The Art of National-Socialist German Reich - Историја Умјетности Трећег Рајха

 

1. Other countries’ perception of the Great German Art Exhibitions.
   Classical Realism versus Degenerated/ Modern Art.
   
   
2. Hitler as art. 
   
   
3. German War Art in the Pentagon.
   ‘Very good, outstanding and brilliant in conception…’
   
   
4. Third Reich Art and New Deal Art.
   ‘German Soil’ versus ‘American Soil’.
   
   
5. What happened to the art Hitler purchased at the Great German Art Exhibitions?
   
   
6. The extreme scarcity of National Socialistic art.
   Massive, systematic destruction of Nazi art since 1945: the Potsdam-Agreement.
   
   
7. Art competitions at the Olympic Games.
   
   
8. ‘The Iron Century’. Cast Iron in Germany.
   The cultural-historical significance of iron casting during the 19th century.
   
   
9. The War Art Program in Nazi Germany.
   ‘Kunst der Front’.

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1. Other countries’ perception of the Great German Art Exhibitions.
– Classical Realism versus Degenerated/ Modern Art.

What was the perception of foreign countries regarding the Great German Art Exhibitions? And what was their view on Entartete Kunst?
Below we have tried to provide answers to these questions, with the help of articles by Keith Holz, professor of Art History at Western Illinois University (“Brushwork thick and easy or a Beauty-parlor mask for murder? Reckoning with the Great German Art Exhibitions in the Western Democracies’, RIHA Journal, September 2012) and Cora Goldstein, professor of Political Science at California State University (‘Capturing the German Eye: American Visual Propaganda in Occupied Germany, 2009).

Clearly the media of other countries had paid little attention to the Great German Art Exhibitions. Besides the outbreak of the war -after which patriotism turned public opinion in foreign countries against Germans and their culture- there were four reasons the foreign press paid limited attention to the Great German Art Exhibitions:

a. The myth that Nazi art was bad art, all the same, propaganda, not art at all, or the opposite of modern art.
‘It would be so much easier if bad men and bad politics made bad art’.
Art writers were predisposed to believe that there was nothing positive for them to write about. Elitism, modernist exclusivity and modern condescension were already established by 1933. Especially in France, the indisputable belief was that only freely creating artists could make real art. Other critic noted the fact that the thematically wide-ranging exhibitions did not include a single religious work, or that German Expressionism was the most important art genre in German.
It took more than 70 years before William Cook wrote in the British Spectator in 2017 the daring article ‘Was Nazi Art Really that Bad?’. Cook: ‘The conventional wisdom is that everything Hitler approved was rubbish, and everything he vetoed was superb. It’s convenient and conforting to believe that tyrants have no taste, but the truth is a bit more complicated, and a lot more interesting than that….However, between the Alpine kitsch he loved and the modernist masterpieces he hated lay a lot of artworks whose merits were less clear-cut…Artist under the National Socialists (the exhibition in the Pinakothek der Moderne) comprises only 11 paintings but it’s the most interesting room of the whole museum….  Its shows that in Nazi Germany, things were rarely black and white. ..It would be so much easier if bad men and bad politics made bad art…. but when you look at this picture with fresh eyes (The Four Elements by Adolf Ziegler) you are forced to acknowledge an awkard truth. Despite the repugant morals of the man who made it, it’s actually not that bad…’   


b. Cultural authorities were afraid that the ordinary public in the democracies would be attracted to and appreciate the German art exhibited at the GDKs.

