Wienert Compliant Art

artige Kunst | Compliant Art

George Rodger, Young boy dressed in shorts walks along a dirt road lined with the corpses of hundreds of prisoners who died at the Bergen-Belsen extermination camp, near the towns of Bergen and Celle, Germany, April 20, 1945

artige Kunst Kunst und Politik im Nationalsozialismus Compliant Art Art and politics in the National Socialist era

Situation Kunst (für Max Imdahl), Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum Kunsthalle Rostock Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg

artige Kunst Kunst und Politik im Nationalsozialismus Compliant Art Art and politics in the National Socialist era

SAAR-RHEIN Transportgesellschaft mbH

Dank

Inhalt

Leihgeber

Förderer

Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie Bettina und Peter Eickhoff, Bochum Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Atelier Breker, Düsseldorf Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf Stadtmuseum Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur. Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster German Art Gallery, The Netherlands Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Osnabrück Kunsthalle Recklinghausen Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg Kulturhistorisches Museum, Rostock Archiv Baumeister im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart Museum Wiesbaden Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal sowie weitere Leihgeber, die ungenannt bleiben möchten.

Situation Kunst, Bochum: Beate und Thomas Bodemann, Berlin SRT Saar-Rhein Transportgesellschaft, Duisburg Verein der Freunde und Förderer von Situation Kunst e.V., Bochum Kunsthalle Rostock: Hansestadt Rostock Land Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg: Die Beauftragte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für Kultur und Medien Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, Familie und Integration Stadt Regensburg Kulturfonds Bayern sowie weitere Förderer, die ungenannt bleiben möchten.

Dank der Herausgeber an

Susanne Anger, Susanne Anna, Hermann Arnhold, Cynthia Baer, Felicitas Baumeister, Willi Beier, Peter Beye, Marion Bertram, Carola Breker, Dieter Disko, Marc Fehlmann, Gerhard Finckh, Monika Flacke, Hadwig Goez-Sturm, Chris de Groot, Jochen Gutbrod, Georg Imdahl, Joachim Jäger, Caren Jones, Alexander Klar, Karen Klein, Susanne Knuth, Anne Dorte Krause, Bernd Kreuter, Irina Lammert, Heinz Liesbrock, Inge Maruyama, Dorota Monkiewicz, Brigitte Müller, Tanja Pirsig-Marshall, Peter Raue, Luise Seppeler, Flavia Sommer, Maria Schulte, Hans-Jürgen Schwalm, Anne Sybille Schwetter, Steffen Stuth, Ferdinand Ullrich, Hilke Wagner, Ulrike Weinbrenner, Peter Wirtz, Beat Wismer, Roman Zieglgänsberger

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Preface | Grußwort Vorwort Silke von Berswordt-Wallrabe

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»Artige Kunst« — zur Einführung Max Imdahl

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Pose und Indoktrination. Zu Werken der Plastik und Malerei im Dritten Reich Karen van den Berg

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Abrichtung der Volksseele. NS-Kunst und das politisch Unbewusste Annika Wienert

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Artige, bösartige Kunst

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Bildtafeln I

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»Aus des Blutes Stimme«. Vermittlung und (Re)Kontextualisierung

Stephanie Marchal, Andreas Zeising

von NS-Kunst in der Zeitschrift NS-Frauenwarte Christian Fuhrmeister

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Die (mindestens) doppelte Zurichtung der »gewordenen Kunst«

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Bildtafeln II

Alexander von Berswordt-Wallrabe

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Fragen, nichts als Fragen… — ein persönliches Nachwort

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Übersetzungen der Katalog-Essays Translations of catalogue essays

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Impressum/Abbildungsnachweis

