Culture wars. They’re everywhere right now. The right wing screaming about the ‘woke’, as if liberal culture is the real problem in the world right now, and the left wing throwing the word fascist around, as if it meant simply a state of mind. But, for better or worse, we’re not the first with culture wars. On 30 June 1937, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment, authorized the Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Adolf Ziegler, to select and confiscate paintings and sculptures from public collections for a major exhibition on 'degenerate art'. Ziegler said “ What's been gathered together in [this] exhibition constitutes the portrayal of a true witches' sabbath and the most frivolous spiritual-artistic cultural Bolshevism and a portrayal of the triumph of sub-humanity, of arrogant Jewish insolence and total spiritual senile dementia.”
This was the infamous exhibition entitled "Entartete Kunst," or "Degenerate Art," in Munich. The objective was to ridicule and condemn modern art that did not align with the party's ideology. This episode delves into the history, motivations, and lasting impacts of this notorious exhibition, how art became a battleground for ideological control and how the legacy continues to influence contemporary discussions on freedom of expression and the role of art in society.
Welcome to The Weimar Spectacle, where I explore the brief and extraordinary life of the Weimar Republic. I’m Bremner Fletcher Duthie, singer, actor and theatre maker. I’ve spent years performing songs and theatre from the Weimar period, and I’m inspired and maybe more than a little obsessed by that moment in time. I’ll put images for this episode onto my website: bremnersings.com.
Listen to Bremner's two albums of Weimar Cabaret songs
https://songwhip.com/bremnerduthie/bremner-sings-weill
https://songwhip.com/bremnerduthie/bremner-sings-kurt-weill-vol-2-moon-faced-starry-eyed
So, as you know, my big, big absurd idea for these podcasts, is that the Weimar Republic invented everything about the modern world, and we are all still dealing with the possibilities and problems it gave to us. To prove this possibly un-provable idea, I’ll be exploring the arts, politics, science, architecture, social innovations of the Weimar period, and of course, the terrible and irresistible rise of the Nazi Party. So, if you’re a struggling artist worried about the political future and wondering if watercolors or oil painting is a safer choice under Fascism, or an art lover angry about how your local gallery paid actual money for an abstract painting and wondering if it's time to take a stand, well this is the show for you
So the Entarte Kunst Exhibition takes place , in 1937, long after the Weimar Republic is dead and gone, but I’m going to put it in this podcast, since essentially the artworks inside the exhibition are the culmination of the Weimar Arts Movement, and I find it fascinating that 4 years after their total victory in Germany, the Nazis still find it necessary to continue beating the drum against modern culture. At this point they have control over most of the institutions of German Life, however, they still find it invaluable to scream Culture Wars, and make that one of the main platforms of their ideology. Tragically, at this point, the Nazis are developing one of their first experiments in racial purity, known as Aktion T4, the sterilization and euthanasia of physically and mentally disabled Germans, a program in which where they killed hundreds of thousands of helpless people, many of them children. One can see how this continued focus on ‘Degeneracy’ in art, and its elimination is just one more way to give their hideous efforts more legitimacy.
Phillipp Bouler head of the Aktion T4 program
As with so many other madnesses of the Nazis Ideology, they insisted that they had scientific backing for these claims about art. A 19th Century critic and author Max Nordau had written a book called ‘Degeneration’, where he said, quote -- “Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists” and “idiotic sequences of words are psychologically interesting, for they demonstrate with instructive significance the workings of a shattered brain.” Nordau based his ideas upon the writing of the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, whose book ‘The Criminal Man’, tried to prove there were "born criminals" who could be detected by measuring abnormal physical characteristics. Max Nordau took this and applied it to modern art, which he described as the work of those so corrupted by modern life they have lost the self-control needed to produce coherent works. He described modern English literature, Richard Wagner and modern French literature as a product of mental disease and called Impressionism the sign of a diseased visual cortex. Despite the fact that Nordau was Jewish, his theory of artistic degeneracy would be seized upon by German Nazis during the Weimar Republic as a rallying point for their racist demand for Aryan purity in art, and Degenerate came to be used as a concept for all modern culture that in Hitler’s mind, “manifested symptoms of national decline.”
The creator of the idea of 'Degeneration' in culture, and the cover of his book
Another ‘scientific’ backer of the idea of degeneracy was The Militant League for German Culture. It was founded in 1928 by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.
Alfred Rosenburg, at the height of his powers, and in his cell at the Nuremberg Trials.
He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on 16 October 1946.
In 1930 they arranged a major youth conference to present the new Nazi leaders, among them Goebbels and Göring. A resolution called for "resistance against all populist harmful influences in the area of theater, literature and fine arts, and against alien architecture." And they presented lectures like "Blood and Honor," and "Race and Personality", and Göring spoke on the theme of "Readiness to fight to protect our culture."
