Page 35 - Studio International - April 1970

For the Nazis there were no such problems. modern art. The art of their 'new time' was persecution (e.g. Nolde), while past membership of
a left-wing party did not automatically guarantee it
In the total synchronization of all units to not to be revolutionary but was to assert,
(e.g. the former S.P.D.-affiliated architect, Paul
total control, the administrative was more through its concern with eternal formative
Bonatz), provided that the work in question did not
important than the aesthetic. Those arts values, its continuity and authority. Art, for look leftist. But less prominent modern architects (i.e.
which directly furthered practical or 'moral' Hitler, was 'the faculty of overtaking the those whose had not been attacked in the Nazi press)
ends achieved prominence. Architecture has reality of a time, that is of the present time, were generally able to continue working if not in the
been mentioned. Design and even gardening through feeling and forming, and to render public eye (e.g. Hans Mehrtens, teaching at Aachen,
Werner Hebebrand, practising at Frankfurt). Likewise,
were also considered important for their it with means especially adequate for such a
sculpture (excepting abstract and expressionist sculp-
practicality. Interior decoration, it has been task'. The 'adequate means' were especially ture-e.g. Belling, Barlach) was less affected-Kolbe
suggested, also contributed to the living plan concerned with clarity. The stress placed by received official support (as did sympathetic film-
of the future since interior designers were the Nazis on education, on controlled patron- makers like Riefenstahl and art historians like Sedl-
involved in producing special furniture for age, on authoritative models indicates a mayr). Moreover, the degree of persecution of 'degener-
ate' artists varied greatly: Freundlich was sent to a
those receiving marriage loans, hence in- belief in a 'rational' aesthetic of broad appeal.
concentration camp (where he died in 1943), Otto Dix
directly furthering national fertility! Painting And if some of this seems just a little familiar was jailed (in 1939), Nolde and Schmidt-Rottluff were
and sculpture were pushed into a clarity of we should remember that the propagandist, as forbidden to work at all, and Pechstein was simply for-
depictive style so as to specifically illustrate Aldous Huxley said, 'is a man who canalizes bidden to exhibit. But those whose work did gain official
approval were very well off indeed: the sculptor Breker
the new mythology. (Hitler threw out some an already existing stream. In a land where
earned more in one year than Goebbels did in three.
works from the 1937 exhibition of German there is no water he digs in vain'.
8 Letter of June 1934. Gropius also initiated appeals by
art at Munich with the words : 'I will not Wagner and Häring. Wagner wrote of modern archi-
tolerate unfinished pictures', dismissed the Cf. Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in tecture as suitable for the new 'revolutionary' times and
jury members and appointed a photographer Germany, 1918-1945, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, without Häring stressed the original nationalistic connections of
to administer the show.) All this was barbaric, doubt the most useful book in this present context in the Werkbund (cf. Lane, Architecture and Politics, 181
discussing the inheritance of the political view of and 263).
but need not necessarily have produced bad 9 Novembergeist (November spirit) refers of course to the
architecture from Weimar to Hitler.
art. After all, David's revolutionary style ful- 1918 Revolution. Hitler had called Weimar politicians
2 The party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter (People's
filled similar demands of clarity through the Observer), was established in December 1920 by `November criminals'.
precise depiction of correct events; and Nazi Rosenberg and Dietrich Eckart. Völkisch implied racial 10 The importance of this speech was very considerable.
painting is in some ways a kind of totalitarian identification with the Volk (folk) who constituted a Of it Der S.A.-Mann of September 18, 1937 noted:
nation; and with such words as Kampfbund (literally, `This speech is undoubtedly the most important
Istoria. But here the impetus did not come cultural-political document in modern times. And it
`struggle-federation'), Kultur, etc. forms part of the
from advanced artists who were stifled lest did not take long to make itself felt in a practical way.
emotional vocabulary of National Socialism.
they disturb the ideal optimism which Nazi 3 Senger, a Swiss architect, published The Crisis of The custodians of all government and private museums
painting showed. Concentrating on purely Architecture (1928) and Moscow's Torch (1931), attacking and art collections are busy removing the most hideous
national utilitarian ends, painting became the new architecture as part of an international creations of a degenerate humanity and of a patho-
bolshevist plot to undermine culture. Le Corbusier 11 logical generation of "artists" '.
idealistic, commemorative and mythological,
mentioned Senger's efforts `to create hostility to our Cf. Robert J. Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern
and placed all stylistic or intellectual con- endeavours at the exact moment when the final Painting, New York, 1938.
cerns in a secondary role. Similarly, any decision was about to be made on who was to build the 12 The development of such ideas from Pinnies
attempts towards intellectual detachment in Palace of the League of Nations'. through Nietzsche and beyond is summarized in Hans
scholarship and criticism were outlawed. 4 The origins of the racialist interpretation of art go Kohn, Political Ideologies of the Twentieth Century, 3rd
back to writers like Max Nordau, Theodore Lothrop edn., New York, 1966.