Karen van den Berg

71 Sigrid Schade, “Ist Nationalsozialismus darstellbar? Ein Streifzug durch die Kritiken an der Ausstellung ‘Inszenierung der Macht,’” in Frank Wagner and Klaus Behnken, Erbeutete Sinne, pp. 49–58, esp. p. 58. 72 Hinz, Die Malerei im deutschen Faschismus, p. 180. 73 Hinz, “Die Malerei im deutschen Faschismus,” p. 264. 74 Cf. Max Imdahl, “Pose und Indoktrination. Zu Werken der Plastik und Malerei im Dritten Reich” (1988), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Frankfurt/M., 1996), pp. 575–590. 75 Cf. Partsch, “Janesch, Albert,” p. 282. 76 Bloth, Adolf Wissel. Malerei und Kunstpolitik, p. 27. 77 Cf. Klee, Kulturlexikon, p. 261. 78 Cf. Dietmar Eisold (ed.), Lexikon: Künstler in der DDR (Berlin, 2010), p. 684. 79 Cf. Berta Kiefer, Der Maler Michael Mathias Kiefer 1902–1980 (Bad Wörishofen, 1982). 80 Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism, p. 26. 81 The only illustrated monograph on his works was published by his widow, Berta, with prefatory remarks by the expert on Nazi art, Reinhard Müller–Mehlis and an introduction by the zoologist, Ernst Josef Fittkau (Kiefer, Der Maler Michael Matthias Kiefer). 82 On the subject of Bergen cf. Jörg–M. Hormann and Eberhard Kliem, Claus Bergen. Marinemaler beider Weltkriege (Munich, 2014). 83 Ibid., p. 48. 84 Christoph Gunkel, “Seeschlachten ausgeschlachtet. Marinemaler Claus Bergen,” Der Spiegel, October 22, 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/ claus–bergen-marine-maler-im-ersten-und-zweitenweltkrieg-a-1055880.html. 85 Cf. Klee, Kulturlexikon, p. 42. 86 Cf. http://www.germanartgallery.eu/en/Webshop/ 0/product/info/Claus_Bergen,_Gegen_England&id=155, accessed July 22, 2016. 87 Hormann/Kliem, Claus Bergen, p. 123. 88 Ibid., p. 156. 89 Ibid., p. 155 f. 90 Ibid., p. 161. 91 Ibid., p. 129. George P. Hunt, “Most Adventurous Sea Painter of His Day,” LIFE, April 17, 1964, p. 3 and Edward Kern, “World War I, Part III,” LIFE, April 17, 1964, pp. 58–82. 92 Hormann/Kliem, Claus Bergen, p. 132. 93 Ibid., p. 101. 94 Ibid., p. 125. 95 Cf. Christian Saehrendt, “Die Brücke” zwischen Staatskunst und Verfemung: Expressionistische Kunst als Politikum in der Weimarer Republik, im “Dritten Reich” und im Kalten Krieg (Stuttgart, 2005). 96 Cf. Klee, Kulturlexikon, p. 395 and for more detail, Aya Soika and Bernd Fulda, “German Down to the Deepest Mystery of Origins. Emil Nolde and the National Socialist Dictatorship,” in Felix Krämer (ed.), Emil Nolde. Retrospektive, exh. cat. Städel Museum Frankfurt (Munich, 2014), pp. 45–58, esp. p. 45 ff. 97 Ibid., p. 46 f. 98 Nolde wrote this in a letter to Hans Fehr in November 1933, ibid., p. 49.

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99 Saehrendt, “Die Brücke” zwischen Staatskunst und Verfemung, p. 49 ff.; Barbara Hein, “Noldes dunkle Seite,” Art, March 2014, pp. 30–39. 100 Wolfgang Benz, “Verfemte Kunst – Verfolgte Künstler,” in Benz/Eckel/Nachma, Kunst im NS-Staat, p. 437. 101 Cf. Schlenker, Kunst und Propaganda, p. 260. 102 A reprint of the letter from the President of the Reich Chamber, Adolf Ziegler appears in Krämer, Emil Nolde. Retrospektive, p. 44; Cf. also Hinz, Die Malerei im deutschen Faschismus, p. 28, and Benz, Kunst im NS-Staat, p. 436 f. 103 Cf. Uwe Danker, “‘Vorkämpfer des Deutschtum’ oder ‘entarteter Künstler’? Nachdenken über Emil Nolde in der NS-Zeit,” Demokratische Geschichte, 14 (2001), pp. 149–188, esp. pp. 158–161. 104 Stefan Koldehoff, “Noldes Bekenntnis,” Die Zeit, 10 October 2013; http://www.zeit.de/2013/42/emilnolde-nationalsozialismus. 105 Ibid. Cf. also Anna Brenken, “Flaches Land mit Heiligem. Ein Besuch im Nolde-Museum und Anmerkungen zu einer Kontroverse,” Die Zeit, April 29, 1988, http://www.zeit.de/1988/18/flaches-land-mit-heiligem, accessed July 22, 2016.