Publications about the GDK-art might stimulate its admiration. Art magazines and news editors seriously feared that the artistic preferences of Western citizens might coincide with Nazi artistic taste, and that they would agree with the Nazi rejection of Modern art/ Entartete Kunst.
Concerns that Nazi art would appeal to audiences in the democracies went hand in hand with the related fear that the exhibition of modernist German art would stimulate a backlash from pro-Nazi elements within the democratic public sphere.
Illustrative of this is a comment made on 30 November 1937 by the curator of the Basel Kunstmuseum, Georg Schmidt. He was concerned with the potentially anti-modernist and pro-Nazi responses to modern art around Europe and in the United Kingdom, as the Paris exiles grappled with how to formulate a counter-exhibition to answer the GDK and Degenerated Art Exhibitions in 1937. Schmidt wrote: ‘if one is not certain that the English public is spontaneously shocked that such great works are being banned by the Nazis, then better to let the matter be. And advocate for modern art without any anti-Nazi viewpoint. With us in Switzerland, one can likewise cultivate much more anti-Nazi sentiment, if one simply writes in the newspaper: ‘the world-famous picture of the greatest German painter of the 20th century, The Tower of the Blue Horses, is being condemned by the Nazi’s!’ But when one shows the painting, the effect shall rather be pro-Nazi. For this reason, the values of modern art are not yet certain enough. In Paris it is little better, but at the moment where the cause of anti-Nazism is raised, the people come in to see the modern pictures for the first time – and the reaction is pro-Nazi.”

As an answer to the two 1937 exhibitions in Munich, a group of Westheim and London art dealers staged an exhibition in 1938 of 300 examples of modern German art in London at the New Burlington Gallery. The reactions of the public were as the Swiss curator already predicted. Raymond Mortimer, critic for the left-liberal New Statesman & Nation, suggested why it might be better not to put modern German art before the eyes of the British public. He wrote: “in so far as the German Exhibition at the New Burlington Gallery is propaganda, it is, in my opinion, extremely bad propaganda. People who go to see the exhibition are only too likely to say: If Hitler doesn’t like these modern pictures, it’s the best thing I’ve heard about Hitler. For the general impressionism made by the show upon the ordinary public must be one of extraordinary ugliness.”
Put differently, the anxieties articulated by Schmidt and Mortimer about the public might best be regarded as the recurrence of a nightmare long suppressed by modernist champions through their long-time and institutionalised neglect of the taste of the masses.
A scaled-down version of the London exhibition ‘Twentieth Century German Art’ was somewhat later held in several cities in the USA. The art works were often met with incomprehension, abomination and rejection. Through the press, people openly advocated the belief that in matters of art Hitler must be right.
And in 1939, on the occasion of the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston’s modernist exhibition ‘Contemporary German Art’, the Boston Globe wrote: “…There are probably many people -art lovers- in Boston, who will side with Hitler in this particular purge. …So it is that the war of opinions has come to Boston -the judgement seat of the United States in art matters- with the emphasis slightly on the side of traditions which Hitler seems to respect.”


c. Writers and cultural figures were blinded by National Socialist cultural propaganda.
Foreign art critics seldom analysed the GDK art in relation to any point of reference (for example history or tradition), or asked questions about it, other than those suggested or prescribed by the Nazis. As a result of the Nazi regime and propaganda, art critics in the democracies were put per definition in defensive positions; they rarely considered the art and exhibitions outside of Nazi-defined terms.


d. During the immediate and ongoing post-war years, American, British and French art historians never developed an art history of National Socialist art that reckoned analytically with the GDKs.
After 1945, the very idea of an empirical assessment of Nazi art, including the Great German Art Exhibitions, was unthinkable, and it would have to wait until decades into the future.


And nowadays?
In the first years after 1945, OMGUS (the U.S. Military Government in Germany) regulated and censored the art world. The Information Control Division (ICD, the key structure in the political control of post-war German culture in the American zone) was in fact a non-violent version of the Reichskulturkammer. With its seven subdivisions (i.e. press, literature, radio, film, theatre, music, and art), the ICD neatly replaced the Reich Chamber of Culture. In the ideology of OMGUS, painting and sculpting were conceived of as a strategic element in the campaign to politically re-educate the German people for a new democratic internationalism. Modern art allowed for the establishment of an easy continuity with the pre-Nazi modernist past, and it could serve as a springboard for the international projection of Germany as a new country interacting with its new Western partners. ‘Free’ artists producing ‘free art’ was one of the most powerful symbols of the new Germany, the answer to the politically controlled art of the Third Reich. Modern art linked Western Germany to Western Europe -separating the new West German aesthetic and politics from that of the Nazi era, the U.S.S.R., and East Germany- and suggested an ‘authentically’ German identity.
Thus Classical Realism disappeared for more than 7 decades to the background and Degenerated / Modern Art became the most favourite style. The former Nazi art genre became the ‘new degenerated art’.

