Degenerate art

Degenerate art (from the German: entartete Kunst) was the term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was "un-German" or "Jewish-Bolshevist" in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely.

Degenerate Art was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism, the exhibition subsequently traveled to several other cities in Germany and Austria.

While progressive styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were narrowly traditional in manner and that exalted the "blood and soil" values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience. They called this style of Romantic realism Heroic art. Similarly, music was expected to be tonal and free of jazz influence; films and plays were censored.

Reaction against modernism

The early twentieth century was a period of wrenching changes in the arts. In painting, such innovations as expressionism, Dada and surrealism, following hot on the heels of symbolism, cubism and Fauvism, were not universally appreciated. The majority of people in Germany, as elsewhere, did not care for the new art which many resented as elitist, morally suspect and too often incomprehensible. Germany had emerged as a leading center of the avant-garde not only in the visual arts but in music as well, giving to the world the atonal compositions of Arnold Schoenberg and the jazz-influenced work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill. Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's Metropolis brought expressionism to cinema.

The Nazis viewed the culture of the Weimar period with reactionary disgust. Their response stemmed partly from conservative aesthetic taste and partly from their determination to use culture as a propaganda tool. On both counts, a painting such as Otto Dix's War Cripples (1920) was anathema to them. It unsparingly depicts four badly disfigured veterans of the First World War, then a familiar sight on Berlin's streets, rendered in caricatured style. Featured in the Degenerate Art exhibition, it hung near a label accusing Dix, himself a volunteer in World War I, of "an insult to the German heroes of the great war".

As dictator, Hitler gave his personal taste in art the force of law to a degree never before seen. Only in Stalin's Soviet Union, where Socialist Realism was the mandatory style, had a state shown such concern with regulation of the arts. Barron, 1991, p.10

A constant theme in the Nazi suppression of modern art was the supposed "Jewish" nature of all art that was indecipherable, distorted, or that represented "depraved" subject matter. Such perceived decadence was explained through the concept of degeneracy, which held that distorted and corrupted art was a symptom of an inferior race. By propagating the theory of degeneracy, the Nazis combined their anti-semitism with their drive to control the culture, thus consolidating public support for both campaigns.

Degeneracy

The term Entartung (or "degeneracy") had gained currency in Germany by the late 19th century when the critic and author Max Nordau devised the theory presented in his 1892 book, Entartung.Barron, 1991, p.26 According to Nordau, artists were victims of modern life and suffered from decayed brain centers. Nordau's theory drew upon the writings of the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, author of The Criminal Man published in 1876. Lombroso attempted to prove that there were "born criminals", whose atavistic personality traits could be detected by scientifically measuring abnormal physical characteristics. Nordau developed this premise into a critique of modern art, asserting that modern artists suffered from the same atavistic degeneracy as Lombroso's born criminals. For Nordau, all forms of modern art, whether music, poetry, or visual revealed symptoms of mental disorder and nervous excitement. As a result of their corruption and feebleness, modern artists lacked the self-control to produce coherent works. Nordau attacked the Symbolist movement in French literature, describing their mysticism as a product of mental pathology, as well as Aestheticism in English literature and Impressionism in painting (he explained Impressionist painterliness as the sign of a diseased visual cortex). He insisted on the superiority of traditional German culture.

Despite the fact that Nordau was Jewish, his pseudoscientific theory of artistic degeneracy was seized upon by German National Socialists during the Weimar Republic as a rallying point for their anti-semitic and racist demand for Aryan purity in art. Only racially "pure" artists could produce "Heroic Art" which upheld traditional ideals of classical beauty, while modern artists of an "inferior racial strain" produced works which were contorted and decadent due to the influence of modernity.

Alfred Rosenberg was the first to use Nordau's theory in Myth of the Twentieth Century, published in the 1920s, which became a best-seller in Germany. The influential art critic Paul Schulze-Naumberg wrote three books: Art and Race, The Fate of the German House, and The German Art, in which he argued that modern artists unwittingly produced their own racial stereotypes in their artwork. To prove this, he utilized both Nordau's and Lombroso's methodology by placing examples of distortions of the human figure in modern art next to photographs of people with deformities and diseases. Schultze-Naumberg then compared healthy people with examples of the Romantic realism of "Heroic Art" to prove that modern art was an indication of racial impurity.