Compliant, Malign Art Annika Wienert

Addressing the officially sanctioned art of the Nazi era raises a fundamental issue in art history—namely, the precise substance of that discipline. The question of whether it is really art at all, i.e. whether works from that era fall under the jurisdiction and expertise of art history, gives rise to the much more difficult question of a universally accepted definition of art. It’s a short hop from “is that art?” to “what is art?” but getting from there back to the objects that triggered the question seems an impossibly long leap. For the purposes of this text, therefore, I will work with an historical, institutioncritical definition of art that treats as artworks those objects that were produced, presented, and adopted as such within the context of their genesis, Nazi Germany. However, it does not make sense to speak of a Nazi art style or art movement, because those formulations suggest a coherence with respect to both content and form that cannot be empirically established by means of the objects themselves. Even the understanding of art among Nazi functionaries, and various people and institutions active in the art field, was far from uniform1. Nonetheless, we can speak functionally of Nazi art in the sense of “works that were created for the use of, or even on commission from, the Nazi regime, and publicly treated as artworks.”2 That definition, introduced by Hans-Ernst Mittig, does not address the intentions of the originators, but is instead based on the institutional and societal function of their work. In terms of style and subject matter, art promoted and desired by the regime between 1933 and 1945 was determined largely ex negativo. The two parallel programmatic exhibitions in 1937, the Great German Art Exhibition (Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung or GDK) and the Degenerate Art exhibition (Entartete Kunst), posited a binary canon of what was desirable and what was condemned, but did not come close to clearly defining it. The GDK was mounted annually in the newly built Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich from 1937 to 1944 as a large-scale sales exhibition, complete with judges. The building itself was the first monumental structure erected by the Nazis for propaganda purposes3. On the right of the 1940 painting by Otto Albert Hirth (p. 48), you see the severe alignment of the building’s facade. The left half of the painting is Hirth’s rendering

of an annex to the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, intended to house architecture, and applied arts exhibitions. Although planned since 1938, the extension never got off the drawing board. The design for the add-on was every bit as massive and monumental as the finished Haus der Deutschen Kunst. However, instead of a portico along the front, a colonnade of columns is integrated into the facade, which increases the monotony of the axisymmetric front view and obscures the access route. Adolf Hitler personally commissioned architect Paul Ludwig Troost to design the original building, and the führer was no less heavyhanded with his influence on the decisions of the GDK jury with respect to selection and presentation of the artworks. Nevertheless, only relatively few works were shown that could be called programmatic propaganda. Alongside them was a multitude of works, so far largely disregarded by the research community, depicting ostensibly harmless subjects, some of them in artistically inept, outworn styles. At the 1938 GDK, a mere 1.7% of the works had “subjects, titles, or themes that could be directly or indirectly linked to Nazi ideology”; the highest percentage was reached in 1941, with 3.4%.4 That statistical analysis by Christian Fuhrmeister and Stephan Klingen is distinctly less than Ines Schlenker’s estimate that some 10% of the works were always “frankly propagandistic.”5 But what is clear, either way, is that only a small minority of the works, at least superficially, conveyed Nazi substance. What follows is not an attempt to represent the entire scope of official artistic creativity under the Nazis, but rather to highlight the images that the regime determined to be “archetype and obligation,”6 and what strategies were used for their distribution and framing. In official Nazi statements, the type of art worth striving for was called “German” or “characteristic (arteigen) art.” Linguist Dina Kashapova has theorized that the term “German art” was not a positive designation, but rather one to offset the art deemed degenerate.7 She argues that “the volume of information in texts about German art is vanishingly low. They are distinguished by the same pathos, linguistic redundancy, emotionality, and monotony of substance indigenous to other thematic areas.”8 At this point, a look at just a few sample quotes makes that verdict evident. In 1933,

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Berlin art professor and party functionary Max Kutschmann declared in Deutsche KulturWacht, Blätter des Kampfbundes für deutsche Kultur (magazine for the Militant League for German Culture): “An artist who is a deeply committed Nazi must inevitably elevate every assignment, whatever it might be, from the simplest flower arrangement to the Last Judgment, from the oppressive miasma of the aesthetic lowlands into the pure, clear air of devotional service to his people. By doing so, with no particular volition on his part, he becomes with each of his works a promoter of his weltanschauung, which—glorified in this way—manifests in a purer form than on the battlefield of the bitter and perforce often coarse daily political brawls.”9 But by necessity, it remains unclear what precisely such a flower arrangement that promotes Nazism as a weltanschauung might look like. Even given a decree that art should be “good, healthy, down-to-earth”10 or “fortifying, racially healthy and highly skilled,”11 it is difficult to derive formal-aesthetic solutions, particularly given that the attributes “healthy” and “fortifying” occasionally change from metaphors to literal meanings. It is simpler to enumerate subject matter and motifs that were politically desirable. In his widely disseminated paper Deutsche Kunst und entartete “Kunst” (German Art and Degenerate “Art”), Adolf Dresler lists the following ones (presumably in order of significance): “The countenance of the Führer—heroism, loyalty, camaraderie—the beauty of the homeland— human beauty.”12 He goes on to praise the fact that “it has once again become the radiant goal of German artists to capture the beauty of the homeland artistically.”13 Thus it was not only in the Munich art exhibitions that landscapes predominated, alongside a multitude of paintings of flowers and animals. Those works represented a continuation of various academic schools of genre painting that the avant-garde had already declared obsolete. By referencing that anti-avant-garde, traditional genre, the works on display could be fitted into the vague definition of German art. That ostensibly harmless adaptability made it possible to talk about compliant art (artige Kunst). The term artig (meaning well-behaved or dutiful) as used here, should be understood as an antonym to Nazi terminology, both to “degenerate” (entartet) as well as to “character-

