degenerate art

degenerate art (entartete Kunst). Term applied by the Nazis to all contemporary art that did not correspond to their ideology (see NATIONAL SOCIALIST ART). Such art, which included most avant-garde work, was systematically defamed and suppressed in Germany throughout the period when the Nazi Party ruled the country, 1933–45. The first of a number of exhibitions designed to ridicule modern art was held at Karlsruhe in 1933, soon after Hitler took power, and Hitler made his first speech against ‘degenerate art’ at Nuremberg in 1934. The ruthless campaign against modern ideas in art included the closing of the Bauhaus (‘a breeding-ground of cultural Bolshevism') in 1933 and culminated in 1937 with the infamous exhibition entitled ‘Entartete Kunst’ in the old gallery of the Hofgartenarkaden in Munich. It opened on 19 July, a day after the first annual ‘Great German Art Exhibition’ of officially approved art had opened in the House of German Art nearby. The works displayed as ‘degenerate’ were confiscated from German museums and were mocked by being shown alongside pictures done by inmates of lunatic asylums. They were grouped into sections under such headings as ‘Mockery of German Womanhood', ‘Destruction of the Last Vestige of Race Consciousness', and ‘Vilification of the German Heroes of the World War'. The artists represented were mainly German (by birth or residence), but a few foreigners were included. Among the total of over 100 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 went to see it in Munich and similar huge crowds turned out when it toured other major German cities. Georg Bussmann writes that ‘Never before or since has an exhibition of modern art reached a greater number of people, or found a greater resonance, than this anti-exhibition’ (‘German Art in the 20th Century', Royal Academy, London, 1985). The guards on duty were instructed to be on the look-out for visitors who did appear to be suitably enraged or amused by the exhibits. One visitor is recorded as saying: ‘The artists ought to be tied up next to their pictures, so that every German can spit in their faces—but not only the artists, also the museum directors who, at a time of mass unemployment, poured vast sums into the ever-open jaws of the perpetrators of these atrocities’ ( Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, 1971). More than 700 works were shown out of a total of about 16,000 confiscated from museums throughout the country (the worst sufferers were the National Gallery, Berlin, the Folkwang Museum, Essen, and the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, with over 1,000 works each). They were chosen by a committee led by the painter Adolf Ziegler: ‘From the field of degenerate art those works are to be viewed which offend against German sentiment, destroy or distort natural form, or display obvious evidence of inadequate craftsmanship or artistry on the part of the producer.’ Some of these works were sold by auction in Lucerne in 1939, 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).

The attack on entartete Kunst was directed not only against innovative art but also against anyone who was in sympathy with it. Such people were dismissed from their posts in museums and teaching institutions and deprived of their honours. In 1935 a decree brought all exhibitions, public and private, under the control of the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer). Artists who refused to conform were faced with formidable sanctions. These ‘ranged from Lehrverbot (deprivation of the right to teach) through Ausstellungsverbot (deprivation of the right to exhibit) to the most crippling of all, Malverbot (deprivation of the right to paint). Lest the Malverbot should be circumvented in the privacy of an artist's home, the Gestapo would carry out lightning raids of inspection, checking up—as in Carl Hofer's case—on whether the paint brushes were still wet. They also placed lists of proscribed artists in the paint shops, so as to cut off their supply of materials at source’ (Grunberger).

The speeches and writings of Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg (the chief theoretical spokesman of Nazism) linked artistic production with political and racial doctrines (in Mein Kampf Hitler wrote: ‘Was there ever any filth, any form of indecency, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew was not involved?'), but it is significant that the artist who had the ‘distinction’ of having the most works confiscated as degenerate (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 has been 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.