Nazi Art Essay Example For Students

Nazi Art Essay Many people know that Adolph Hitler was an artist in his youth as an Austrian, but just howmuch art played a role in the National Socialist Germany seems to get underrated in the historybooks. Just as a racial war was waged against the Jewish population and the military fought theFrench and the Slavic people, an artistic cleansing for the Germanic culture was in progress. Special Nazi units were searching the ancient arts of antiquity for evidence of a great Germanicrace that existed well before history. Hitler had monuments and museums built on a grand scalewith carefully designed architecture that would last a thousand years. Art of this nature was apriority because Hitler wanted to capture Chronos, not Gaea. He wanted to dominate the rest oftime, not the limits of Earth. Hitler was born and raised in the town of Linz. As a youth he studied art, primarily as a paintercapturing mostly the surrounding Alpine Mountain landscapes that he grew up with, but he alsohad an interest in architecture. When he turned eighteen he applied to the Vienna Art Academy,and was rejected. Along with art, Hitler was fascinated with Linz, Antiquity, and Wagner. It was atthis time in his youth that Hitler and his friend, Kubicheck would try to finish an opera thatWagner had abandoned. This opera was about a leader trying to establish the Roman Empire byoverthrowing the Papal government in Rome. Hitler would remember It was in that hour it allbegan.1Hitler thought of Wagner and art as the basis for a new government, nation, and people. It isnot just coincidence that he would be surrounded by National Socialist leaders with backgroundin the arts. Joseph Gobbels, the Minister of Propaganda and head of the Reich Chamber ofCulture, was an experienced writer and aspiring poet. Ros enberg was a painter and Von Sherotwrote poetry. Hans Frederick Munch of the Reichs Chamber of Literature said This governmentborn out of opposition to rationalism knows the peoples inner longings and dreams, which onlythe artist can give them.2 Less than three months after coming to power, the Nazis issuedWhat German artists expect of their new government in March of 1933. One of the first projectsof the Nazi regime was the House of German Art (Haus der Deutschen Kunst), a large museum. Quickly the Third Reich was forming its own style of art, as identifiable as Soviet Social-Realism, but symbolizing the national and racial policies. And while the Soviets tended toemphasize Literature, the Nazis focused on Visual art and Architecture. Nazi art was Neo-Classical with a twist of German romanticism, heroicism, and nostalgia for the times of yore.3In the beginning there was debate on what exactly the Nazis were looking for in art. It is wellknown that the Third Reich was extremely hostile to Avant-Garde artists, but before the Naziscame to power, Joseph Goebbels took to the opinion that some German Expressionists werecompatible with National Socialist ideas. These artists include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, ErichHeckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Barlach, and Emil Nolde. Nolde was even a Nazi partymember, but these artists could hardly be called Nazi artists. They declared nationalism andwere very anti-capitalist. The Expressionists promoted sensation and passion over rati onal logicand were heavily into primitive German culture. Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, and other seniorNazis attacked these modern artists as incompatible with the Nazi ideal because of there strongopposition to authoritarianism and the individualism expressed within their work.4 Albert Speer,commissioned to decorate Goebbels home would later write: I borrowed a few watercolours from the director of the Berlin Nationalgalerie. Goebbels and his wife were delighted with thepaintingsuntil Hitler came to inspect, and expressed his severe disapproval. Then the ministersummoned me immediately. The pictures will have to go at once; theyre simply impossible.5Upon the assumption of power, almost all modern art was attacked and artists of all sorts fled thecountry as work was confiscated and art schools were closed. There are many reasons Hitler attacked modern art. Such groups as the Dadaists and theBauhaus had close connections with the Soviet schools of Constructivism and Suprematism. Chinese Women Rights EssaySuch genre paintings of the period like Gisbert Palmies The Rewards of Work also use theseparation of colour to represent purity of race. The golden seamless cloth being woven by theman at the bottom right of the picture flows around a centered beautiful Aryan woman. Thecloths colour matches her blond hair. The background is a rural farmland setting. The variousfields can be distinguished from each other. The figures are out of time. A man picks fruit and awoman harvests grain while sewing and the caring for animals is being carried out in the pictureplane form a unity of the rural people (volk) and the cycle of nature. Their equipment forperforming these tasks of labour are outdated. They use a spinning wheel for sewing anddressed in Renaissance costumes to express the anti-modern position of the Nazi government. 1936 had brought Germany the eyes of the world with its Olympic games. In 1937 Hitlerproclaimed: Never was mankind closer than now to antiquity in its appearance and itssensibilities. Sport contests and competitions are hardening millions of youthful bodies,displaying them to us more and more in a form and temper that they have never manifested norbeen thought to possess for perhaps a thousand years.7 The much anticipated boxing matchbetween the Aryan and the American negro proved German racial superiority to the watchingworld. And the Olympic village built for the games was a utopia as grand and bogus as thevillages Potemkin built for Catherine the Great of Russia. Nazi architecture would be theachievement of the century. Hitler wanted to outshine Paris. By 1950 Hitler planned to have anew German capital ready. After the House of German Art, Hitler planned many buildings. Hewanted to reconstruct a Germany in the Grecco-Roman style. His obsession with antiquity isclearly diplayed in his ruins principal that he formed with Albert Speer in 1934. This idea wouldhave the new constructions collapse in on themselves after a period of abandonment that leftruins similar to such famous structures as the Acropolis in Athens. Hitler said If here in thedistant future archeologists should dig the Earth and strike granite beneath, Let them stand bear-headed in front of a glorious idea that shook the world.8Forty cities had monumental building projects planned by Hitler and Speer. In 1939 a newchancellery was built because the old one was a piddaly cigar box in Hitlers words. Suchbuildings as large as his Great Hall that could sit one hundred eighty thousand people andwould be seventeen times St.Peters in Rome or his sports hall that held four hundred thousandpeople can far better be described in Richard Harriss novel Fatherland that has a setting of1960s Germany after the hypothetical Nazi winning of World War Two. But the fact is that theHitler lost his war. Even in defeat he was preoccupied with the art and architecture of the ThirdReich. Losing battle after battle, Hitler received the final model for his plans of a Hitleropolis inhis hometown of Linz on February 9th, 19459 and while in his bunker he studied the project forhours on end. He called doom arts highest form of expression obviously bases on the fireyending to some of Wagners operas. A grand German fall would fill other German generationswith inspiration. Hitler tried to obtain a timeless existence through the immortality of art. AlthoughGermany has yet to rise again from its own ashes, we still remember Hitler and his infamousdeeds. One could say he was successful. Bibliography1. Architecture of Doom. Directed by Peter Cohen. 90 Minuets. First Run Features. Videotape. 2. Architecture of Doom. 3. Payne, Stanley G. A History of Fascism 1914-1945. Madison: The University of WisconsonPress, 1995. pp196-1984. Clarke, Toby. Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc,1997. pp62-635. Nicholas, Lynn H. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europes Treasures in the Third Reich andthe Second World War. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. pp10-116. Harris, Robert. Fatherland. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1992. p2767. Clark, Toby. p378. Architecture of Doom.