As stated above, it took more than 70 years before the British Spectator finally wrote in 2017 the daring article “Was Nazi Art Really that Bad?” To find an answer to that question, we go to the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. In 2015 they staged the exhibition ‘Degenerated Art – Nazi Art’. The museum displayed the large marble Nazi sculpture ‘Zwei Menschen’ by Joseph Thorak next to the Entartete bronze ‘Der Aufstieg’ by Otto Freundlich (one of Freundlich’s works was depicted on the cover of the catalogue of the Entertete Kunst exhibition in Munich 1937); The Pinakothek also displayed Adolf’s Ziegler’s ‘The Four Elements’ (which hung in the Führerbau) versus the triptych ‘Temptation’ by the entartete painter Max Beckmann.
– which sculpture do you think the public liked the most?
– which triptych do you think the public found magnificent, before reading the explanatory text next to it?
Nothing seems to have changed; the public opinion about art is still subordinated to the view of a small group of art elites, who continue to think it is their mission to teach people what good and bad art is. The taste of the masses? Who cares?


The public opinion about art is still subordinated to the view of a small group of art elites, who continue to think it is their mission to teach people what good and bad art is.

The Taste of the Masses? Who cares?

Left: ‘Zwei Menschen’ by Joseph Thorak, 1941. Marble, height 2,90 meter.
Right: ‘Der Aufstieg’, by Otto Freudlich, 1928. Bronze, height 2,00 meter.

On top: ‘The Four Elements’ by Adolf Ziegler, before 1937 (‘Actually not that bad’, according to the International Spectator).
Below: ‘Temptation’ by Max Beckmann, 1936/37.

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2. Hitler as art.

Thirty-six paintings and busts of Hitler were displayed at the Great German Art Exhibitions from 1937 to 1944. The first painting that people saw when they entered the exhibition was one of Der Führer in Room 1. In similar fashion, the official exhibition catalogues all started with a picture of the ‘Schirmherr (patron) Des Haus der Deutschen Kunst’.
Around 450 portraits depicting Hitler and other Nazi-officials, Nazi-symbols, German Soldiers and battle fields are currently stored in the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington. Keeping this German War Art Collection in the US is not seen by the Americans as a violation of the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1970 UNESCO Treaty on cultural property, as they don’t classify these paintings as art.

In 2004 Brigadier General John Brown, outgoing head of the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History, was interviewed about the Army’s view of the legal status of these 450 objects in the German War Art Collection that remained in the custody of the United States. When asked if the Army’s continues sequestration of these works, which had been determined to be in volation of U.S. and German laws in 1947, could not also be construed as a volation of the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1970 UNESCO treaty on cultural property, he replied, “No. That would only be true if the objects in the German War Art Collection could be defined as cultural property or art. Our position is that these paintings are no art” (‘Nostalgia for the Future’, Gregory Maertz, 2019).

This remarkable point of view leads us to the following question: is a painting depicting Angela Merkel, Joseph Stalin, Benjamin Netanyahu or Mao Zedong art or non-art? And who decides this? Respectively German left-wing extremists? Russian civilians? Palestinians or Taiwanese civilians? Can people be interested in a portrait of Napoleon (or Hitler) because of it’s historical significance? Or does their interest mean that they are automatically right-wing extremists with the aim of conquering the whole of Europe? This last point of view echoes the theory of Hannah Ahrend who states: ‘The essence of terror lies in the immediate transition from accusation to conviction’. One thing we learned very well from the tragic 1930s and 1940s is that classifying art as ‘non-art’ is a dead-end-street, just like burning and forbidding books for political reasons. No matter how much one dislikes Hitler, Napoleon, Caligula or Stalin, and no matter how much their depictions were used as propaganda, a painting or sculpture of them cannot be reclassified as ‘non art’.

