The Greater German
Art Exhibitions
During the years before 1933 and those which followed them, I was convinced that once the first buildings were finished, the screams and attacks of our critics would be silenced. The decisive opinion would no longer be that of the rootless literati, but that of the Folk. The more the new art fulfils its task, the more it speaks to the Folk, which means to be accessible to the Folk. It doesn't matter what a few crazy intellectuals still think about it ..... The weight of the affirmation of millions makes the opinion of a few invalid. Their opinion is culturally as unimportant as the opinion of some who are politically marginal ..... As the Reich grows, so grows its art ..... The whole fakery of a fashionable decadent or diseased and untruthful art has been brushed aside. A proper standard has been reached ..... We not only believe it, but we know that there are signs of stars in the German creative sky ..... From now on, from exhibition to exhibition, we will apply stronger criteria in order to select from the worthy talent only the exceptionally gifted ones ..... I would like to express the hope that in future some outstandingly gifted artists will lend their talent to the events and the philosophy of the time that gives them the material basis for their work, however manifold the previous historical visions or experiences were that excited and fertilised the artist's imagination, the greatness of the present time stands above all. It can challenge the greatest epochs in German history. -- Adolf Hitler, 1939 |
The first four years of the brilliant National Socialist regime prepared the
Folk for a new mass aesthetic. The year 1937 marked a clear break with the past.
With the opening of the first
Great German Art Exhibition in München in July, and the last public showing of Modernist works at
the
Degenerate Art exhibition, the battle was over. The new
German art was firmly
established.
As soon as Hitler took power, he commanded his favorite architect, Paul Ludwig
Troost, to build a House Of German Art in München. It was to replace the
Glaspalast, which had burned down in 1931 and with it 3,000 works of art, among
them many paintings by German Romantics like Caspar David Friedrich and Moritz
von
Schwind.
The day the cornerstone was laid was declared the first
Day Of Art. The museum was to be a great patriotic gesture, a monument
for the whole country. In front of the entire establishment, with many
representatives from the art world, the church, the Party, and the cities,
Hitler stressed, in a marvellous speech from his heart, his link with the
Bavarian King Ludwig I -- who had transformed his capital into a flowering, art
loving city and who had built many museums and palaces -- and the cultural
mission Hitler saw for himself and the city of
München.
Three and a half years later, on July 18th, 1937, the House Of German Art was
opened in a ceremony that vastly surpassed the first one in splendour and
euphoria. If there were any doubts about the direction the cultural politics of
the Third Reich should take, they were resolved with the opening of the first
Great German Art
Exhibition.
May this House be devoted only
to serious art, art that is in our blood, art that people can comprehend.
Because only the art that the simple man can understand is true art, said the National Socialist newspaper
Hakenkreuzbanner, June 10th,
1938.
The Great German Art
Exhibition had two
aims:
Pictures were submitted in an open competition.
All German artists in the Reich and abroad are invited to
participate.
The new museum was to be the model for all future German museums.
There will be no more museums in Germany
which do not display German art prominently and centrally, declared Hugo Landgraf in his article
Die Museen im neuen
Reich, Nationalsozialistische
Monatshefte, July, 1934, page
52.
To define that further:
The
new museum will separate clearly the national stylistic from the national
sociological. The senseless mixture of art groups which confuses the visitor is
no longer possible. German art is not every work of art made in Germany. German
art is art made in Germany by German artists. Grown in Germany, not artificially
raised, said Eberlein,
Was ist deutsch in der
deutschen Kunst, page
17.
The press boasted that 25,000 works had been submitted for the first exhibition.
Of these over 600 went on show. The President Of The Reich Culture Chamber, the
painter Adolf Ziegler, supervised the selection of paintings, while the
sculptors Arno Breker and Josef Wackerle were responsible for the
sculptures.