Also, in 1928, Paul Schultz-Naumburg, an architect and Nazi activist, published his book ‘Kunst und Rasse’ (Art and Race), which applied 'racial science' to art, claiming a connection between artistic expression and mental or physical disabilities, both of which were supposed to be eradicated from the 'racial community'. According to him, artworks mirrored the racial quality of the artists themselves, and so artists considered racially healthy would produce art that improved the German race and artists with mental or physical 'defects' produced art that mirrored their 'racial deficiencies'. Jewish art dealers and critics who supported modern art were condemned for using their influence to harm the community. Schultze-Naumburg put photographs of disabled individuals side by side with modernist art to demonstrate they were outcomes of hereditary traits and symptomatic of a 'racial degeneration'.
However, probably much to the dismay of all these “Scientists”, under the Weimar Republic of the 1920s, Germany emerged as a leading center of the avant-garde and one of the major centers of modern art in Europe. There was the radical work of the two art movements, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter. A new approach to design flourished at Bauhaus, jazz bands and cabaret became popular, and Expressionism went from painting to architecture, literature, theatre, dance, and in the new cinema created masterpieces like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Wiene and Nosferatu by Murnau. Not to mention the atonal musical compositions of Arnold Schoenberg, the jazz-influenced work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.
But this golden period was not to last: In 1930 Wilhelm Frick, the Nazi Interior and Cultural minister of Thuringia and KdfK regional leader dismissed all practitioners of the Bauhaus style. Frick ordered artworks by "degenerate artists" to be removed from the Schlossmuseum in Weimar. They listed their enemies: okay, and this is a moment where we can at least smile bitterly about their choices, since today, reading these lists gives us the pantheon of influential artists respected by history: but those most hated by the Nazi culture ministers were people like Kurt Tucholsky, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Mehring Klee, Kandinsky, Kurt Schwitters, the whole Bauhaus Movement, Emil Nolde, Karl Hofter, Max Beckmann, and Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, Kandinsky, Paul Klee. Stravinsky and Hindemith and Kurt Weill were struck from concert programs, and books by Erich Maria Remarque, and films by Eisenstein and Pabst were dismissed as not properly German and banned outright and of course the Berlin Institute for Sexual Research which made such advancements in the study of non-traditional sexual lives.
Art by the ‘enemies’ of the Nazis
And finally Hitler's rise to power on 30 January 1933 was immediately followed by the censorship of modern art in all its forms: theatres were closed, artists arrested for ‘re-education’, book burnings were organized. In September 1933, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, was put in charge of the Reich Culture Chamber. Sub-chambers within the Culture Chamber, representing music, film, literature, architecture, and the visual arts were created consisting of "racially pure" artists. Goebbels said: "In future only those who are members of a chamber are allowed to be productive in our cultural life. Membership is open only to those who fulfill the entrance condition. In this way all unwanted and damaging elements have been excluded." By 1935 the Reich Culture Chamber had 100,000 artist members who accepted participation in the Nazi belief system.
However, all fake scientific writing aside, it was Hitler who ultimately decided the artist taste of the Third Reich: he gave his personal taste in art the force of law. Ironically, the only other state leader that took such an effort to control art was Stalin in the Soviet Union, and he and it were despised by Hitler. For his model Hitler took classical Greek and Roman art, since he believed its form embodied an inner racial ideal. Henry Grosshans, author of Hitler and the Artists, says that Hitler "saw Greek and Roman art as uncontaminated by Jewish influences. Modern art was [seen as] an act of aesthetic violence by the Jews against the German spirit. Such was true to Hitler even though only Liebermann, Meidner, Freundlich, and Marc Chagall, among those who made significant contributions to the German modernist movement, were Jewish. But Hitler ... took upon himself the responsibility of deciding who, in matters of culture, thought and acted like a Jew." So, once again, we see how important this artistic theory of degeneracy was, since the Nazi drive to control the culture overlapped perfectly with their antisemitism and a need to eradicate any ‘degeneracy’ from society, which could be done by burning a troublesome painting that had been scientifically proven to be degenerate, or killing a troublesome human for the same reason.
A landscape painted by Adolph Hitler
Terrible Nazi approved art
On 30 June 1937, Joseph Goebbels authorised the Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Adolf Ziegler, to select and confiscate paintings and sculptures from public collections for a major exhibition on 'degenerate art'. A Nazi book, Die Säuberung des Kunsttempels (The Cleansing of the Temple of Art), provided the blueprint. It called for a cleansing of the 'Temple of Art' and provided a list of names of artists deemed guilty of promoting degeneracy according to criteria of ‘decadence’, ‘weakness of character’, ‘mental disease’, and ‘racial impurity’. The commission combed through 32 collections in 23 cities to select works of art. They confiscated over 5000 pieces, of which around 600 were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition. These artworks were shipped to Munich, the capital city of the Nazi movement and the official 'City of German Art'.