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3. German War Art in the Pentagon.
– ‘Very good, outstanding and brilliant in conception…’

House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Investigation Subcommittee, Washington, D.C. , September 23, 1981
At September 23, 1981, the House of Representatives discussed the return to Germany of 6.337 pieces of war art that were seized from the German Government by the United States Army in March 1947. Below some remarkable quotes from the discussion.
George William Whitehurst (Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, journalist, professor) about the 6.337 pieces of German war art:
‘They are similar to the military works of art hanging on our own committee and subcommittee rooms. Part of the German collection is on display in the Pentagon…. This is war art, showing the life of German military personnel under the best and the worst conditions, as indeed soldiers, sailors, and airmen of all nations experienced it… ‘Asked by the Chairman about the value of the art: ‘Some of it is very, very good. The large canvas in my office is an outstanding work of art’.   

Marylou Gjernes, Army Art Curator, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Department of the Army:
‘..The Air Force similarly favors retention of German war art integral to its museum operations at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and a small exhibit of paintings that they have in the Pentagon.’…. ‘Some of the paintings and drawings are brilliant in conception and execution. They show by their artistry, color and mood, the spirit of combat, and the desolation, destruction and tragedy of war. There are illustrations of the despair and boredom of the troops…They are a testament to the sensitivity of the artist regardless of nationality. The collection ..is utilized in ongoing exhibition programs and displays to provide a unique view of World War II that supplements and supports the written history of the conflict..’


Extreme scarce work of art
Art works considered as overt propaganda were massively destroyed
As described below, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945, the Allied Control Council laws and military government regulations, all collections of works of art related or dedicated to the perpetuation of German militarism or Nazism, were destroyed. Thousands of paintings were considered of ‘no value’ and burned. Around 8,722 artworks were shipped to military deposits in the U.S. In 1986 the largest part was returned to Germany, with the exception of 200 paintings which were considered as overt propaganda: depictions of German Soldiers, war sceneries, swastika’s and portraits of Nazi leaders.

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4. Third Reich Art and New Deal Art.
– ‘German Soil’ versus ‘American Soil’.

A large amount of the public art works in the USA, created under the PWA and WPA-programs as part of the New Deal*, were painted in Social Realism Style. Social Realism was the style of idealized realistic art, originally developed in the Soviet Union, and from 1922 -1988 the official style in that country. Many of these murals in the USA seem to be very, very similar to murals and paintings in the Third Reich. What is the difference for example between ‘German Soil’ and ‘American Soil’?

* The Public Works of Art Project (PWA) was a program to employ artists, as part of the New Deal, during the Great Depression. It was the first such program, running from December 1933 to June 1934. The purpose of the PWAP was ‘to give work to artists by arranging to have competent representatives of the profession embellish public buildings. Artists were told that the subject matter had to be related to the ‘American scene’. Artworks from the project were shown or incorporated into a variety of locations, including the White House and House of Representatives.
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was created not as a cultural activity but as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. The Federal Art Project’s primary goals were to employ out-of-work artists and to provide art for non-federal municipal buildings and public spaces. As many as 10,000 artists were commissioned to produce work for the WPA Federal Art Project.

Lincoln Kirstein, one of the ‘Monuments Men’, wrote in ‘Art in the Third Reich’, (‘Magazine of Art’, American Federation of Arts, New York, October 1945): ‘There have been many new buildings to decorate (in Germany): party offices, banks, barracks, schools, and town-halls. What has been done compares, at least in technique, more than favorably with our PWA and WPA murals. Americans employed much the same subject matter – physical energy and the Common Man…. The Nazis did not tolerate incompetence or slipshod execution. Their patronage was in no sense charity…….The general level of official work in Germany was technically superior to much of the work in France, England, and the United States’.

Now, we have already seen that US Members of Congress stated in 1981 that German war art was similar to their own American war art, and that some of these art works were ‘outstanding works of art’. The curator of the US Army Centre of Military History stated: ‘..‘Some of the (German) paintings and drawings are brilliant in conception and execution. They show by their artistry, color and mood, the spirit of combat, and the desolation, destruction and tragedy of war. There are illustrations of the despair and boredom of the troops…They are a testament to the sensitivity of the artist regardless of nationality’. See Art History, point 3. ‘German War Art in the Pentagon’.