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istic” (arteigen). It is also a parody of the presumptuousness of the co-opting of the German word “Art” (nature/essence) for Nazi purposes, which included some neologisms.14 It plays on the English meaning of “art,” while the suffix “ig,” analogous to the English “ish,” calls into question the artistic substance. The German dictionary defines “artig” as follows: “behaving as adults expect from a child; behaving well and obediently.”15 So what we are talking about here is art that obeys the rules established by Nazi art policy. But what those rules were cannot be determined with any consistency. The sketchy, more or less vague rules on form and content were joined at the beginning of the Nazi dominion by explicit, legal regulations with antiSemitic, racist intent. In the summer of 1933, the previously cited Max Kutschmann was tasked with “consolidating” (Gleichschaltung) German artists and art associations, a euphemism for bringing them into line. He was a member of the Nazi party and, at the time, temporary director of the state College of Art and the Applied Arts (Vereinigte Staatsschulen), chairman of the German Art Collective (Deutsche Kunstgemeinschaft), division head of the cultural department of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, and chair of the visual arts group in the Militant League for German Culture (Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur). The first step in the consolidation was to form the Reich cartel for the visual arts, the only umbrella organization recognized by the Nazi Party. Kutschmann became its first director.16 The next step was the formation of the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer, RKK); being a member was a prerequisite for working publicly as an artist. A report in the Germania newspaper on November 16, 1933 on the ceremonial inauguration of the RKK in the Berlin philharmonic explained the political goal to the public. “In this way it is possible to shut down the disagreeable and harmful elements. [. . . ] And that is as it should be. This is the only way to prevent forever the return of the Jewedup literature and art activities of the last few decades.”17 A comprehensive questionnaire was one of the tools used for verification, with the first question being whether the member’s wife was of Aryan descent.18 Those who were defined as non-Aryan could have painted as many countenances of the führer, highly skilled

views of the lovely homeland, and Nazi flowers as they wanted; it would not have saved them from marginalization, persecution, and murder.19 As Joan L. Clinefelter described in her study on the nationalist, “völkisch” German Art Society (Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft), which had been co-founded in 1920 by Bettina FeistelRohmeder, it was not only that Nazi cultural policy was mandated from above and obediently implemented by artists.20 More than that, it was an interdependent relationship, with artists getting involved in, and helping to shape, culture policy. Thus it came to the point at which, alongside well-behaved (artig) art, malicious (bösartig) art also existed. Only in very few cases was the malice inherent to the works themselves. Clinefelter argues that Nazi art was less defined by specific contents or style, but rather via interpretive attribution, a “nazification” by virtue of its exhibition in a context acceptable to the party, and the explicit interpretation offered by official art reviews.21 She was following an argument developed as early as 1979 by Berthold Hinz,22 which plausibly posited that a specific “Medienverbund” (“media association”) made the ideological content of the works unambiguous, or even created it in the first place. One particularly distinctive example of that association are autobahn paintings, which can be considered the only genuine Nazi innovation in the visual arts.23 The genre, a mix of landscape, architecture, and industrial representations of construction of the highway system, no doubt contributed to the fact that, to this very day, the German autobahns stand for the alleged good side of the Nazi regime. Autobahn paintings were a constituent part of a successful and extensive orchestration of the media,24 in which artists played a decisive role. Christina Uslular-Thiel worked out how Nazi propaganda portrayed the autobahn itself as an artwork, and how its construction was extolled as a synthesis of the arts.25 The by no means purely technical or purpose-directed construction of a nationwide highway system reveals the degree to which it was ideologized, for instance in formulations in which the autobahn appears as a subject capable of action, whose task is to honor Adolf Hitler.26 Fritz Todt was the inspector general of roadways in the Nazi hierarchy, and he explicitly stated that roadwork should not be seen „as satisfying purely traffic concerns,” but rather “the German road [. . . ] must