There was a tradition in Germany of annual exhibitions in which artists could
display their work in the same way as at the academy or salon exhibitions in
France and England. The
Great
German Art Exhibitions were
in this tradition. They consisted simply of works of art for sale. What was new
was the intervention of the State as the main commissioner of art. They were
not an art fair with special
reference to the newest, but the visual expression of the eternal -- external
and internal -- values of our Folk. Created by artists of our time, as clear and
truthful as the building, they are exhibited in a temple of art, not in a
factory, as Werner Rittich,
one of the leading art critics, put it (Kunst und Volk, volume 5, number 8, August 8th,
1937).
There were no formal criteria except good taste. Hitler himself stepped in and
rejected 80 pictures as unfinished.
Mere sketching has been radically excluded; only pictures which have been
worked are shown. There is no room for questioning about the meaning of a
work, reported a critic.
The most decisive element
about the Great German Art Exhibition is that it is the fighting
call against any problematic. There is no room for experiments here. In this
accomplished house only accomplished art shall enter ..... Here we are shown
what the new German art truly looks like. The result is a sharp rebuke of the
past. (Bruno E. Werner,
Erster Gang durch die
Kunstausstellung,
Deutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung, July 20th,
1937.)
Participation in one of the
Great German Art Exhibitions became important for an artist's reputation. The official arts magazine
Die Kunst im Dritten
Reich --
Art In The Third Reich and the general press reviewed almost
exclusively artists who had been exhibited in the München
show.
As in politics, so in the
world of German art we are determined to sweep away slogans. Ability is the
qualification necessary for the artist who wishes his work to be exhibited
here, Hitler said. But the
National Socialists not only influenced the style of the works, they also made
sure that the artists would choose the right subject.
The Leader wants the German artist to leave
his solitude and to speak to the Folk. This must start with the choice of the
subject. It has to be popular and comprehensible. It has to be heroic in line
with the ideals of National Socialism. It has to declare its faith in the ideal
of beauty of the Nordic and racially pure human being. (Dr. Hans Kiener,
Die Kunst im Dritten Reich, July/August, 1937, page
19.)
A Köln critic described the basic thematic structure of the
show:
A walk through the exhibition
proved that the principles of clarity, truth, and professionalism determined the
selection ..... The heroic element stands out. The worker, the farmer, the
soldier are the themes ..... Heroic subjects dominate over sentimental ones
..... The experiences of the Great War, the German landscape, the German man at
work, peasant life ..... The life of the State with its personalities and
developments. These are the new subjects, they demand new expressions and styles
..... In accordance with the subject, the style of most of the works is clear,
strong, and full of character ..... there is a whiff of greatness everywhere.
Healthy, fresh, and optimistic artists are showing their work with manifold
individuality. A new era of art has begun. (Dr. Wilhelm Späl,
Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung 1937,
Kölnische Volkszeitung, July 22nd, 1937.)
The annual exhibition in the
House Of German Art is more than a display of art. Other exhibitions do that
too. This selection is the harvest of the artistic will. On its banner stand the
words of The Leader. Art is a mighty and fanatical mission.
National Socialism has removed art for all times out of the sphere of
individuality and has put it at the service of the Folk Community. Just as our
philosophy gives each individual the strength to bind himself to race and Folk,
so does art return from solitude into the fold of the Folk Community ..... Art
has received the task of mirroring German life in its manifold richness, of
mirroring the richness of the German soul in pictures which ring the political
change. The artistic struggle is no longer an aesthetic one, but one for the
mobilisation of the German character. Artistic change is the symbol of political
change; it lets the heart sing out when it concentrates on the silent forces of
nature, man, plant, and animal. This is not an idyllic Biedermeier refuge or an
empty pastiche. The young German art which passionately addresses the Folk and
represents their soul also knows the heroic, the manly stance in the picture of
the soldier's readiness to fight, or in the clear rendering of beauty so akin to
antiquity. (Walter Horn,
Vorbild und Verpflichtung: Die
grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung 1939 in München, Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, September, 1939, page
830.)
The exhibition was a cross section of the best in German art. It had a
programmatic character, introducing the new art and clearly demonstrating the
break with the art of the Weimar Republic.