Third Reich art from 1933 – 1945 appears to be quite similar as American New Deal Art and American War Art created in the same period. On top of that, ‘a surprising number of modernist idioms flourished, not just in the shadow of the Nazi dictatorship, but openly and with the enthusiastic support of the regime’s most powerful individuals and institutions’ (‘Nostaligia for the Future’ by Gregory Maertz). Works by Adolf Wissel show elements of Neue Sachlichkeit, several paintings by Edmund Steppes are almost surrealistic, and Karl Walther was without any doubt a late impressionist.
That raises the question: what exactly is the definition of ‘Nazi Art’?

Below a comparison between Third Reich murals/paintings and American New Deal Art.

Jerry Bywaters, ‘Soil Conservation in Collin County’, 1941. Mural in the Post Office of Farmersville, Texas. ‘American Soil’, the American counterpart of ‘German Soil’.

Werner Peiner, ‘Deutsche Erde’ (‘German Soil’ or ‘Terra tedesca’), 1933. GDK 1938, room 3. The painting was also displayed at the XIX Venice Biennale, 1934, and at the ‘1938 Berliner Ausstellung in der Preussischen Akademie der Künste’.

Ray Strong, ‘Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge’, 1934. Created under the New Deal’s Public Works of Art Project.

Erich Mercker, ‘Construction of the Drachenlochbrücke’, 1937. Located near Stuttgart. Nowadays a protected landmark. Large format (120 x 100 cm).

Seymour Vogel, ‘Security of People’, 1941. Study for a mural, Old Security Building, Washington D.C. Executed in tempera on board, in the possession of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

‘Kalenberger Bauernfamilie’ (Farming Family from Kalenberg), 1939. GDK 1939, room 33; depicted in the exhibition catalogue. Size 200 cm x 150 cm. Bought by Hitler for 12,000 RM. Currently in the possession of the German Historical Museum, Berlin. ‘Calenberg’ is an agricultural region south-west of Hannover. ‘Kalenberger Bauernfamilie’ was also displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst im 3. Reich, Dokumente der Unterwerfung’; the exhibition, instigated by the Frankfurter Kunstverein, was held from 1974 to 1975 in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Ludwigshafen and Wuppertal. Again displayed at the exhibition ‘The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790 – 1990’, organised by the Royal Scottish Academy, Edingburgh/ London, 1994/95.

Joe H. Cox, ‘Harvest’, 1940. Mural in the Post Office of Alma, Michigan.

Arthur Kampf, ‘Der Schnitter’ (‘Grim Reaper’). Displayed at the ‘Ausstellung Berliner Kunst’, 1935, Neue Pinakothek, Munich. Depicted in ‘Das Bild’, May 1935, and in ‘Das bauerliche Jahr, Ein Buch vom Bauerntum in Bildern deutscher Maler’.
deutscher Maler’.

Jacob Elshin, ‘Miners at Work’, 1938. Owned by the city of Renton, Washington.

Left: Ria Picco-Rückert, art print, ‘Im Schacht des Panzers Johanna’. Depicted is the first Armoured Face Conveyer (coal mining equipment), invented in 1942 and for the first time in use in the Johanna coal mine in Poland. GDK 1943, room 12. Bought by Joseph Goebbels for 5.000 RM. A litho is in the possession of the ‘Bergbaumuseum Bochum’.

Richard Haines, ‘Settlers’, 1938. Mural in the Sebaska High School, Sebaska, Minnesota.

Oskar Martin-Amorbach, ‘Der Abend‘ (‘The Evening‘), 1937. GDK 1939, room 15; depicted in the exhibition catalogue. Bought by Hitler for 15.000 Reichmark. In the possession of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. Depicted in ‘The Arts of the Third Reich’, by Peter Adam, 1992, in ‘Kunst im Deutschen Reich’, 1939, in ‘Jugend’, 1939, in ‘Deutsche Kunst der Gegenwart’, Breslau, 1943, and in ‘Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte’, 1939, Heft 114. Size: 342 x 320 cm.

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5. What happened to the art Hitler purchased at the Great German Art Exhibitions?

