The
son of an old friend asked to read this series. I posted it here for easier
access, and I hope you don’t mind reading, or reading it again. The pictures
have been removed, and all the links have been checked. M
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This 1938 portrait was
Hubert Lanzinger's allegorical "Der Bannerträger" (The Standard
Bearer), showing Hitler as an armored knight. This painting became very popular
in poster and postcard form. Copyright Third Reich in Ruins.
Thanks
to the philosophy and forward thinking at the Bauhaus, German fine arts and
graphics were well ahead of the world norm prior to World War
II. Once Hitler personally intervened in the arts, “Political aims
and artistic expression became one,” says a “Teachers Guide to the
Holocaust.” Graphic design, allegory, and traditional images became
intermixed in the German arts just as they did in the American government
sponsored art under the WPA. No modern artists needed apply; no
internationalism need show itself.
The task of art in the
Third Reich was to shape the population's attitudes by carrying political
messages through stereotypical concepts and imagined realities. They
did this using every medium from carefully chosen typestyles through stone
sculpture, using every device from tiny runes on book covers to the massive
banners and lighting seen at the party rallies. Every arts item was
often approved directly by Hitler himself whether a drawing or a piece of
sculpture.
One of the smallest details,
typestyles, proved to be a most controversial issue. The broken,
blackletter gothic style we think of as typical of the National Socialist era
is called Fractur. It was in use for over five centuries in the
separate German states through the German Nazi era. In the 1930’s,
Paul Renner introduced Futura, and its variations into
Germany. Major print media immediately began using Futura after its
introduction, but Fractur was deeply entrenched, and despite the bureaucracy
disowning it after 1941 as Jewish, it was still in use at the end of the war.
Albert Speer noted that
when he gave away a painting it was often from the collection stored in the
cellars of the House of German art. Later he commented that there
was little difference between these works that were “once the subject of (such)
violent controversy” and those paintings that were approved for display.
Hitler’s favorite
sculptors were all considered neoclassical in the Doric
sense. Although Arno Breker was heavily influenced by the modernist
artists of the period in Paris, such as Charles Despiau, Isamu Noguchi, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Maliol, who he called the “Michelangelo of
Germany,” Becker was really mannerist though Hitler preferred to think of his
work as neoclassical. He became Hitler’s favorite sculptor with
works titled Comradeship, Torchbearer, and Sacrifice that
helped typified Nazi ideals, and suited the nature of the NS
architectures. Other sculptors, such as Josef Thorak worked in an
adapted neoclassical manner in his powerful oversized architectural pieces.
Hitler’s
favorite subjects were gentle countryside images from his invented Volk
Germanic History, dramatic images of heroic Aryan’s in action, or quiet Aryan
nudes. He used these works as propaganda for the masses and as
a tool for the bureaucracy. “To promote proper art, Hitler had the Haus
der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) built in Munich, to be the scene of
special yearly exhibits,” Geoff Walden writes in Third Reich in Ruins. He
knew exactly the kind of art he liked, and he personally edited
the brochures that accompanied each show which had been juried to his
liking by his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, and special friends like
Speer.
Walden also says, “The
annual exhibitions featured military scenes, portraits of the Fuehrer and other
Nazi leaders, German landscapes and places associated with Hitler's youth,
nudes, and scenes promoting German traditions, particularly
"folk-art" agricultural views. Favored artists included sculptors
Josef Thorak, Arno Breker, and Fritz Klimsch, and painters Sepp Hilz, Karl
Truppe, Elk Eber, Wilhelm Hempfing, Ernst Liebermann, and Adolf Ziegler who are
mainly unknown in the arts world of today. The first exhibit was in 1937, at
the opening of the building, and the annual shows continued through
1944.”
Many of these images are
indistinguishable from WPA art of the period both in style and
medium. Even works that focused on a favorite theme, Portraits of
the Fuehrer, were always done in what Hitler considered a classical style.
After the war, the
American and British armies considered the neoclassical architecture to be
propaganda and began its systematic destruction. They also
faced a difficult task when dealing with the many paintings,
sculptures, and graphics, as well as the smaller items such as decorated books
or napkin rings. The Occupying Forces considered these also
propaganda works also. Instead of destroying the art, the US Army
quietly collected over 9,250 Nazi-era works of art in 1946–47, and shipped them
to the United States.
This existence of this
collection, “has long been suspected by journalists and scholars of fascism and
the Third Reich. But aside from a few familiar, frequently exhibited
objects, such as Hubert Lanzinger's Der Bannenträger (1937), The
Standard Bearer, knowledge of the whereabouts, the full contents, and the
provenance of this collection, the largest surviving remnant of Nazi culture,
has eluded researchers for over sixty years,” writes Gregory Maertz in Unearthing
the Lost Modernist Art of the Third Reich. Only in 1986 were
7,100 pieces returned to Germany.
Though Hitler felt his
art uniquely Aryan, the arts of the National Socialist period, 1932 through
1945, parallel much of the world political art of the time. Where
Hitler used art to further his personal aims, Britain, Russia, and the United
States all had similar government funded art programs using similar politically
controlled styles to sway the public’s opinions. Only after the end
of WWII did the true modernists crawl out from the wreckage of the war and
begin to see the world in a fresh manner. Modern abstract art held
full sway for a time, but the international style won in the end.
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German Art Links:
</A HREF=http://www.thirdreichruins.com/index.htm>Third Reich in Ruins
</A HREF=http://german.about.com/od/readinggerman/a/fraktur.htm>German Typefaces</A>
</A HREF= https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/>A
guide to the Holocaust</A>
</A
HREF=https://sites.google.com/site/dnhistory/home>A history of Graphic Design</A>
</A HREF=http://www.usmbooks.com/nazi_art_magazines.html>Nazi Art Magazines</A>
</A HREF=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Breker>Arno Breker Sculptor</A>
<A
HREF=https://ww2gravestone.com/people/thorak-josef/>Josef Thorak the
forgotten artist</A>
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