Stephen Butler

Week 6: The Arts in Nazi Germany: A Silent Debate

Was there a Nazi aesthetic?

Author:

Dr. Pamela M. Potter is a currently lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Potters
work concentrates on relating music, the arts, and the writing of cultural history to ideological, political,
social, and economic conditions, focusing twentieth-century Germany, Jewish music, and the impact of
German emigration on American musical life. She has been published 32 times all focused on German
Arts during and previous to WW2, she has coedited 2 books, as well as translated 4 books from German
to English

Key Points:

The Nazi aesthetic is a highly debated topic not only between historians, but single historians
have this silent debate with themselves, making the existence of a Nazi aesthetic suspect.
The study of the Nazi arts can be better understood by the study of the Cold War to help explain
the idea of the Totalitarian concept.
It has been said that Nazi art is not a style, but is defined by an artists participation in the Nazi
Regime.
Hitler
- Loved the arts, however was a failed artist. It is thought that his failure as an artist sparked the
attack on modern art for a much more conservative True German art.
- Close ties with the composer Wagner and his family.
- His interest with architectural design and urban planning makes him capable as the Chancellor
to dictate and manage all aspects of cultured life.
- Highly skilled architect
- Hitler had no desire to impose aesthetics to composers.
Propaganda
- Was considered to be the equivalent of a successful ad campaign today.
- Film: considered on the most, if not most effective means of mind control
- Music: By only allowing music that has the appropriate psychological effect, the masses can be
better controlled.
- Modern art: Removed and displayed in a negative manner.
- Poetry: Many propaganda poems were written.
- Media: Used to spread the Nazi message to all parts of the Reich.
Nazi Art
-Nazi art = Conservative German tradition.
German Art Society
- Far more consistent in its extreme conservative views than the Nazi Party.
- Anti-foreign, anti-Semitic, and anti-modern agenda
- Promoted the True German artist by genealogy, biology, and Character
- Gains allies in the Nazi Party and uses them to push the idea of the True German artist
through the media as propaganda.
 Stephen Butler

-Consolidated efforts by targeting the French impressionist, secessionist, and Jew Max
Liebermann.

Ministry of Propaganda and public Enlightenment and the Reich Chamber of Culture
- Gives the impression of a complete government takeover of the arts and media
- Artists were not immune to the purges.
- Artists restructured where the Gleichshaltung starting in 1933.
- Purged modern art. They removed it from the museums and put them in a special hall called
the Chamber of Horrors to educate the public of the past injuries to the German art.
Displaying the amount of tax dollars spent. Later, using it as kindling to light fires in stated
buildings.
Barlach The artist
- Considered to be a True German artist, even though his works supposedly bold defiance,
he resisted the Nazi ideology.
- His works were overlooked by the purges, due to his inherent lack of propaganda.
The Allies
- After the war, the De-Nazification begins.
- A US Officer during the process said that Hitler has succeeded in transforming the lush field of
musical creativity into a barren wasteland.

New Ideas and Understandings

Late 1960s historians uncover Nazi administrative chaos, as well as aesthetic inconsistencies
between purported ideas and actual artistic endeavors.
*Found no clear correspondence between politics and architectural style during the Weimer
Republic or the Third Reich, nor any one architectural style or philosophy unique to Nazi
Germany.
- Jazz was more tolerated then one would expect
- Musicians were determined less by ideology and more by cronyism and sheer luck.

Late 1990s the available literature on the topic as a whole was fraught with contradictions.
- Historians warned against jumping to conclusions about the totalitarian ism of the Nazi
Propaganda.
-Studies of individual artists have begun to blur the one distinct categories of victims and
perpetrators.
- Among the German arts of the time, there have been no identifiable distinguishing uniquely
Nazi artistic traits.

Historiography

Potter believes that future historians need to acknowledge previous dead-ends and seek out new
paths toward viewing Nazi culture and its artifacts from a fresh perspective.
Kater is of a similar opinion to Potter, even though there was to be no nigger-jew jazz it was
never outlawed. There remained Jazz in Nazi Germany, throughout the rule of the Third Riech.
Vaget agrees that Wagner was a propaganda tool used by the Third Reich, because of his anti-
Semitic political beliefs, as well as his close ties to Adolf Hitler himself.
 Stephen Butler

References
Kater, Michael H. "Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich." The American Historical Review 94, no. 1
(1989): 11-43.

Potter, Pamela M. "The arts in Nazi Germany: A silent debate." (2006): 585-599.

Vaget, Hans Rudolf. "Poisoned Arrows: Wagner, Hitler,'und kein Ende,'." Journal of the American
Musicological Society 54, no. 3 (2001): 661-77.

Provisional answer:

In the light of new information and ideas that debunk the work of previous historians, it is very
difficult to take a specific side. My belief is that there was an attempt to control all parts of the lives of
Germanys citizens. However, there is little evidence to show that there is even such a thing as Nazi art.
So, no I do not believe that there is a Nazi Aesthetic.