With his insatiable passion for collecting art, Hitler was the most important purchaser of works from the GDKs. Every year, several times, he visited the Haus der Deustchen Kunst. From 1937 to 1944 he bought in total 1316 works at the GDKs.  
Hitler’s mass art purchases were mostly undertaken without a plan regarding the future location of the works. He only had a specific usage in mind from the start for a few of these works of art. The majority of the paintings and sculptures acquired at the GDKs faced an uncertain future. They were stored at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst until further notice (some were eventually taken to the Führerbau).  
Below we describe the fate of a limited number of artworks which were – as an exception- given a special destination by Hitler:

1. 144 paintings, sculptures and graphic works were bought by Hitler in 1938; they were transported to Berlin and placed in the Neue Reichskanzlei under construction, which was completed in January 1939. The list of 144 works (in our possession) is not exhaustive. Hitler did buy more works at the GDK in 1938, and in later years, which were also placed in the Reichskanzlei.

2. In 1939 Hitler gave 10 works of art to the Jagdmuseum in Munich: works by Carl von Dombroswki, Ludwig Eugen, Felix Kupsch, Friedrich Reimann (5), Karl Wagner and Renz Waller.

3. A few pieces were used to decorate Hitler’s various offices and private residences; for example, Adolf Ziegler’s ‘Die Vier Elemente’ was famously placed over the fireplace in a salon of the Führerbau in Munich.

4. In April 1943 Hitler had 21 paintings from the GDK delivered to his Munich apartment in the Prinzregentenstrasse. This delivery included works by Anton Müller-Wischin, Franz Xaver Wolf, Freidrich Schüz, Hermann Urban, Ludwig Platzöder, Sep Happ and Sepp Meindl.

5. In 1939 Hitler bought two works, explicitly meant for his own personal use: ‘Beethoven’ by Josef Jurutka and ‘Bauernkrieg’ by Franz Xavier Wolf.

The article ‘Die Gemälde aus Hitlers Wohnung am Prinzregentenplatz. Eine Spurensuche‘, 2022, by Rainer Keller, published a list of 46 oil paintings that previously hung in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz; most of them classical works, only 3 of them were German contemporary paintings. This list was discovered by the Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv in 2019 (BayHStA NL Hitler 72).
German Art Gallery discovered/identified in 2025 six other contemporary works in Hitlers house at the Prinzregentenplatz.
The works, photographed at the end of April 1945 by American soldiers, including US Army War Correspondent Lee Miller, were:

• Otto Antoine, ‘Berlin, Am Ehrenmal’ (‘Berlin, at the Mermorial’), GDK 1940 room 11. Bought by Hitler for 1,800 Reichsmark;
• Willy Ter Hell, ‘Auf der Schwäbischen Alp’ (‘In the Schwabian Jura’). GDK 1940 room 17. Bought by Adolf Hitler for 3.000 Reichsmark;
• Sepp Meindl, ‘Markt in Proskurow der Ukraine‘ (‘Market in Proskurow in Ukraine‘), GDK 1942 room 18. Bought by Hitler for 2,500 Reichsmark;
• Friedrich Schüz, ‘Taormina – Antikes Theater‘ (‘Village of Taormina – Ancient Theater’), GDK 1942 room 4. Bought by Hitler for 4,000 Reichsmark;
• Ferdinand Thurnmann, ‘Blumenstrauss I‘ (‘Bouquet of Flowers I’), GDK 1940 room 37. Bought by Hitler for 1,200 Reichsmark;
• Hermann Urban, ‘Am Liris’ (‘At the Liri River’). GDK 1940 room 6. Bought by Adolf Hitler for 1.800 Reichsmark.
  
  

Otto Antoine, ‘Berlin, Am Ehrenmal’ (‘Berlin, at the Mermorial’), GDK 1940 room 11. Bought by Hitler for 1,800 Reichsmark. Located in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz, München, end of April, 1945.


Willy Ter Hell, ‘Auf der Schwäbischen Alp’ (‘In the Schwabian Jura’). GDK 1940 room 17. Bought by Adolf Hitler for 3.000 Reichsmark. Located in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz, München, end of April, 1945.
     

Sepp Meindl, ‘Markt in Proskurow der Ukraine‘ (‘Market in Proskurow in Ukraine‘), GDK 1942 room 18. Bought by Hitler for 2,500 Reichsmark.
Located in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz, München, end of April, 1945.  

Friedrich Schüz, ‘Taormina – Antikes Theater‘ (‘Village of Taormina – Ancient Theater’), GDK 1942 room 4. Bought by Hitler for 4,000 Reichsmark.
Located in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz, München, end of April, 1945.  