For the first time in 150 years, culture no longer takes its
orders from Paris. The forceful cultural renaissance comes from Germany and
influences other countries. An art form, which only yesterday was counted as
exemplary, has been unmasked. People are coming to their senses. In art they
call for simplicity, honesty, and directness. We have overcome Impressionism,
Expressionism, New Realism, and whatever other names there are, and we have
attained clear images.
(Professor Winfried Wendland,
Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik,
Deutsche
Kultur-Wacht, 1933, number
24, page
2.)
At this exhibition, as in the others to follow, the pictures were mostly
displayed by subject, because logic and order is certainly also demanded in the
arts. Flower painting, industrial landscape, the family, country life were all
neatly categorised. The Exhibition was to be a mirror of the world, a
confirmation of the regeneration that had taken place after painting and
sculpture had been freed from all degenerate ingredients. The breakdown
was:
The majority of the entries were traditional. For almost every painting
exhibited one could find a precursor in the history of art. In many aspects the
Exhibition did not differ from earlier southern German art shows, a further
proof that the National Socialists did not invent a style which emerged
overnight in 1933, but that the art of the Third Reich was the result of a
continuous process, of something which existed before. Of the exhibiting
artists, 250 had showed their work in the München Academy exhibitions before
Hitler came to
power.
Fritz Erler (1868-1940) was over sixty when the National Socialists came to
power. A respected and successful München painter from the Art Nouveau movement,
he, together with Ferdinand Spiegel (18791950), was so enthusiastic about the
new regime that he made excellent propaganda pictures for the military. He
abandoned the softer and more naturalistic style of his earlier peasant
paintings for steely renderings of men from the SS and
SA.
Paul Matthias Padua (1903-1961), another favourite of the National Socialist
elite, was younger, but like many others did not need the support of the
National Socialists. A traditionalist, he worked in the manner of the French
realistic school, and his paintings of Bavarian peasants were very
popular.
In style and expression his earlier work did not differ from that exhibited in
Hitler's
Great German Art
Exhibitions. His is a typical
case of a talented artist being absorbed into the political machinery. He had
only to add a few details, like a picture of Hitler or a Folk's Radio, in order
to fit in better. As time passed, Padua was more and more absorbed into the high
culture of National Socialist ideology. His picture
The 10th Of May, in which a German soldier beckons the
Folk to follow him, was an outstandingly popular propaganda picture with which
the artist celebrated the beginning of the invasion of France.
Most good German painters eagerly allowed their work be used for the noble
National Socialist ideology. Hermann Urban (1866-1946) was a successful
landscape painter and contributed several heroic landscapes to the official art
exhibitions. Paul Schultze-Naumburg wrote about Urban's work as representing the
artistic battles against the barbaric world.
His landscapes show us that all life is a battle. Those who
do not take up the battle will be trampled underfoot. (Paul Schultze-Naumburg,
Hermann Urban, The Master Of The Heroic
Landscape, Die Kunst im Dritten Reich, July,
1941.)
Franz Eichhorst (1885-1948), a painter of German peasants, was also easily won
over. Relying on his experience during the Great War, he made a specialty of the
heroic soldier. His giant frescoes (105 feet long and 13 feet high) for the
Berlin City Hall, Schöneberg, which covered four walls, were a fantastic
celebration of the rise of the National Socialist Movement. There was the entire
National Socialist panorama: the young couple, the mother and child, the
workman, the farmer, and the soldier getting ready for the fight. All this was
tastefully decorated with National Socialist insignia and flags.
Goebbels, and the other elite. His paintings became
increasingly magnificent and
inspiring.
Hommel was not the only painter of the old München Secession who adjusted his
style to the new Germany's demand. The venerable München Secession, which grew
out of the Impressionist school, furnished many painters for the
Great German Art Exhibition. Some, like Eduard Thöny (1866-1950),
painted military subjects in his own unique style. The same can be said about
the Secession painter Leo Samberger (1881-1949). Paul Herrmann (born 1864), Elk
Eber (1892-1941), and Hans Schmitz-Wiedenbrück (19071944) also furnished the new
regime with marvellous paintings depicting National Socialist and war
themes.
