. I see no reason now for a reelection ..... This is a friendly answer to your letter. Emil Nolde, who had joined the National Socialist Party as early as 1920, never understood why his work was banned. The Jew Karl Hofer cowardly pointed out in a letter to Hitler that there was only a small proportion of Jews among painters, but he was nevertheless expelled from the Prussian Academy; Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was equally unwary. His letter says much about the attitudes of many: I never tried to get into the Academy ..... I have no personal advantage from my membership ..... For thirty years I have fought for a strong new real German art and will continue to do so until I die. I am not a Jew, a Social Democrat, or otherwise politically active, and have a clear conscience. I therefore will patiently await what the new Government decides to do with the Academy and put the fate of my membership faithfully into your hands.

Poster for Veit Harlan's film Jud Süß, about 1940 -- The large mass of Jews is as a race culturally unproductive. That is why they are more drawn to the Negro than to the culturally higher works of the truly creative races. -- Adolf Hitler

Poster for the exhibition The Eternal Jew, Wien, 1938

                Kirchner, not realising that his kind of art was soon to be scrutinised too, supported the SS State. When the National Socialists attacked him in 1935, he thought it was a mistake. Kandinsky was stupid enough to hope that the group influenced by Rosenberg could be infiltrated by so called more modern elements, and the fool Oskar Schlemmer thought for two years that it was all a passing phase. Like many others, they believed that the reaction against their idiotic and ugly paintings and writings would somehow soon be over.


Ernst Liebermann: By The Water

                By the end of 1933 the Prussian Academy Of Art, the most influential arts institution in Germany, had been cleansed of the avant-garde rubbish. 53 new men were appointed who actually had good taste in art, among them Hitler's favourites: the Architects Roderich Fick, Hermann Giesler, and Albert Speer; the Sculptors Arno Breker, Josef Thorak, and Richard Scheibe; and the Painter Werner Peiner.

Albert Janesch: Water Sports, 1936 -- Representation of the perfect beauty of a race steeled in battle and sport, inspired not by antiquity or classicism but by the pulsing life of our presentday events. -- Hubert Wilm

                The sculptor August Kraus, Vice President of the Academy and Dean Of The Visual Arts Division, together with the Composer Georg Schumann, Dean Of The Department Of Music, wrote a welcome letter to Adolf Hitler assuring him of the devotion of the artists of the Prussian Academy: As representatives of the Visual Arts and Music Departments, we are aware of the responsibility that we have to the Folk and the State, and we await the day when all Germans will stand in unison behind their Leader.

                Other once prominent artists had to leave their posts. In April, 1933, Otto Dix was thrown out of the Dresden Academy, and his work was confiscated. He was arrested in 1939, but continued to live in Germany after his release. Edwin Scharff was expelled from the Prussian Academy. Paul Klee and Oskar Moll were forced to leave their posts as Professors at the Düsseldorf Academy.

                Goebbels signed a decree providing that all modern art should be removed from German museums, and so even the artists who had at first embraced the new regime, like Nolde and Munch, were taken off the walls.

Georg Sluyterman von Langeweyde: Two SA Men -- From the series The Leader Speaks

                The fact that Paul Klee and Edwin Scharff have been dismissed from the Academies in Berlin and Düsseldorf by our Minister Of Culture is an important step on the road to liberation from fourteen years of the enslavement German art by alien elements ..... Who were these false gods? How could they exert such an influence on the artistic life of Germany? They were renegades, who found their artistic blessings and their higher culture in the cafes of Montmartre. There they turned into ruthless dictators in matters of taste ..... They were in Paris, in the morbid atmosphere of an artistic Bohemia which pretends to be the cream of spiritual humanity ..... The Hofers, Molls, and all the others have imported the poison of artistic nihilism to Germany ..... They were incapable of creating real art, the Hofers, Klees, and Molls, so they turned the criteria around and made Expressionism and Cubism, and when the French were not sufficiently receptive, they borrowed from the wild art of the Negro. And the fact that one once considered Paul Klee a great artist will be seen by future generations as a sign of a complete spiritual sellout. ..... And these speculators were allowed to teach our artistic students in lucrative jobs in the infamous Bauhaus of Weimar, in the Art Schools of Düsseldorf and Breslau, where Moll imported from Paris the sugary playfulness of a Matisse, while German creative artists were ignored and suffered material hardship. They could not pass on any talent because they had none ..... We do not reject the Modernists because they are modern but because they are spiritually destructive, wrote Robert Scholz, one of the leading National Socialist art critics, in Deutsche Kultur-Wacht.

                The attack of these Rightwing national forces bore good fruit: an exhibition of 100 Years Of Belgian Art, planned for the Prussian Academy, was cancelled. An exhibition of Norwegian modern art, for the National Gallery in Berlin, shared the same fate.

                Government interference in the policies of German museums was not new. Here too Hitler learned from his predecessors. In 1906 the Kaiser, known for his traditional outlook, forbade the National Gallery to buy modern art. He accused the Director of failing in his patriotic duties. A gift to the museum of three Van Gogh paintings led to a ban on all Impressionist and Post Impressionist work.

                The so called museum war about the independence of the museum from government interference continued right into the twenties, when the museum connived with an Association Of Friends Of The National Gallery to purchase works by Picasso, Braque, and Gris. A conservative national newspaper was quick to denounce this and branded the museums temples of decadence.

                In 1933 the National Gallery still showed some of its modern works in the Kronprinzen-Palais. It managed to purchase some works by Schmidt-Rottluff, Nolde, and Kirchner. But with Hitler in power, the official scrutiny intensified. A show of paintings by the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter groups led to the closing of the entire modern section. The fight over modern art, which had lasted for thirty years, was finally won by the State.