The Entartete Kunst exhibit

By 1937, this concept was firmly entrenched in Nazi policy, and authorities purged German museums of modern art now condemned as degenerate. Inventory lists indicate that at least 16,500 works were seized. The entartete Kunst exhibit premiered in Munich in March, 1937, and travelled to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria. The show was intended as an official condemnation of modern art, and included over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of thirty two German museums. Expressionism, which had its origins in Germany, was especially heavily represented.

The exhibit was held on the second floor of a building formerly occupied by the Institute of Archaeology. Viewers had to reach the exhibit by means of a narrow staircase. The first sculpture was an oversized, theatrical portrait of Jesus, which purposely intimidated viewers as they literally bumped into it in order to enter. The rooms were made of temporary partitions and deliberately chaotic and overfilled. Pictures were crowded together, sometimes unframed, usually hung by cord.

The first three rooms were grouped thematically. The first room contained works allegedly demeaning of religion; the second featured works by Jewish artists in particular; the third contained works considered insulting to the women, soldiers and farmers of Germany. The rest of the exhibit had no particular theme.

There were slogans painted on the walls:

Insolent mockery of the Divine under Centrist rule
Revelation of the Jewish racial soul
An insult to German womanhood
The ideal - cretin and whore
Even museum bigwigs called this the 'art of the German people'

Speeches of Nazi party leaders contrasted with artist manifestos from various art movements, such as Dada and Surrealism. Next to many paintings were labels indicating how much money a museum spent to acquire the artwork. In the case of paintings acquired during the post-war Weimar hyperinflation of the early 1920s, when a loaf of bread cost trillions of German marks, the prices of the paintings were of course greatly exaggerated. The entire exhibit was designed to promote the idea that modernism was a conspiracy by people who hated German decency, frequently identified as "Jewish-Bolshevist", although only six of the 112 artists included in the exhibition were in fact Jewish.Barron, 1991, p.9.

It was considered the first blockbuster art exhibit of the twentieth century, with an estimated attendance of three million visitors. The exhibition was far more popular than the nearby Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition), featuring officially sponsored "Heroic Art".

The fate of the artists and their work

Avant-garde German artists, mostly Expressionists, were now branded both enemies of the state and a threat to the German nation. Many went into exile and lost both their reputations and credibility. Max Beckmann fled to Amsterdam on the opening day of the entarte Kunst exhibit. Max Ernst emigrated to America with the assistance of Peggy Guggenheim. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner committed suicide in Switzerland in 1938. Paul Klee spent his years in exile in Switzerland, yet was unable to obtain Swiss citizenship because of his status as a degenerate artist. The Nazi authority that monitored and regulated culture and the arts (the Reichskulturkammer) forbade artists such as Edgar Ende and Emil Nolde from purchasing painting materials. Those who remained in Germany were forbidden to work at universities and were subject to surprise raids by the Gestapo in order to ensure that they were not violating the ban on producing artwork. Those of Jewish descent who did not escape from Germany in time were sent to concentration camps.

After the exhibit, paintings were sorted out for sale and sold in Switzerland at auction; some pieces were acquired by museums, others by private collectors. Nazi officials took many for their private use: for example, Herman Goering took fourteen valuable pieces, including a van Gogh and a Cezanne. In March, 1939, the German Fire Brigade burned many which had little value on the international market.

After the collapse of Nazi Germany when the Russian army was the first to invade Berlin, some artwork from the exhibit was found buried underground. It is unclear how many of these then reappeared in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg where they still remain. The story of how these paintings survived is not documented in public. They are simply listed at the Hermitage as: provenance unknown.

Listing of artists in the Entartete Kunst show at Munich, 1937

Artistic movements condemned as degenerate

Footnotes

References

Adam, Peter. Art of the Third Reich (1992). New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. ISBN 0810919125
Barron, Stephanie, ed. 'Degenerate Art:' The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (1991). New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. ISBN 0810936534
Grosshans, Henry. Hitler and the Artists (1993). New York: Holmes & Meyer. ISBN 0810936534
Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut. Art Under a Dictatorship (1973). New York: Oxford University Press.
Minnion, John. Hitler's List: an Illustrated Guide to 'Degenerates' (2nd edition 2005). Liverpool: Checkmate Books. ISBN 0954449924
Nordau, Max. Degeneration, introduction by George L. Mosse (1998). New York: Howard Fertig. ISBN 0803283679
Rose, Carol Washton Long. (1995) Documents from the End of the Wilhemine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism. San Francisco: University of California Press. ISBN 0520202643
Suslav, Vitaly. The State Hermitage: Masterpieces from the Museum's Collections vol. 2 Western European Art (1994). New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 1873968035

External links

German art | Nazi Germany | Dada | Modern art

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