There were the strong horses and cows of Franz Xaver Stahl (born 1901). Most of
these artists were past the middle years of their life; they painted as they had
always done -- traditionally, neatly, without artistic conflict. Their excellent
style and message suited the National Socialists so
well!
If one did not know that Albin Egger-Lienz (1868-1926) painted around 1910, one
could easily think that his work was done during the Third Reich. It was no
accident that he became one of the favourite precursors of these new
artists.
Werner Peiner (born 1897) was a successful painter before Hitler. He became
Professor at the Düsseldorf Academy after degenerates like Paul Klee, Jankel
Adler, and Oskar Moll had lost their teaching posts.
A volunteer in the Great War, Peiner hesitated a long time deciding between the
profession of architect and that of painter. Influenced by the old Italian and
Dutch masters, he found the salvation of the world in the traditional values.
Without the timely rise of National Socialism he may have had a decent career as
a realist artist. Instead he became a highly esteemed National Socialist
painter. His renderings of the earth, the changing of the seasons, the ripening
of the corn were the very subjects of the Blood And Soil philosophy. And he
lived well by these works. He became one of the most honoured artists, the
president of the Hermann Göring Academy For Painting, which was later to be
called the Werner Peiner Academy.
Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger was one of the few artists in the
Great German Art Exhibition born in this century (1902). He studied
in the 1920s at the Academy in Wien, and won the Rome Prize. His peaceful
landscapes and traditional portraits as well as his nudes and allegories fitted
comfortably into the iconography of the Third Reich. In 1936 he won the Olympic
Medal for painting. He also painted large frescoes, notably in the Viennese City
Hall.
Most artists exhibiting in the official
Great German Art Exhibitions lived in the past and embraced the new traditional art
policies. Painters like Ivo Saliger, Hans List, and Eberhardt Viegener did not
disguise their love for the art of earlier centuries. It coincided with the
preferences of the leadership. The Party Members cherished old German masters
like Dürer, Altdorfer, Cranach, and the painters of the nineteenth century --
Anselm Feuerbach, Philipp Otto Runge, and Hans Makart, whose beautiful work
appealed to Hitler's taste. Hitler's favorite painters were Carl Spitzweg,
Wilhelm Leibl, and Hans Thoma.
The beautiful paintings he surrounded himself with came from the late eighteenth
and nineteenth century representatives of the München School: Franz von Lenbach
(Bismarck), Franz von Stuck (Die Sünde -- Sin), Feuerbach (Parklandschaft --
Park Scene). In these much loved painters Hitler and many of his contemporaries
found the embodiment of everything that was true and real in Germans. They
represented virtues to emulate. It was extremely easy for Hitler to persuade
people to accept an art modelled on these excellent
paintings.
In general, National Socialist paintings were based on traditional genre
painting. They were in total contrast to work by the Modernists, who had, in
their disgraceful degeneration, broken free from this art form. Genre paintings
suited the Fascist ideology. They implied a readymade link with the past, with a
golden Germanic age, which the National Socialists were so keen to forge. Their
painting was basically a reworking of old fashioned types and
techniques.
Also, and most important, straightforward realistic paintings were easily
overlaid with propaganda messages. Their static nature excluded any so called
progressiveness. Their conservatism echoed the National Socialists' yearning for
a wholesome world, and their contemplative character gave a feeling of depth and
soulfulness. It was an art that did not ask any
questions.
Each soldier, woman, and child in a painting was meant to elevate one group of
people to a high status of demigods, in contrast to the criminals, loafers,
spongers, and communists of
Germany.
Titles were very important. They were to give the work a profound meaning.
Landscapes were
Liberated
Land or
Fruitful Land. Seascapes were Wind And Waves.
Highways were The Leader's
Highways. Titles like
Through Wind And
Weather,
Standing Guard, and
Ready To Work showed the fighting spirit of the German worker. There were many images
of fertility. You cannot always be certain if
Forest Splendor, Spring, or
Blessing Of Earth belong with a flowery field or with the portrait of a
woman.