be an expression of the landscape and an expression of the German character.”27 The oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings of the autobahn were sometimes comprehensive commissions, granted as the result of competitions, or similar state subsidy schemes, offering some previously unknown artists the chance of success.28 Among that group was Erich Mercker, who cultivated a personal relationship with Fritz Todt and produced other industrial paintings, in addition to those of the autobahn construction. During the Munich phase of the 1936 traveling exhibition Die Straßen Adolf Hitlers in der Kunst (Adolf Hitler’s Roads in Art), Mercker was represented with 22 oil paintings.29 A picture depicting the Flossenbürg Granite Quarry (p. 59) was exhibited at the 1941 GDK; prisoners of the Flossenbürg concentration camp had been forced to work the quarry since 1938, under grueling conditions. A fourth quarry was opened in 1941, in addition to the ones already being worked in 1938. The local granite deposits, which were a deciding factor in building the camp there, had been mined for several years before that for use in constructing the autobahn.30 Carl Theodor Protzen’s monumental painting Straßen des Führers (The Führer’s Roads), which was shown at the 1940 GDK, shows an autobahn overpass under construction (p. 57). It depicted the Holledau viaduct, which was actually completed in August 1939; it was an arched bridge of natural stone near Geisenhausen on the Nuremberg-Munich stretch of the autobahn.31 The choice of materials and method was favored so that the bridges would be “symbols to Germans in all corners of the Reich of the common bond of the German tribes, of the unity of the Reich,” as the architect Rudolf Wolters wrote in 1941 in the magazine Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (Art in the Third Reich).32 Construction of the autobahn was mediatized via numerous additional publications. Above and beyond individual articles, there were monographs and the newly founded monthly trade magazine Die Strasse (The Road), but also calendars, postcards, and picture and photo books. There were exhibitions, a photo competition, winter relief stamps, and poems, novels, films, and a play set on the autobahn. In addition, sculptor Josef Thorak designed an autobahn monument, although it was never actually built.33 That varied media campaign

continued through the construction of the autobahn, bridges, the service areas, and the gas stations; only after those were largely complete at the end of the 1930s did it begin to abate in quantity and significance. Against that background, it’s clear that Protzen in 1940 was trying to once again establish validity with his autobahn painting in heroicmonumental style and with a programmatic inscription framing the image at the top and bottom. Compared to two earlier works, we can also see a stylistic change, which can be interpreted as a kind of nazification. While the 1919/29 painting Industrie I (fig. 1, p. 53) shows cubist and expressionist influences, and places an individual centrally in unclear perspective, framed by the various facets of its activities, in the painting Donaubrücke bei Leipheim (Danube Bridge)34, showing construction of the bridge and done for the 1936 exhibition Die Straßen Adolf Hitlers in der Kunst (Adolf Hitler’s Roads in Art), no humans are visible at all at first glance. The dramatic focus is not on the construction work, but rather the engineering and the gigantic dimensions, which are accentuated by a group of people on the vertex of the front trestle arch who appear miniscule. The manner of painting can be characterized as a detailobsessed, technical variation on the visual language of the New Objectivity. By contrast, the 1940 picture places the manual labor at the forefront and integrates the construction site into the landscape. The distorted perspective forsakes a quasi-photographic style in order to introduce the local church at the left edge of the painting with its typical southern German onion dome; it ensures that the motif is embedded in a recognizably regional, picturesque landscape. It was not only construction of the autobahns, but also the GDK itself that benefited from a mass media campaign. The selection and compilation of artworks on postcards, 35 in newspaper articles, newsreels, or advertisements, sometimes with explanatory comments, were not representative of the official creative artistry in the German Reich altogether. But they are examples of what the regime accepted as good art and presented to the public as such. The media exposure reinforced the desired idealization function, and created ideological clarity. For instance, the front page of the Berliner Illustrirte newspaper of July 22, 1937, boasted