Entartete Kunst exhibition opened on July 19, 1937, Ziegler, the head of the commission said : "Look around you at these monstrosities of insanity, insolence, incompetence and degeneration". It was held in the Institute of Archaeology because of its dark rooms and narrow corridors, and remained on view until 30 November, before traveling to 11 other cities in Germany and Austria. Viewers had to reach the exhibit by means of a narrow staircase. The rooms were made of temporary partitions and deliberately chaotic and overfilled. Pictures were crowded together, sometimes unframed, usually hung by cord. 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 exhibition was meticulously designed to mock and degrade the artwork, accompanied by derogatory labels and slogans that incited public ridicule. All forms of modernism were covered – from Impressionism to Expressionism – and juxtaposed, with works by patients of mental institutions.
There were works by (and again, bitter smiles of tragic victory) Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh, Klee, Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Salvador Dali
The first three rooms were grouped thematically. The first room contained works considered demeaning of religion; the second featured works by Jewish artists in particular; the third contained works deemed insulting to the women, soldiers and farmers of Germany.
the exhibition halls of the Entartete Kunst exhibit, and Hitler and Goebbels touring the show
There were slogans painted on the wall:
Insolent mockery of the Divine
Revelation of the Jewish racial soul
An insult to German womanhood
The Jewish longing for the wilderness reveals itself
Negro is the racial ideal of a degenerate art
Madness becomes method
Nature as seen by sick minds
There’s actually some silent footage shot by American cinematographer Julien Bryan, who later stated: “People might not believe my story if I told it in words when I returned to America. Everyone would believe my pictures”
I’ll put a link to that https://youtu.be/NmdO9tWeptY
The day before the Degenerate Art exhibition opened its doors to the public, Hitler had opened the German Art Exhibition at the monumental Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art).
the insane nationalistic parade to open the House of German Culture, and Hitler's speech.
He said – and as strange as it is to read out loud the words of Adolph Hitler, I’m going to read this long quote, partly because of how terrifying it is, and also partly because so many of the phrases seem so familiar and contemporary: so here we go: Adolph: quote
“When, four years ago, the ceremonial cornerstone laying for this building took place, we were all aware that it was imperative to lay not only the cornerstone for a new building, but also the foundation for a new and genuinely German art. The goal was to bring about a turning point in the development of all German cultural creation…. The collapse and overall decline of Germany was – as we know – not only academic or political, but rather, and perhaps to a far greater extent, cultural. Moreover, this process was also not solely attributable to the fact of the lost war. Such catastrophes have often afflicted peoples and states, and these events have not infrequently provided an impetus for their cleansing and, with it, their inner elevation. But that flood of slime and refuse, which the year 1918 spewed onto the surface of our lives, was not produced by the loss of the war, but instead only released by it. It was only through the defeat that such a thoroughly rotten body first experienced the full extent of its inner decay. After the collapse of those earlier social, political, and cultural forms that were only seemingly in order, the baseness that was underlying them for so long began to triumph…. During the long years of planning for the new Reich, and thus for its intellectual creation and shaping, I often devoted myself to the tasks that the rebirth of the nation would impose on us especially in the area of its cultural purification. After all, Germany was to arise again not only politically or economically, but above all also culturally. Indeed, I was and am convinced that this last aspect will take on much greater importance for the future than the first two….. But you will also understand now that it is not enough to give to German art this new art museum, which is so respectable, clear, and truthful that we may rightly call it a “House of German Art”; rather, the exhibit itself must also bring about a turning away from the degeneracy that we have witnessed in the arts, sculpture, and painting….. Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, and so on, have nothing to do with our German people. For all of these terms are neither old nor modern, but are simply the stilted stammering of people to whom God has denied real artistic talent and has given instead the gift of blather and deception. I therefore wish to affirm in this hour my immutable resolve to do for German artistic life what I have done in the area of political confusion: to purge it of empty phrases….. “Works of art” that cannot be understood on their own, but rather require a pompous user manual to justify their existence, in order to finally find that intimidated person who will patiently accept such foolish or impudent nonsense – such art works will no longer find their way to the German people! The new age of today is working on a new type of man. Immense efforts are being made in countless spheres of life in order to lift up the people, to render our men, boys and youngsters, girls and women healthier and thus stronger and more beautiful. And out of this strength and this beauty emanates a new feeling of life, a new joy of life!"
Instead of paintings denouncing the senseless nature of the war and questioning society, there were paintings about comradeship, heroism and motherhood, service to the Reich and many, many (so many) landscapes. Ironically, this official Nazi art was a exact mirror image of the socialist realism of the hated Communists. And, ironically, at the end of four months Entartete Kunst had attracted over two million visitors, nearly four times the number that visited the nearby Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.