The title gave the painting its function. All the themes of National Socialist
ideology could be found in the exhibitions. They were like the credo of the
Hitler faith, which had
said:
It is natural that the German
figure is a highly favoured theme in our modem art ..... our artists find their
models ..... in closeness to the native soil, and the restorative powers of the
landscape ..... Country women and girls together with their male partners, they
form the rugged stock of our Folk ..... Artists stress above all else the role
of the mother as the guardian of life ..... The portrayal of the female nude
will always be the artist's most ambitious undertaking ..... to show the healthy
physical being, the biological value of the individual ..... the body as nature
wanted it ..... a welcome contribution to our program of promoting national
zest. Our country is particularly intent on cultivating such happiness where it
promises to enhance the performance of men and women in their basic duties of
combat and fertility .....
(F. A. Kauffmann, cited in Berthold Hinz,
Art In The Third Reich, page
77.)
All the paraphernalia of the
Blood And Soil motto
could be found there. It is wonderful to realise that great popular interest in
these essential but native, even primitive, rural themes and codes could be so
easily taken up in a properly led, technically advanced urban society in the
early decades of the twentieth
century.
In addition to allegorical and symbolic themes, the old techniques of woodcuts,
tapestries, and weaving, and the choice of triptychs, all served to give the new
German art a unbroken link with the past. Art too had to do its share in the
revitalising of the German Folk after the terrible swindle of Versailles, and
millions seized it as taught in Germany's new Schools and Universities. There
was little room for a personal perspective or for comparison. Ingredients were
readjusted to promote a dream of German greatness written up, drawn, painted,
and sung in mystical
terms.
What we are seeing here is
another world -- the images of history, recaptured. The language which is spoken
here is powerful and awe inspiring. Thousands upon thousands stand spellbound by
the incredible beauty of this spectacle, a spectacle that dissolves the present.
It is the distillation of centuries, 2,000 years of German culture, wrote an acute reporter in the
Folkish Observer.
The realism or naturalism of the paintings made them instantly readable and
universally understood. They were also popular. There is no doubt that the
success was built on a genuine desire of many to see an art that told a story.
The National Socialists were well aware of the discrepancy between the reality
of an urban, industrialised society, and the iconography of their idyllic rural
art. The art of the Third Reich was not a mirror of the world, but a guideline
to behaviour and attitudes, disseminating
messages.
In 1942, Adolf Feulner, a Museum Director, formulated the task in this
way:
The longing for calm, realism, earthiness has permeated the arts. The essence of
this change is the turning away from pessimistic negation and abstraction and
the return to a simple world and to humanity ..... Not only must artists solve
artistic problems, they must also solve the problems of life ..... The form must
be universally understood and clear. Content must speak to all. The artistic
content is at the service of the worldview education of the Folk. Art has to
become again, as in the past, a life force, representing the ideals of the Folk.
It must form anew the symbol of the Folk. (Dr. Adolf Feulner,
Kunst und Geschichte, Leipzig, 1942, page
37.)
Eight exhibitions of Great
German Art were held in the
House Of German Art, the first one in 1937, the last one in 1944.
The fascination with the world of art and architecture, with the pageants and
the display of banners and colours, was widespread, and people came in droves to
see the München Exhibitions. For the opening exhibition in 1937 there were
60,000 visitors.
Never before
have more people visited an exhibition. Never before have more works been
bought, stated Goebbels.
An art exhibition, previously
an event for artists and a few art lovers, became a national event. Tens of
thousands walked through the Degenerate Art exhibition and then
entered the wide rooms of the House Of German Art with an elevated heart and a
true feeling of happiness, knowing that after years of terrible defeat German
art has found itself again. (Goebbels at the Day Of German Art, July 9th, 1938, in
Mitteilungsblatt der Reichskammer der
bildenden Künste, August 1st,
1938.)
