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Joseph
Goebbels: "Der steile Aufstieg"
Franz Eher Verlag München 1944, Page 339
Immortal German Culture
26. Juni 1943
Were one to imagine Western culture without its
contributions from Germany and Italy, much would be missing. As
obvious as this may be, one has to repeat it now and again to give a
short but persuasive reply to the enemy's arrogant talk. They love
to pretend to be the protectors and defenders of an art and culture
that they themselves have not created, or to which they made at best
a modest contribution that could vanish without much harm to the
cultural edifice. The art treasures they possess were mostly stolen
by their armies in Europe or the rest of the world. They have hardly
any cultural achievements of their own, and those that they do have
stem from the spiritual consciousness of that part of the world that
they today are trying to destroy. Cities such as Nuremberg and
Munich or Florence and Venice contain more eternal manifestations of
Western culture than the entire North American continent. What
musicians do the English have to compare with Beethoven or Richard
Wagner, and what artists can the Americans present to match
Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci? They talk of human culture; we
have it, and remain today its guardians, wardens and protectors.
We have to remember that to properly understand and
appreciate the gigantic struggle the Axis powers are engaged in. We
are fighting for the basic values that Europe has created in its
thousands of years of history. Even more, we are fighting for the
very source of these values, both in the past and for the future.
The very roots of Europe are threatened. The nations that made the
greatest contribution to the West are fighting for their material
and spiritual existence. Were they to surrender, our continent would
lose everything. Its very roots would that have borne so much fruit
over two millennia would be cut off.
It is stupid and easy to refute when our enemies
maintain that they are fighting only the present leadership of the
Axis powers, not their peoples. That is what they have always said,
but forgotten it when the time came to act, as for example in 1918
and 1919. Second, these regimes are the natural expression of their
people's modern political thinking. They have no other reasonable
form of government. The claim that their autocratic structure takes
the life from art, even makes its further progress impossible, is
easily refuted both theoretically and practically. These regimes are
not nearly as autocratic as they are accused of being. They actually
have stronger democratic traits than the traditional democracies,
and besides the history of culture shows that everywhere and at
every time art does not ask under which political system it lives.
Churches and secular buildings over the centuries were built by
tyrannical popes and kings. The best of Europe's paintings come from
ages filled with the noise of the battlefield. Demonic noble
families promoted the highest flowering of the visual arts, while
their citizens lived in fear.
Even ignoring the past, the present refutes the
stupid and base claims our enemies use to conceal their actions,
which oppose or destroy culture. It is a rape of sound understanding
to justify the attacks of English or American terror planes on
German or Italian cities on cultural grounds. Attacks on German or
Italian cultural centers that were built over centuries are reduced
to soot and ashes in a brief hour. This is far more than an attempt
to terrorize our population, much less to attack our armaments
production. This is evidence of an historical inferiority complex
that wants to destroy what the enemy is incapable of producing
himself, and has never created in the past. European humanity must
blush in shame that a 20-year-old American, Canadian or Australian
terror flyer can destroy a painting by Albrecht Durer or Titian,
that he can destroy the work of the most honored names in history,
though he and millions of his countrymen have not even heard of
them. There can be no apology for such behavior. It is a cold,
cynical, calculating attack by the spoiled child of Europe. These
upstarts from the New World turn against the Old World because it is
richer in soul and spirit. Its eternal artistic accomplishments
stand against skyscrapers, cars and refrigerators.
Is it not interesting that the English leadership has
destroyed dozens of German theaters, while England itself does not
have even a single serious theater? And the Americans are not even
worth mentioning. They lay waste to Europe's cities and their
cultural landmarks, since there is nothing to compare them to in
Chicago or San Francisco. Their bombing terror will destroy that
part of European art and culture that they cannot buy.
We know what they are up to. This war is about more
than our daily bread, our living space, and our peace. More than
ever before we have to defend our most valuable possessions, the
things that make life worth living, without which human life is
meaningless, like the lives of our enemies from the steppes of the
east.