The work of clearing out the German Museums continued during the exhibition. By the end around 16, 5000 works of art were removed on ideological reasons. Nazi officials took many for their private use: Hermann Göring took valuable pieces, including a Van Gogh and a Cézanne. Works were also sold abroad to generate cold, hard cash for the Nazi regime. Some were sold at auction in Switzerland in 1939 and more was disposed of through private dealers. Artworks which could not be liquidated in this manner were destroyed. In March 1939, the Berlin Fire Brigade burned about 4,000 paintings, drawings and prints that had apparently little value on the international market.
Heinrich Heine, the German poet, once poignantly remarked, "Wherever they burn books, they will in the end burn human beings too”. So at the same time as the suppression of the art, look at the persecution of the artists who created them.
The artist Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler suffered a nervous breakdown in 1929, and was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Friedensberger, where she continued to make drawings and to paint watercolours. In 1932, doctors in the psychiatric hospital in Arnsdorf diagnosed her with schizophrenia. Two years later she was forcibly sterilized, and finally she was gassed in the nursing home.
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler watercolor
Max Beckmann fled to Amsterdam on the opening day of the Entartete Kunst exhibit. Max Ernst emigrated to America. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner committed suicide in Switzerland. Paul Klee spent his years in exile in Switzerland but was branded a degenerate and was unable to work. A leading German dealer, Alfred Flechtheim, died penniless in exile in London. The cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum was turned away at the border when he tried to leave Austria, and was sent to Buchenwald and later to Dachau. The songwriter Fritz Löhner-Beda, who collaborated on operas with Franz Lehár, spent time in Dachau and Buchenwald before being sent to Auschwitz, where he was beaten to death. The writer of hit songs, Ralf Erwin, left Germany in 1933, but was later captured in France, and died in an internment camp. Those who remained in Germany were subject to surprise raids by the Gestapo to ensure they were not violating the ban on producing artwork. Otto Dix was dismissed from his professorship in Dresden in 1933. Edgar Ende and Emil Nolde were forbidden from purchasing painting materials though Nolde began secretly using only watercolors, to avoid the odor of oil paint.
Emil Nolde watercolor
The impact of the Entartete Kunst exhibition was far-reaching and did not actually have the result that Nazis desired. Yes, the artistic careers and lives of so many artists were damaged or destroyed, and their contributions to society were marginalized. However, the exhibition lasted four months and then went on to tour the country and lines went around the block in every city. In Munich alone, it attracted more than two million visitors, an average of 20,000 people per day, making it arguably the most popular modern art show of all time. And sure, many came for scandal and others in hatred, but many realized it could be their last chance to see masterpieces. The Degenerate Art exhibition hugely outnumbered the Great German Art show, receiving almost four times the number of visitors. Unintentionally, Hitler, despite all his harsh slogans, the way he manipulated the media, the way he tried to shut down and destroy whole cultural movements, did more to expose the general German populace to the breadth of modernism than anyone before him.
So, once again, if some of the concerns and desires in these stories seem familiar, well they should, because I believe the Weimar Republic helped give birth to the modern world.
Thanks for listening. Hit subscribe or follow if you want to know when the next episode appears. I don’t have any advertising budget for this show or really a budget at all, I’m just some obsessed singer repurposing an old microphone, so if you leave a review on your app, or hit the star button, it really encourages the podcast to be found by other listeners, or just forward a link to a friend, that’d be great. And I hope you’ll join me in the coming months as I explore more about the strange birth, life and death of an experiment in creating a new society.
I was going to do an episode on the follow up exhibition, Entartete Music, where the Nazis tried to expose the same degeneracy in Modern Music, but you know, after this one, I need a break from the Nazis, so I’ll save it for later. That’s one of the problems about thinking about the Weimar Republic, no matter how you play it out, it always ends with the Nazis. Screw the Nazis. So, my next episode will be about all the amazing, social innovations of the Weimar Republic and how much they have added to our modern life.
I’ll put images for this episode onto my website: bremnersings.com.
And who am I to discuss Weimar? Well, I’m not a sociologist, a political scientist or an historian. I’m an obsessive artist. A singer, play-write and cabaret performer who has been obsessed with the arts and music of the Weimar republic all my life. I’ve recorded three albums dedicated to the music of this time and particularly the music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. If you want to listen to them, just search for Bremner Fletcher Duthie in any music streaming site, and you’ll find all my albums. And if you want to know more about my work, see the images from the period, or suggest a specific Weimar subject for an episode, check out bremnersings.com
Join me next time for another walk through the amazing creative madness of 1920’s Germany.