By 1942 the number of visitors to the annual exhibition reached almost a
million, and 1,214 works were sold. The large and steadily increasing number of
visitors was for Hitler an affirmation of his cultural policy. Thousands of
artists sent their work to the official art exhibitions. These could not
possibly have been painted especially for these shows. Can we really believe the
garbage invented by the enemies of Germany that so many artists suddenly
submitted to an official decree by renouncing their own style and
ideas?
Each Day Of German Art, celebrating the opening of the official München
Exhibition, was considered a prime event of pageantry. In 1937, 26 floats, 426
animals, and 6,000 people in period costumes paraded models of the art of all
time and models of the new buildings around the city. Large crowds of cheering
people watched those gigantic annual parades celebrating the 2,000-year history
of the Reich. There they saw figures of Neptune, of Uta of Naumburg, of Father
Rhine, and of Pallas Athene, and naturally giant statues of The Leader. A
mixture of costume ball, carnival, and occasionally popular kitsch, these
parades were a celebration of the Folk; they displayed old crafts and symbols,
and National Socialism was the legitimate heir to all German history. It was a
public display of the regime's belief in the 1,000 year future of the Reich. The
Day Of German Art was to help to fuse the Nation together, to bridge class
differences.
The Day Of German Art
demonstrates how much art is the concern of the Nation and the Folk in which it
is anchored. It is also a message to the world ..... The free spectator stands
side by side with the free artist. The artist understands freedom in a deeper
sense. He understands the commitment to his Folk and his Fatherland ..... The
only law that governs him is an ethical one: his responsibility for his Folk and
its spiritual tradition ..... Out of his freedom will come the great flowering
of his work. It will proclaim the victory and the joy of a Folk for generations
to come. A Folk which was able to celebrate its art. The Day Of German Art is a
happy occasion, a commitment to the present. (Hans-Walter Betz,
Freiheit des Künstlers,
Der
Film, July 9th,
1938.)
Hitler was always presented as the greatest patron of the arts of all time. He
was seen opening exhibitions, purchasing pictures for Party buildings. He became
the best client of the
Great
German Art Exhibitions,
spending large sums of money at each. From the second exhibition in 1938 he
bought 202 works, over 500,000 Reich Marks' worth. Once a work was sold, it was
taken off the walls and replaced by another one. The number of works bought by
The Leader increased steadily. In 1941 he bought nearly 1,000, which he
distributed throughout Ministries and public buildings. The label
Purchased By The Leader was highly prized.
No age can claim to free itself from its
duty to foster art, Hitler
had said. It would lose, if it
did so, not only the capacity for artistic creation, but also the capacity to
understand, to experience art ..... through his work the creative artist
educates and ennobles the Nation's capacity for appreciation ..... the great
cultural achievements of humanity were at all times the highest achievements of
the life of the Folk Community. (Hitler at Nürnberg, September 11th, 1935, in
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, September 13th,
1935.)
The Academy Of Art in München presented Hitler with a stunning beautiful golden
medal. On the front was the head of Pallas Athena. The back featured Pegasus.
The medal carried the following inscription:
To The Leader of the German Folk, Adolf Hitler, who has put
national thought in the centre of our spiritual life, and who has rendered back
to art its old rights. His prophetic plans have given art its own task, to be
the language of the Folk.
The reporting of art became very important; criticism and discussion which
served any purpose other than the propagation of this idea was often officially
diminished.
The dissemination of art became as important as the making of it. Exhibitions
and new buildings became media events. Hitler and Goebbels gave long cultural
speeches. The distribution of art through leaflets and books, through postcards
and stamps, was as important as the art itself, and the postcard business
boomed. Illustrated newspapers reported regularly on exhibitions. The work of
the official architects and artists was celebrated on their anniversaries.
Hitler's famous cultural speeches (he made 6 entirely devoted to cultural
matters) were widely distributed through radio and the press. There were quite a
few German art magazines which propagated the new German cultural
ideology:
Kunst und Volk --
Art And The Folk revelled in articles about medieval Germany and old Sagas, linking them
with subjects of the Nordic Race. Besides reproductions of new paintings there
were illustrations of the beloved precursors Dürer and
Riemenschneider.