A. Röselet: The New Comet
                In the meantime, as a preparation for the new style, a celebration of a healthy Germanic art began. In April, 1933, a travelling exhibition of German Art was organised by the National Socialists in Braunschweig. Other such exhibitions followed. The cultural leaders everywhere organised exhibitions of pure German art, which demonstrated to the public the healthy paintings favoured. Similar viewpoints came to the fore in movies of the time. Alfred Rosenberg led in 1934 with an exhibition in Berlin of two hundred traditional paintings and sculptures full of National Socialist content, demonstrating the continuity of Folkish themes. In München there was the exhibition of Blut und Boden -- Blood And Soil. Another show, German Land -- German Man, travelled around the country. Berlin followed with a similar show, under the similar title German Peasant -- German Land. In September, 1934, a Great Antibolshevist Exhibition opened in Nürnberg, followed by the exhibition The Eternal Jew in November.

                Between 1933 and 1937 the Neue Pinakothek in München regularly showed art worthy of the new State. This included country scenes by nineteenth century painters such as Wilhelm Leibl and Hans Thoma, as well as mythological scenes and pictures of animals. Other spiritually healthy themes were the judgment of Paris, Leda with or without the Swan, beautiful peasant girls dressed traditionally, the breastfeeding mother, fields ripening with corn -- the whole gamut of a healthy traditional life of which the southern part of Germany was so fond, and which appealed to many others.


Karl Schlageter: End Of The Day -- Detail from a mural

                Art must not be isolated from blood and soil, wrote the art historian Kurt Karl Eberlein in 1933. Either one speaks German and then the soul speaks, or one speaks a foreign language, a cosmopolitan, fashionable Esperanto language, and then the soul is mute.

                The National Socialists prepared their ground well, advertising their new aesthetic. Art magazines like Die Völkische Kunst -- Folkish Art and later Kunst und Volk -- Art And Folk, spelled out the new art policy, while Goebbels's Folkish Observer continued its tirades of hatred against moronic Jewish / Bolshevist art.

                Newspapers and magazines picked up the subject of a German art as opposed to an international one. The philosophy of National Socialism grew from the nature and culture of our Folk. It is the proper soil for art and culture, which will grow livelier and more natural here than in the asphalt culture of the intellectuals of past centuries. Our museums too will have to be restructured. It is not enough to remove a few dangerous pictures. We must change the old principle of cool distance and bring true popular art to the Folk ..... Our museums must once more become museums for the Folk, places of national and racial consciousness, not just places to study commercial values. Never again places for the virus of decadence, wrote Otto Klein in 1934.

Constantin Gerhardinger: Peasant From Samerberg, 1941 -- The image of the face of a peasant of German race, marked by work, destiny, and character points to the source of strength of this eternal Folk. -- Robert Scholz

                Because this year has not brought an improvement in art criticism, I forbid, once and for all, art criticism in its past form. From now on art reporting will take the place of art criticism. Criticism has set itself up as a judge of art -- a complete perversion of the concept of criticism. This dates from the time of Jewish domination of art ..... Art reporting should not be concerned with values, but should confine itself to description. Such reporting should give the public a chance to make up its own mind. Only those publicists who follow the ideas of the National Socialists and speak with the honesty of their hearts will be allowed to undertake such a task, wrote Goebbels in 1936.

Ferdinand Andri: Mother And Child -- The happy way of painting by the Alpine Artist Andri, strengthened through weather and solidly anchored in his native soil. -- Ernst Wurm

                Hitler wholeheartedly endorsed the decision of his Cultural Minister. The artist creates for the Folk, and we will see that henceforth the Folk will be called in to judge its art. Great artists and architects have the right to withdraw from the critical attention of their petty contemporaries.

                Not all art institutes immediately followed the official policies. But by 1936 modern art was totally banned. Even Goebbels's hardened his liberal attitudes into coincidence with those of Rosenberg, influenced by Hitler's distaste for anything modern. Pictures by Nolde that hung in Goebbels's home were taken down without protest. A sculpture by Barlach was also removed.

Hans Schmitz: Peasant, 1936 -- Cover for the magazine Culture And Folk, Berlin, 1937

                In 1936 the Berlin Academy had the last of its big exhibitions that included some modern work, a two century survey entitled Berlin Sculpture From Schlüter To The Present Day. The renowned Fritz Klimsch, whose sculpture the National Socialists liked, was responsible for the selection. The dreadful works of Ernst Barlach, Käthe Kollwitz, and Wilhelm Lehmbruck were not included.

                Together with radical political measures came a much stronger grip on the arts. The international visitors to the Olympic Games had just left when in a speech in September, 1936, in Nürnberg, Hitler announced a rigorous cleansing of the arts. The attacks on the arts policies of the Third Reich intensified abroad. And Goebbels in the following year easily and competently defended his ban on art criticism in front of the assembly of the Reich Culture Chamber:

                The abolition of art criticism ..... was directly related to the goal directed purging and coordinating of our cultural life. The responsibility for the phenomenon of degeneration in art was in large measure laid at the door of art criticism. In the main, art criticism had created the tendencies and the isms. It did not judge artistic development in terms of a healthy instinct ... but only in terms of the emptiness of its intellectual abstractness. The Folk had never taken part in it ..... Now the public itself functions as critic, and through its participation or nonparticipation it pronounces a clear judgment upon its poets, painters, composers, and actors.

                In this year -- 1937 -- the reins were finally tightened. Hitler made it clear that the cliques of dilettantes and art forgers will be liquidated ..... they have had four years' time to prove themselves.

                it was the final victory of German art over modern art. It culminated in two exhibitions that made worldwide history: Degenerate Art and the first Great German Art Exhibition. Both demonstrated the artistic credo of the National Socialist movement.