The war is a great destroyer, but it also contains
constructive elements that suddenly appear in the midst of its
destructive work. It robs us of our senses, yet also gives them
back. Never before have our continent's people been able to see so
clearly where Europe stands and what we must do. Times of
comfortable peace may make the lure of material comfort seem all too
satisfying. The war wipes it all away. It drives away dullness and
indifference, and returns us to the roots and sources of our
strength, teaching that man does not live by bread alone. Never have
the German people has such a drive toward intellectual and spiritual
things as they do today. I am not speaking of the less pleasant
manifestations of war, which are always there. But one should look
to our theaters, concert halls, museums and art exhibitions. Day and
night, summer and winter, tens and hundreds of thousands of Germans
sit or stand there astonished at so much beauty. We have become
richer, more fulfilled and better as a result of the war.
It would be a mistake to explain this development
exclusively on material grounds. The German people are not spending
their money on art because there is no other way to spend it, as is
sometimes said. The path to art is the path to their hearts. The
present with its pain and misery drive us to the consoling
certainties of our people, and where are they more visible than in
art? We see in it the answer to the destructive fury of our enemies.
We learn today to appreciate what they cannot understand, since it
is threatened. It is of no importance if this occasionally occurs in
primitive ways, or as some know-it-alls call it, Kitsch. Over time
things will work themselves out. We were all beginners once, and
what pleased us as children often does not please us once we are
mature. A large part of our people still are in their childhood
years in this regard, which leaves room for systemic education and
development. Despite all our rich and glorious past, we are a people
at its beginning. Everything is open before us. We need only to
reach out.
It would be more than serious if today's artists did
not want to understand that. Never have they had a more eager public
than they have today. One must recall the past to know what that
means. New pictures, sculptures, plays, novels, symphonies and
operas are no longer of interest only to intellectual critics in the
newspapers, as was once the case. Today they must withstand the eye
and ear of the people. Even more, they have to endure comparison
with the great works of he past, which the popular consciousness
today has begun to understand, and which provide the standards for
the new fans of art. Goethe's maxim is truer today than it ever was:
the artists must create, not talk. The age offers each the
opportunity to display his talents. In contrast to the past, each
has an equal chance. No one can complain that he had no chance to
speak, as long as he has something to say. Let him reach for the
pen, the brush, the chisel and the compass and speak with the
instruments of his art and his calling to an age that is waiting for
enlightenment.
It is almost a miracle that in the midst of this
gigantic battle, art is able to exist, almost untouched by the
storms of war. Were any proof needed of National Socialism's support
for the arts, this is that proof. That does not mean that artists
can ignore what is going on around them. There may be an artist here
or there who believes that since his art does not concern the war,
the elementary laws of war have no application to him. He must be
reminded of his duty, perhaps rather firmly. His desire to stand to
the side is not an end in itself. He is working for his people,
which is enduring the heaviest burdens and deepest sorrows. It has a
right to expect the artist to recognize that, particularly since he
enjoys creative freedom in the mist of war that he never had in
times of normal and unmolested peace.
I have the honor to open in the Fuhrer's name the 7th
Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich.
The beautiful and impressive exhibition is not
independent of its age. Its form is influenced by it. It supplements
the war at the front. Our artists here give evidence of their energy
and their creative fanaticism.
As in the past war years, the Fuhrer cannot be with
us. But his spirit is even more with us. This cultural monument, the
building and the exhibition, is his work. It was built in peace,
maintained and expanded in war, and points to a happy and blessed
peace. Its splendor today gives us a sigh of what will come when the
victory comes, in which we believe more today than ever before.
I greet the Fuhrer in this great age, of which he is
the creator. The scaffolding is still there and only the expert can
see what its creator has in mind. But we can all believe in it.
We do that with all the strength of our hearts.
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