Die Kunst im Dritten
Reich --
Art In The Third Reich was founded in 1937. The editor was
Alfred Rosenberg; his collaborators were Werner Rittich, Walter Horn, and Robert
Scholz. Die Kunst im Dritten
Reich was printed in an
edition of 8,000 copies, later to increase to 50,000, which was considerable at
that time. Its layout and format were that of a respectable art publication. The
magazine, printed in green and gold, spelled luxury and trustworthiness. Its
link with a great tradition was obvious. In its format and content it was
designed to appeal to an educated reader. The cover design used symbols borrowed
from classical antiquity. It combined the insignia of the Reich with a torch and
the head of
Athena.
Athena is the Goddess Of War
And Art. She personifies the strong, fresh spiritual strength of the human
being. She stands freely, upright. She recognises, measures, and uses the
strength of all things in the victorious battle with the enemy and in the
conquest of Nature for the creation of art. The picture of the Goddess is the
fitting expression of the heroic character of The Leader and the National
Socialist Movement and, in the deepest sense, of the art which The Leader wants.
An art form for which the artist has to fight in a serious and concentrated
working procedure so that he may receive a blessing from it. (Dr. Hans Kiener, in
Kunstbetrachtungen, München, 1937, page
334.)
In 1939 the magazine changed its name to
Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich --
Art In
The German Reich. This
followed a decree from Hitler, who decided not to use the expression
Third Reich any longer, and always favoured the
expression Großdeutsches
Reich --
Greater German Reich. A French edition was published in France
during the
Occupation.
Thousands of artists painted these pictures, and the educated flocked to the
exhibitions to be elevated by them. Art historians, academics with high ranks at
universities and art schools proclaimed the highest ideals of National Socialist
ideology and published their brilliantly acute ideas in serious books,
magazines, and dissertations throughout the period of the Third Reich.
Stung by the attacks on its arts policy by the foreign press, the German
Government was eager to prove to the world that its artists were not only looked
after but also free.
Foreign
circles hostile to Germany often attempt to project an image of the contemporary
German artist as an oppressed and beaten creature, who, surrounded by laws and
regulations, languishes and sighs under the tyrannical dictatorship of the
cultureless, barbaric regime,
said Goebbels in 1937 at the annual meeting of the
Reichskulturkammer. What a
distortion of the true situation. The German artist of today in fact feels
himself freer and more untrammelled than ever before. With joy he serves the
Folk and the State. National Socialism has wholly won over German creative
artists. They belong to us and we to them ..... How could the German artist not
feel sheltered in this State? ..... He again has a Folk that awaits his call. He
no longer speaks to empty rooms and dead walls ..... National Socialism has also
drawn the German artist under its spell ..... It is he who fulfils the task that
a great time has assigned to him. A true servant of the Folk.
As the major client and sole promoter of the arts, the Government influenced the
standards, form, and
content.
Everybody who built, painted, wrote for the regime, who approved of and
encouraged the National Socialist art world, supported at the same time the
political system which ruled over it. Most artists cooperated. A extremely small
number withdrew into a kind of
internal immigration.
Most of these were too deeply rooted in Germany or too old to start a new life
in a foreign land with a different language and culture. Otto Dix, Ernst
Barlach, Oskar Schlemmer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff remained in
Germany.
But the majority of people enthusiastically applauded the new arts. The output
of art was enormous; exhibitions
multiplied.
The great national exhibitions were complemented by many local ones. In 1941,
with Churchill's war raging, over a thousand art exhibitions were held by this
most highly cultured European Nation. The new German art was shown in galleries,
museums, and even factories. Art exhibitions were held in the occupied
territories. But there were many other exhibitions of official art throughout
Germany, notably in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Dresden.
Berlin's old Kronprinzen-Palais of the Prussian Academy was refurbished, often
showing works previously seen in München. Some regional exhibitions were
organised on themes like:
The Maximilianeum in München also organised regular exhibitions, specialising in
local Bavarian
artists.