Ferdinand Thurnmann, ‘Blumenstrauss I‘ (‘Bouquet of Flowers I’), GDK 1940 room 37. Bought by Hitler for 1,200 Reichsmark. Located in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz, München, end of April, 1945.  

Hermann Urban, ‘Am Liris’ (‘At the Liri River’). GDK 1940 room 6. Bought by Adolf Hitler for 1.800 Reichsmark. in Hitler’s house at the Prinzregentenplatz, München, end of April, 1945.   

 

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6. The extreme scarcity of National Socialistic art.
– Massive, systematic destruction of Nazi art since 1945: the Potsdam-Agreement.

From 1933 to 1949 Germany experienced two massive art purges. Both the National Socialist government and OMGUS (the U.S. Military Government in Germany) were highly concerned with controlling what people saw and how they saw it. The Nazis eliminated what they called ‘Degenerate art’, erasing the pictorial traces of turmoil and heterogeneity that they associated with modern art. The Western Allies in turn eradicated ‘Nazi art’ and forbade all artworks military subjects or themes that could have military and/or chauvinist symbolism from pictorial representation. Both the Third Reich and OMGUS utilized the visual arts as instruments for the construction of new German cultural heritages.
The Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945, subparagraph 3, Part III, Section A stated that one purpose of the occupation of Germany was ‘to destroy the National Socialistic Party and its affiliated and supervised organizations and to dissolve all Nazi and militaristic activity or propaganda.’ In accordance with Allied Control Council laws and military government regulations, all documents and objects which might tend to revitalize the Nazi spirit or German militarism would be confiscated or destroyed. For example, Title 18, Military Government Regulation, OMGUS stated that: ‘all collections of works of art related or dedicated to the perpetuation of German militarism or Nazism will be closed permanently and taken into custody.’ As a consequence, thousands of paintings –portraits of Nazi-leaders, paintings containing a swastika or depicting military/war scenes– were considered ‘of no value’ and destroyed. With knives, fires and hammers, they smashed countless sculptures and burned thousands of paintings. Around 8,722 artworks were shipped to military deposits in the U.S.
OMGUS regulated and censored the art world. The Information Control Division (ICD, the key structure in the political control of post-war German culture in the American zone) was in fact a non-violent version of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture). With its seven subdivisions (i.e. press, literature, radio, film, theatre, music, and art), the ICD neatly replaced the Reich Chamber of Culture. The ICD established through its various sections a system of licensed activity, with screening and vetting by Intelligence to exclude all politically undesirable people.

‘Free’ German artists producing ‘free German art’ after 1945
In the ideology of OMGUS, painting was conceived of as a strategic element in the campaign to politically re-educate the German people for a new democratic internationalism. Modern art allowed for the establishment of an easy continuity with the pre-Nazi modernist past, and it could serve as a springboard for the international projection of Germany as a new country interacting with its new Western partners.
‘Free’ artists producing ‘free art’ was one of the most powerful symbols of the new Germany, the answer to the politically controlled art of the Third Reich. Modern art linked Western Germany to Western Europe – separating the new West German aesthetic and politics from that of the Nazi era, the U.S.S.R., and East Germany – and suggested an ‘authentically’ German identity.

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7. Art competitions at the Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games during its early years, from 1912 to 1948, included art competitions in addition to the athletic contests. Bronze, Silver and Gold medals were awarded for exhibits of town planning, architecture, drama, poetry, music, graphic arts and paintings as well as sculpture, reliefs and medallions. All of the entered works had to be inspired by sport, and had to be original and not previously published.
The competitions were part of the original intention of the Olympic Movement’s founder, Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, who believed that sports and the arts were inextricably linked.
The juried art competitions were abandoned in 1954 mainly because of the idea that artists were considered to be professionals, while Olympic athletes were required to be amateurs (however, the athletic events would later radically evolve to accommodate professional athletes).
Also, a continuing subject of discussion and debate was the fact that sporting achievements can be measured in easily-understood metrics such as time and distance, but judging the arts is undeniably subjective. Finally the arts competition suffered from the guiding parameter that the works created had to be associated with sport, limiting the entries to tiresome imagery of athletes and odes to sporting achievement.