“Trend-setting works of German art as exhibited to the world in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst,” and reproduced seven painting across a double page, with a short commentary on each one (fig. 2, p. 54).36 On the left side, you can see a Taunus landscape, a group of farmers, and the muse Terpsichore as a nude. On the right moving clockwise are a seascape, Hitler in threequarter profile as a visual counterpart to the portrait format Taunus landscape on the opposite page, the allegory Erwachen (Awakening), and—opposite the nude—Elk Eber’s dramatic portrait of a soldier titled Die letzte Handgranate (The Last Hand Grenade). That painting (p. 82) did, in fact, become a model for the often-repeated genre of the heroic lone warrior, reducing the events of war to the individual soldier. Elk Eber was one of a small group of artists who were members of the Nazi Party before 1933. He had already worked as an official war painter during World War I; in the 1920s, as a former member of the nationalistic, paramilitary Free Corps (Freikorps), he designed Nazi propaganda flyers.37 He was most likely specifically invited to take part in the first GDK38 and his support for National Socialism helped him gain an appointment as a professor in 1938.39 In its obituary of Eber, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter called The Last Hand Grenade harrowing “in its combative will and in its dogged energy,” saying it was “one of the most sensational paintings” at the 1937 GDK, because it “symbolically expresses the stance of the Party and the entire people, a value that will ensure this picture a speedy and broad dissemination.”40 That dissemination was no doubt aided by the fact that Hitler bought the painting for himself, and it was printed in Dresler’s programmatic publication as an exemplary model of a depiction of war.41 Although Dresler said in his preface to the picture section of his book that “German artworks [need] no description at all. They provide the people directly with the experience of true art,”42 he added the following commentary to the reproduction of the painting: “Presenting the heroic life remains the eternal goal of German art.” Juxtaposed with Eber’s “norm painting” are the “distorted” works The War Cripples by Otto Dix and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Farewell 1914.43 Dresler elucidates that “the Jewish brotherhood leaves no stone unturned in its attempts to eradicate the

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German people’s avowal of a heroic view of life. The daubs of these subhumans do not even pause before the victims of war.”44 In the 1937 exhibition, The Last Hand Grenade hung in Hall 1, flanking the central Hitler portrait by Heinrich Knirr on the right. To the left of the portrait was another of Eber’s paintings, which glorified the role of the Party’s paramilitary organizations in the seizure of power.45 The portrait is framed by two trimmed laurel bushes, providing additional pathos.46 The significance of the pictures’ arrangement is evident not only in the GDK exhibitions themselves,47 the press coverage, and the programmatic publications, but also in the accompanying advertising. A flyer for the 1940 Great German Art Exhibition shows reproductions of nine artworks, arranged in three columns of three pictures each.48 In the center is a picture of Arno Breker’s bas-relief Kameraden (Comradeship) (p. 81), and below it, Die Wacht (The Watch) by Michael Mathias Kiefer (p. 43). On the bottom right is Ivo Saliger’s Rast der Diana (Diana’s Rest) (p. 62). Naked women and clothed soldiers frame Breker’s conception of the highest, ideal form of masculinity; two nude, muscular men’s bodies are intertwined, framed by fluttering drapes, and placed on a vague base, likely meant to be a cliff. The seascape with eagles below it reinforces the impression of floating in the bas-relief, and the comrades cliff setting could be read as a ball of clouds, elevating the depiction to a quasi apotheosis. In this text, we have examined examples of media contextualization of artworks in functional Nazi art to illustrate the strategies of Nazi art and image policies. The strategic use of imagery should not be understood to mean that paintings with harmless or vague subjects were co-opted or abused, as has often been claimed.49 Artists consciously took advantage of the opportunities offered by the regime. Kiefer, for example, participated in a 1943 traveling exhibition organized by the previously mentioned, nationalistic German Art Society. It showed primarily landscapes in the Romantic style. Apart from a small strip of sky, Kiefer’s painting Schwanenpaar (Swans) is entirely filled by the surface of the water. In the center are two swans; one is dipping his beak into the water, surrounding the pair of birds with concentric circles on the water.50

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Like that picture, the preponderance of the works depicted subject matter that did not reflect the political situation at the time. It is precisely in their ostensibly non-political subjects that their political content can be seen.51 It’s not plausible to assume that, for an exhibition of the German Art Society in the fourth year of the war, the art was intended to, or could gloss over or obfuscate anything. We must instead assume that it was chosen for its entertainment value and as a welcome distraction for the public. Nazi politicians and functionaries attributed additional, further functions to the works. Braunschweig’s premier, Dietrich Klagges, was the patron of the first stop on the exhibition tour in 1943 at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum.52 In his opening speech, he addressed the issue of war and ascribed to art the role of ensuring society’s support for it. It is difficult to measure what part art played in ensuring the Germans support for the Nazi regime to the very end. It is, however, equally difficult to ascertain whether the artists who were not shut out of the racially-defined community would have counteracted that support.