Indeed, for Goebbels, the responsibility for
Stoddard, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, etc. In 13 No exact figure of confiscations can be given because
the phenomenon of degeneration in art was it appears that the accounts were tampered with to
Kunst und Rasse (1928), Schulze-Naumburg writes that
in large measure laid at the door of art `the battle of Weltanschauung to a large extent is fought conceal 'unofficial' transactions by Nazi leaders.
criticism: it had 'created the tendencies and out in the field of art'. Sometimes the attempts to 14 Cf. 'Whether the material presented is true or
the isms. It did not judge artistic development associate art and racial characteristics produces pas- untrue, the operator sincere or insincere, his aims
sages like Guenther's 'Was it the dinaric blood in the "good" or "bad", is entirely irrelevant. What makes
in terms of a healthy instinct linked to the
Nordic-dinaric Dürer which opened up in him the behaviour propaganda is the manner in which the
people, but only in terms of the emptiness of material is presented, just as much as its content.'
southern art will, the dinaric blood, which is inclined to
its intellectual abstractness'. 'The artist does facilitate the transition of the soul across the Alps to ( J. A. C. Brown, Techniques of Persuasion, Harmonds-
not create for the artist', said Hitler, 'he upper Italy?' worth, 1963.)
creates for the people and we will see to it that Darré was essentially an agricultural expert. His 15 i.e. `German-ness equals clarity'. For a discussion of
notions of Blut und Boden (blood and soil) were signifi- this concept: Lane, Architecture and Politics, ch. VIII.
henceforth the people will be called in to
cant for the new anti-urbanism. 16 Speer succeeded Paul Ludwig Troost, the designer
judge its art.' of the Munich House of German Art, after Troost's
6 The attention of radical architects to practical prob-
By taking art from the artists and giving it to lems from c.1924 ff. helped identify their style as death in 1934, and later became a powerful member of
the people (another aspect of the 'democratic' machine-orientated, and it came to be called the Nazi government.
technique of totalitarianism), the scope of `functionalist' (Zweckmässigkeit) or 'the new practicality' 17 Gustav Metzger, 'Automata in history', Studio
or 'new objectivity' (die neue Sachlichkeit). I use the word International, March 1969, 107-9. If one accepts this
propaganda was extended. But fine art itself
`practicality' to refer to such notions. The term was of point of view, the evidence that certain Ring architects
played but a limited part in this propaganda. wished to continue their work under the Nazis will
course also used for post-expressionist painting (cf.
Following the spirit of the 20s the Nazis Fritz Schmalenbach, 'Die neue Sachlichkeit', Art appear very significant.
employed a very broad range of propaganda Bulletin XXII, 1940, 161-5). 18 Raum (space) was the all-over dimension of the
forms, and the most useful and effective were 7 For a summary of the scope of the Reichskultur- creative process, heimat (homeland) its meaning and
kammer: Ernest K. Bramsted, Goebbels and National content, and kulturlandschaft (cultural landscape) its
the recently extended fields of print, film and
Socialist Propaganda, Michigan, 1965. There were seven desired result Such concepts are discussed in Helmut
radio. The inventions of the 'hot' 20s were Lehmann-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship, New York,
individual chambers, for literature, theatre, music, film,
utilized to extend the sphere of Nazi influ- fine arts, the press, and broadcasting. By the end of 1954.
ence. In this total situation, space itself be- 1936 there were some 42,000 members of the Fine Arts
came a strategic concept (raum) towards the section. Only racial or political affiliation appears to Photo credits.
have affected applications to the Reichskulturkammer. The Wiener Library of the Institute of Contemporary
cultural totality of a kulturlandschaft and it
Likewise, proscribed art falls mainly into the following History: Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23.
was manipulated in a controlled but rhetorical
categories: Jewish (e.g. Chaghall, Soutine), 'primitivis- Marlborough Fine Art: Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12.
way). 8 ing' expressionist (e.g. Heckel, Kirchner), leftist (e.g. Lords Gallery: Nos. 8, 19, 20.
Although the Nazis drew on modernist Grosz, Dix), and 'bolshevik' Bauhaus (e.g. Kandinsky, The Imperial War Museum and the National Film
idioms their art was, of course, in no sense a Klee). Nazi party membership did not itself prevent Archive: Nos. 13, 14, 16.
155