Entartete Kunst

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Kelly Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Paul Klee ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Third ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Degenerate Art ◽  
The Third Reich

Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) is a term that was used by Nazi authorities to identify, censure, and confiscate art they considered inconsistent with their ideology. It was the cornerstone of an ambitious propaganda campaign that culminated in the exhibition Entartete Kunst, which took place in Munich in 1937. The majority of this so-called degenerate art was Avant-Garde in both form and subject. Abstract Art by German artists, including Max Beckmann, Max Eernst, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, and Franz Marc, was particularly vulnerable to Nazi attack; non-German artists such as Vasily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian were also singled out. As a polarizing concept, Entartete Kunst stems from an essentially anti-modernist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic position. It was designed to legitimize the art of the Third Reich, which was rooted in traditional art forms and characterized by an idealized naturalism that promoted heroic virtues and racial purity.

scholarly journals THE AMBIVALENCE OF MODERNISM FROM THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC TO NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND RED VIENNA

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-234
Author(s):  
SIEGFRIED MATTL
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Artistic Style ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Art Policy ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
The Third Reich

Focusing on the spectacular propaganda exhibitions “Degenerate Art” and “Degenerate Music,” critical studies of Nazism's art policy long considered the regime's public attack on modernism and the turn to pseudo-classicism as decisive proof of Nazism's reactionary character. Studies such as Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (1974), which inspired broader research on the topic in the early 1970s, subscribed to a modern conception of aesthetics in which art expresses complex systems of ideas in progress. Artistic style, from this perspective, corresponded to political tendencies and reflected the traditional divide between conservatism and progressivism. But those boundaries have become blurred in the wake of more recent research, which has demonstrated the involvement of modernist artists in Nazi art (e.g. members of the Bauhaus involved in National Socialist architecture or avant-garde filmmakers such as Walter Ruttmann in National Socialist propaganda films) and, conversely, the continual performance of popular jazz music in the Third Reich (e.g. in radio programmes). Seen against such instances of modernist collaboration and its own occasional mimicry of modernism, National Socialism acquires a more ambivalent profile, characterized by the ongoing conflict between reactionary factions and those who favoured modernization for various reasons.

scholarly journals Building the Visible Immortality of the Nation: The Centrality of ‘Rooted Modernism’ to the Third Reich’s Architectural New Order

Fascism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
New Order ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Third ◽  
Industrial Buildings ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Many ◽  
Architectural Modernism

This article sets out to contribute conceptual clarity to the growing recognition of the modern and futural dynamic behind fascist cultural projects by focusing on projects for architectural renewal under the Third Reich. It starts by reviewing the gradual recognition of the futural temporality of the regime’s culture. It then introduces the concept ‘rooted modernism’ and argues for its application not only to the vernacular idioms of some of the Reich’s new buildings, but also to the International Style and machine aesthetic deployed in many Nazi technological and industrial buildings. The article’s main focus is on the extensive use made in the new civic and public architecture under Nazism (and Fascism) of ‘stripped classicism’. This was a form of neo-classicism widely encountered in both democratic and authoritarian states throughout the inter-war period, and which can be understood as an alternative strand of architectural modernism co-existing with more overtly avant-garde experiments in reshaping the built environment. The case is then made for applying a new conceptual framework for evaluating the relationship to modernity and modernism of architectural projects, not just in fascist cultural production, but that of the many authoritarian right-wing regimes of the period which claimed to embrace the national past while striving for a dynamic, heroic future. This opens up the possibility for historians to engage with the complex cultural entanglements and histoires croisées of revolutionary with modernizing conservative states in the ‘fascist era’.

Dix, Otto (1891–1969)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Academic Appointment ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

Otto Dix was a painter who emerged as a leading figure of the German avant-garde after World War I. His expressionist caprices, dadaist collages, and verist grotesques challenged prevalent norms of taste and propriety in a number of ways, which include but are not limited to the mixing of high art with mass culture, testing the limits of obscenity and transgressing traditionally heroic images of war. These tactics, coupled with the energetic promotion of his work in the modern dealer–critic system, laid the foundation for the painter’s rapid professional ascent, which culminated in an academic appointment in 1926. At the same time, conservative, nationalist and Nazi artists, critics, and activists frequently attacked Dix’s work, which was prominently displayed in anti-modernist exhibitions such as Degenerate Art between 1933 and 1938. During the Third Reich, Dix was marginalized; he adapted by producing ideologically equivocal, marketable landscapes and religious scenes. After 1945, Dix abandoned the techniques and themes of his earlier, best-known work and sought to position himself in West and East Germany while maintaining his independence from both abstraction and Socialist Realism. His work of the 1920s is now canonical, although the character of his political ideology and the causes and implications of his depictions of the female body and sexual violence continue to be debated.

The Language of Ideology: Lingual Manipulation of Readers in German Literature of the Third Reich

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
Underlying Basis ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

In recognizing more than just hyperbole in their critical studies of National Socialist language, post-war philologists Viktor Klemperer (1946) and Eugen Seidel (1961) credit persuasive words and syntax with the expansion of Hitler's ideology among the German people. This popular explanation is being revisited by contemporary philologists, however, as new historical argument holds the functioning of the Third Reich to be anything but monolithic. An emerging scholarly consensus on the presence of more chaos than coherence in Nazi discourse suggests a new imperative for research. After reviewing the foundational works of Mein Kampf (1925) and Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), the author confirms Klemperer and Seidel’s claim for linguistic manipulation in the rise of the National Socialist Party. Most importantly, this article provides a detailed explanation of how party leaders employed rhetorical language to promote fascist ideology without an underlying basis of logical argumentation.

Issues Surrounding the Development of the Neo-Nazi Scene in East Berlin

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brothers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Culture ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The rise of neo-Nazism in the capital of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was not inspired by a desire to recreate Hitler's Reich, but by youthful rebellion against the political and social culture of the GDR's Communist regime. This is detailed in Fuehrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Naxi by Ingo Hasselbach with Tom Reiss (Random House, New York, 1996). This movement, however, eventually worked towards returning Germany to its former 'glory' under the Third Reich under the guidance of 'professional' Nazis.

A war hero or a Hitler soldier?

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Committee ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document