1 For an example of “oppositional art policy within the party, which supported expressionism in the early days of the Nazi regime,” see Dieter Scholz, “Otto Andreas Schreiber, die ‘Kunst der Nation’ und die Fabrikausstellungen,” in Eugen Blume and Dieter Scholz (ed.): Überbrückt. Ästhetische Moderne und Nationalsozialismus (Cologne, 1999), pp. 92–108, quote p. 92. 2 Hans-Ernst Mittig, “Zum Umgang mit NS-Kunst,” in Deutsche Kunst 1933–1945 in Braunschweig. Kunst im Nationalsozialismus, exh. cat. Städtisches Museum Braunschweig, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (Hildesheim, 2000), pp. 11–19, here p. 17. 3 For more on the history of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, see Sabine Brantl, Haus der Deutschen Kunst 1937–1997. Eine historische Dokumentation (Munich, 1996). 4 Christian Fuhrmeister and Stephan Klingen, “Die ‘Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung’ 1938. Relektüre und Neubewertung,” in 1938. Kunst, Künstler, Politik, ed. Eva Atlan et al., exh. cat. Jewish Museum Frankfurt (Göttingen, 2013), pp. 189–208, here pp. 203–204. 5 Ines Schlenker, “Defining National Socialist Art. The First ‘Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung’ in 1937,” in Degenerate Art. The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany 1937, ed. Olaf Peters, exh. cat. Neue Galerie New York (Munich, 2014), pp. 90–105, esp. p. 103. 6 This was the title of an article about the third GDK by Walter Horn that appeared in the Nationalsozialistischen Monatsheften of September, 1939.

7 “Meaning Degenerate Art remains a core term in the Nazi view of art, without which German art would be inconceivable.” Dina Kashapova, Kunst, Diskurs und Nationalsozialismus. Semantische und pragmatische Studien (Tübingen, 2006), p. 161. 8 Ibid. 9 Quote according to Joseph Wulf (ed.), Die bildenden Künste im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt/M., 1989), pp. 23–24. 10 From a report on the autumn art exhibition Blut und Boden at the district office for Munich/Upper Bavaria of the Nazi Art Society in the autumn of 1935, published in Das Bild, 1935, p. 370, quote ibid p. 188. 11 Ibid., p. 213. 12 Adolf Dresler, Deutsche Kunst und entartete “Kunst” (Munich, 1938), p. 15. The fifth edition of the book was published in 1941. 13 Ibid., p. 67. 14 For instance in addition to Entartung (degeneracy), there was Aufartung (species graft), there were the terms Arteigenen, Artgebundenen, Artbewussten, Artgerechten, and Artfremde (characteristic, species specific, species conscious, appropriate, and foreign). 15 http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/artig, accessed on July 4, 2016. 16 See Wulf 1989 (see note 9), p. 24. 17 Ibid., p. 104. 18 Reprinted in ibid., pp. 110–111. 19 On German art policy after 1933, see Christoph Zuschlag, “Entartete Kunst.” Ausstellungsstrategien im Nazi-Deutschland (Worms, 1995), pp. 38–57. 20 See Joan L. Clinefelter, Artists for the Reich. Culture and Race from Weimar to Nazi Germany (Oxford/New York, 2005), p. 3. 21 Ibid., p. 4. 22 See Berthold Hinz, “Bild und Lichtbild im Medienverbund,” in the same, et al. (eds.), “Die Dekoration der Gewalt.” Kunst und Medien im Faschismus (Giessen, 1979), pp. 137–148. 23 By contrast, the forestscapes promoted by Alfred Rosenberg’s Nationalsozialistische Kulturgemeinde with a 1936 exhibition failed to establish themselves as a separate genre. See Jan Werquet, “‘Deutscher Wald’ – ‘Deutsche Kunst’? Die Darstellung des Waldes in der Malerei des Dritten Reiches” in Unter Bäumen. Die Deutschen und ihr Wald, eds. Ursula Brandmayer and Bernd Ulrich, exh. cat. German Historical Museum Berlin (Dresden, 2011), pp. 160–171. 24 Although the thesis has been put forth that panel painting was accorded relatively little significance. See Rainer Stommer and Kurt H. Lang: “‘Deutsche Künstler – an die Front des Straßenbaus!’ Fallstudie zur nationalsozialistischen Bildgattung ‘Autobahnmalerei’,” in Rainer Stommer (ed.): Reichsautobahn. Pyramiden des Dritten Reichs – Analysen zur Ästhetik eines unbewältigten Mythos (Marburg, 1982), pp. 91– 119, esp. p. 93. 25 See Christina Uslular-Thiele, “Autobahnen,” in Frankfurter Kunstverein (ed.), Kunst im 3. Reich. Dokumente der Unterwerfung (Frankfurt/M., 1980), pp. 148–182.

