degenerate art

degenerate art. A term coined in Germany in the 1930s to discredit all contemporary art that did not correspond to the ideology of the Nazi party. Such art, which included most avant-garde work, was systematically defamed and suppressed in Germany throughout the period when the Nazis ruled the country, 1933–45. Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg (the chief theoretical spokesman of Nazism) linked art with political doctrines and racial theories, attacking modern art as ‘political and cultural anarchy’. The ruthless campaign against modern ideas in art also included the closing of the Bauhaus (‘a breeding-ground of cultural Bolshevism’) in 1933. Hitler made his first speech against ‘degenerate art’ (in German entartete Kunst) at Nuremberg in 1934, and a series of exhibitions designed to ridicule modern art culminated in an infamous show (also called Entartete Kunst) that opened in Munich in 1937 and then went on tour round Germany. In Munich it was shown alongside the first annual ‘Great German Art Exhibition’ of Nazi-approved art; this was thoroughly traditional in concept and technique, and favoured themes (often militaristic) that glorified Hitler and his ideals of Aryan supremacy.

The works on display in the Entartete Kunst exhibition were mocked by being shown together with pictures done by inmates of lunatic asylums. More than 700 works were shown out of a total of about 16,000 confiscated from museums throughout the country. The artists represented were mainly German (by birth or residence), but a few foreigners were included. Among the total of over a hundred were many distinguished figures and several of the giants of 20th-century art: Beckmann, Ernst, Grosz, Kirchner, Klee, Kokoschka, Marc, Mondrian, Picasso (the inclusion of Marc caused some embarrassment, for he had been killed in action fighting for Germany—as a volunteer—in the First World War). As a propaganda exercise the exhibition was a huge success: more than two million people visited it in Munich alone, and huge numbers also went to see it in other major German cities. Living German artists whose work was declared ‘degenerate’ were forbidden to exhibit or even to work, and people who sympathized with modern art were deprived of their posts in museums and teaching posts. Some of the confiscated works were sold at auction, Nazi officials helped themselves to others, and the ‘unsaleable stock’ is said to have been burnt in Berlin (although it has been doubted whether this really happened).

Although degenerate art was linked so closely with political and racial doctrines, it is significant that the artist who had the ‘distinction’ of having the most works confiscated (more than 1,000, mainly graphics) was Emil Nolde, who was racially ‘pure’ and had even been a member of the Nazi party. He protested in vain to Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister: ‘My art is German, strong, austere and sincere.’ The suppression of degenerate art was not, therefore, simply a matter of political expediency, but also a symptom of the general antipathy to new forms of artistic expression that was such a feature of the history of 20th-century art. In the normal course of events such hostility rarely goes beyond verbal abuse and occasional acts of vandalism, but in Nazi Germany aesthetic revulsion was armed with political power.