German Expressionism
Entartete
Kunst
"Degenerate
Art"
Photo from the Teacher's
Guide to the Holocaust
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Seldom, if ever, has an art movement ended as tragically as German Expressionism. In 1927, the National Socialist Society for German Culture was formed under the auspices of the increasingly powerful Nazi party. The purpose of this organization was to eliminate the "corruption of art" and apply standards for "acceptable art." The work of the Expressionism artists was determined by the Society to be an "insult to the hardworking German people." By 1933 the Nazi Party, which began in 1919 as a gang of unemployed soldiers led by one of their own (Adolph Hitler), became the legal government of Germany. And as the Nazi Party came into power, the terms "Degenerate" and "Bolshevik" were used to describe almost all modern art. The criteria established by the Nazis for "acceptable art" were: 1. “Must
embody the expression of the soul & the ideals of the community”
of German life For more information on Nazi acceptable art: Nazi
Approved Art |
"In 1937, Nazi officials purged German museums of works the Party considered to be degenerate. From the thousands of works removed, 650 were chosen for a special exhibit of Entartete Kunst. The exhibit opened in Munich and then traveled to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria. In each installation, the works were poorly hung and surrounded by graffiti and hand written labels mocking the artists and their creations. Over three million visitors attended making it the first "blockbuster" exhibition." (A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - Degenerate Art)
In March of 1939
over one thousand paintings and almost four thousand watercolors and
drawings of German Expressionism art, as well as other modern art, were
burned in the courtyard of a fire station in Berlin. The fate of the
650 works of art shown in the Entartete Kunst exhibit are unknown.
While some of the artists included in Entartete Kunst were Jewish, certainly not all of them were. In fact Emil Nolde, who had the dubious honor of having more of his works included than any other artist, had once been a member of the Nazi Party.
What reasons might a government have for destroying the work of artists? Some of the reasons could be:
1. Suppression
of artistic expression & freedom of speech as a means of control
and intimidation
2. Ridicule of art & artists as a manipulative means of diverting
attention from more important social issues
3. Furor surrounding artistic issues can obscure the true agenda of
the government
The American Civil Liberties Union provides an explanation of the importance of artistic freedom and ways in which the freedom must be safeguarded.
Below you will
find a link to a list of all the artists that were included in Entartete
Kunst.
In the next lesson we will look at Hitler's background to see if there might possibly be a more personal reason, in addition to the political one, for his hatred of German Expressionism.
Learning Actives
1. See if you can locate one or more specific instances of attempts by US government agencies, either state, local or federal, to suppress artistic freedom in the past five years. What was the outcome? Are such actions ever justified?
2. Are there parallels between what happened in Germany during the 1930s and what happened in Iraq during Gulf War II?
3. Select one of the artists included in Entartete Kunst and find out what became of the artist after Entartete Kunst.
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