26 “The duty of the Reich autobahn is to become Adolf Hitler’s road. They are the first technological works that bear his name. Honoring him, not only today, but for generations to come, is the exalted duty of the Reich autobahn,” wrote Ernst Schöneberger in 1943 in Fritz Todt. Mensch, Ingenieur und Nationalsozialist. Quote ibid., p. 148. 27 Ibid., p. 161. For Todt, it was about upgrading the engineer from a mere technical specialist to a creative, inventive, and comprehensively culturally educated artist. See Fritz Todt, “Schönheit der Technik,” Die Kunst im Dritten Reich, 1938, No. 1, pp. 8–15. 28 See Stommer/Lang 1982 (see note 24), p. 98. 29 See Ausstellung: Die Straßen Adolf Hitlers in der Kunst 1936, organized by the Ausstellungsleitung München e. V. for the inspector general of German Roads (Munich, 1936), p. 25. 30 For more on the relationship between the concentration camp system and Nazi building works, see Paul B. Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression. The SS, forced labor and the Nazi monumental building economy (London, 2000). 31 Construction began in July, 1937; the lanes in the direction of Munich were inaugurated in November, 1938. For more on the construction, see Gabi Obermaier, “Die Holledaubrücke,” bau intern, No. 5/6 (2011), pp. 18–21. 32 Quote from Uslular-Thiele 1980 (see note 25), p. 164. 33 For examples, see Stommer/Lang 1982 (see note 24). 34 Pictured in ibid., p. 106. 35 Documented on the Internet at http://www.hausderdeutschenkunst.de/postkarten/postkarten.html. 36 Pp. 1058–1059, pictured in Braunschweig 2000 (see note 2), p. 11. 37 See Marlies Schmidt, Die “Große Deutsche Kunstaustellung 1937 im Haus der Deutschen Kunst zu München”. Rekonstruktion und Analyse, dissertation (Halle, 2010), p. 70. Online at digital.bibliothek.unihalle.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:4-9141 (accessed on Feb. 24, 2014). 38 Ibid., p. 30. 39 See Werner Rittich, “Zum Tode von Prof. Elk Eber,” Völkischer Beobachter, Aug. 15, 1941, excerpt printed in Wulf 1989 (see note 9), pp. 278–280. 40 Ibid., p. 279. 41 Dresler 1938 (see note 12), p. 37. 42 Ibid., p. 33. 43 As late as 1937, Kirchner wrote from Davos to the Prussian Academy of the Arts that he was “not an enemy” and wished “with all his heart that Germany would develop a new, beautiful, and healthy art,” counting his own creations as part of that. Printed in Wulf 1989 (see note 9), p. 348. 44 Ibid., p. 36. 45 The painting Appell am 23. Februar 1933 referred to the deployment of armed auxilliary police in Prussia, made up of members of the SA, SS, and the steel helmet paramilitaries. That painting was printed in the catalogue, unlike The Last Grenade.

46 See Schmidt 2010 (see note 37), p. 90. 47 Only the arrangement of the works for the 1937 GDK has been researched (ibid.). There is extensive photo documentation of the exhibitions that is now freely available online, which would lend itself to further studies of that kind. 48 Printed in Frankfurter Kunstverein 1980 (see note 25), p. 386, fig. 199. 49 For a critical analysis of that strategy of deflecting guilt based on selected artists from Upper Swabia, see Kunst Oberschwaben 20. Jhd. Ein schwieriges Erbe 1933–1945, ed. Uwe Degreif, exh. cat. Museum Biberach (Lindenberg, 2014). 50 Printed in Clinefelter 2005 (see note 20), p. 112, fig. 6.1. from Das Bild, Jan/Feb 1943, p. 10. 51 Christian Fuhrmeister and Stephan Klingen present a similar argument when they describe one of the functions of Nazi art to be “leading one to believe in a domain free of politics.” They characterize the 1938 GDK as an “unburdening exhibition” and identify the illusion of a non-political sphere as a way of stabilizing the system. In Frankfurt 2013 (see note 4), p. 206. 52 See Clinefelter 2005 (see note 20), p. 110 ff. Klagges had been a member of the Nazi Party and the SS since 1925, and the minister for the interior and public education in Braunschweig since 1931. In 1950, he was sentenced to life in prison; in 1952, his sentence was reduced to 15 years. See Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945 (Frankfurt/M., 2007), p. 312.

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