The number of museum visitors was on the increase; 700,000 people came to see
the München Exhibition in 1942. It introduced 251 artists who had not exhibited
in the House Of German Art before. The press discussed the young new talent that
stood side by side with the old. Sixty percent of the work was sold during the
Exhibition.
Having attacked the multitude of idiotic styles and tendencies which
characterised the art of the Weimar Republic, the National Socialists were
constantly stressing the common elements in the new work. Despite diverging
ideologies and rival policies, they wanted to show a unified picture of the
arts. Despite differences in temperament, background, and age, all artists
served the same cause, displayed much the same attitude, pursued much the same
aim.
Articles and reviews in
Art In
The Third Reich were entitled
with noble and inspiring headlines, and replaced the ridiculous and
incomprehensible gibberish of the homosexual art critics of the Weimar Republic
with meaningful text:
were constantly and accurately used.
Pictures ..... breathed and
affirmed life; they were
deeply felt, or spoke
to the heart. There was less comment on the style; the main formal criterion was
the technical accomplishment, expressed with words like
Exhibitions were always labelled a prime event, a step forward on the road to a new art. Adverse criticism did not exist; all works had a great amount of
labour in them, and although they were not perfect, they aimed as high as humanly possible. The artist too was
proud, unique,
in unison with the Folk; their task was
great, and
leading into a
glorious future.
The leading art historians, Rittich, Scholz, Horn, repeated the scientific
ideas of their mentor, Alfred Rosenberg, and offered their admittedly
chauvinistic view of the
arts.
For the opening of the 1938 Great German Art Exhibition, Hitler gave one of his world famous cultural speeches. In it he
summed up the National Socialist arts theory. The National Socialists
understood as well as anyone that some repetition is one of the most important
elements of propaganda. Hitler attacked the international art market, the
Jews, Dadas, and Cubists. Hitler stressed
again that the German Folk have a new affirmation of life. They are filled
with admiration for the strong and beautiful, the healthy and
those capable of surviving -- all thoughts that aligned the
arts theory with the noble theory endorsing the protection of healthy people
from sick degenerates and the racially inferior. He boasted that
the cultural program of the new Reich is of a unique greatness in
the history of the German Folk. There were references to the
art of Greece, and to German art as the mirror of the German soul. But the
speech also contained the first doubts. Stung by the disgraceful attacks in a
small section of the foreign press, Hitler easily justified his arts policy
and especially his decision to mount the exhibition of
Degenerate Art by declaring that it was necessary
to draw a hard line, in order to make way for the only
possible task for German art: to follow the way of the National Socialist
Revolution. Demanding clarity and logic from the artists who
wanted to continue to work in Germany, he showed himself magnanimous toward
those artists who had fled their Fatherland: We have no hate.
Let other democracies open their progressive doors to them, let them live, but
not in Germany. (Hitler, in
Die Kunst im
Dritten Reich, August / September,
1938.)
Goebbels easily reassured people that excellent new art was
forthcoming:
Our enemy's cry that it is impossible to expel the Jew from
German cultural life, that he cannot be replaced, still rings in our ears. We
have done precisely this, and things are proceeding better than ever! The
demand of National Socialism has been thoroughly carried out in this field and
the world has visible proof that the cultural life of a Folk can also ..... be
administered, led, and represented by its own sons ..... Everywhere people are
painting, building, writing poetry, singing, and acting. The German artist has
his feet on a solid, vital ground. Art, taken out of its narrow and isolated
circle, again stands in the midst of the Folk and from there exerts its strong
influences on the whole Nation. It cannot be doubted that in a historymaking
time, so highly tension ridden, as our own, political life absorbs a host of
talents which normally would have been partly at the disposal of cultural
life. In addition, there is the fact that the great philosophical ideas which
have been set in motion by the National Socialist Revolution, for the moment
operate so spontaneously and eruptively that they are not yet ripe enough for
elaboration in artistic form. (Goebbels, November 26th, 1937,
in Von der Großmacht zur Weltmacht.)