The 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, best-documented Olympic Art Competition
At the opening ceremony of 1936 Olympic Art Competition, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels reminded his audience that each work entered in the competition was required to have been created within the last four years. This restriction, he declared, ‘enables us to derive from the Exhibition an estimate of international conditions.’
The detailed descriptions in the Official Report of the 11th Olympic Games not only provided a dazzling depiction of this charmingly peculiar Olympic-art phenomenon, but also a chilling snapshot of Germany during the emergence of the Third Reich. Home-field advantage greatly worked in Germany’s favor that year; the international jury consisted of 29 German judges and 12 from other European countries. It was also a welcome, if not surprising, spike in gold medals for the German artists, who won five of the nine gold medals awarded that year. Charles Downing Lay was the only American to win a medal in 1936, taking home silver in the Architecture category. The German brothers Werner and Walter March took home gold in that category for their design ‘Reich Sport Field.’
The 1936 art competition was one of the most successful on record. More than 70,000 people visited the accompanying exhibition over the course of its four weeks on display. Prominents like the Reich Ministers Frick, Goebbels, and Rust, the Italian Minister of Education, and the Baron Morimoura of Japan all purchased works from the exhibition.

Catalogue of the 1936 Olympic Art Competition.

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8. ‘The Iron Century’. Cast Iron in Germany.
– The cultural-historical significance of iron casting during the 19th century.

Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures; a cast bronze sculpture is often called simply ‘a bronze’. Artists were working with bronze even in ancient times, such as in the Greek and Roman civilizations. The first known bronze statue is likely ‘Dancing Girl’ from Mohenjodaro (Pakistan), belonging to the Harappan civilization and dating back to c. 2500 BC. However, the Greeks were the first to scale the figures up to life size: an example that is still in existence is ‘Victorious Youth’, a life-size bronze made between 300 and 100 BC.
Casting iron sculptures is a technically different and more complicated process. Cast iron had been occasionally used in Europe in basic architectural embellishment in the Middle Ages, such as fire backs with cast figures and scenes. It was not until 1784 that the German foundry Lauchhammer, with the assistance of sculptors Joseph Mattersberger and Thaddäus Ignatius Wiskotschill, for the first time in Europe, successfully cast a life-size hollow sculpture in iron. The use of cast iron for sculpting in Prussia developed rapidly under the reign of King Friedrich Wilhelm III; from 1797 to 1840 the Berlin art scene operated on a high level, and several Berlin artists preferred iron for their works. Cast iron was more affordable than bronze, and in the 19th century, ‘The Iron Century’, a large number of high-quality sculptures -often with monumental dimensions – were produced. During the German ‘Freiheitskriege’ (Battles against Napoleon from 1813- 1815), the social valuation of cast iron had already increased. For example, there were successful war financing campaigns like Eisen statt Gold and the creation of the Eiserne Kreuz. The cultural-historical significance of iron casting during the 19th century was further catalyzed by Friedrich Wilhelm III, who had his palace decorated with cast iron art, produced in Prussia. Black-coated iron became an aesthetical mark in Klassizismus. Meanwhile, the popularity of cast iron sculpting was not limited to Germany. The first Crystal Place Exhibition in 1851 in London prominently showed a series of life-size iron sculptures, as did the Exposition Universelle of 1855 held on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. It is notable that many sculptures and other iron art works in that time period were not signed by the artist or by the foundry.
The glory days of cast iron sculpting ended around the third part of the 19th century. The famous Königlich Preußische Eisengießerei (founded in 1796) closed its doors in 1874. The prominent Saynerhütte (founded in 1769) was sold to Firma Krupp in 1865, and it ceased the production of iron sculptures. Paradoxically, Foundry Lauchhammer (founded in 1725), which created the first cast iron life-size sculpture in Europe, is still in existence. A short renaissance in iron sculpting took place in the 1920s.

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9. The War Art Program in Nazi Germany.
– Kunst der Front

In 1942, the High Command of the Wehrmacht founded the Squadron of Visual Artists (Staffel der bildenden Künstler Propaganda Abteilung [SdbK]). The tradition of combat art went back to World War I in Germany; in his official war art report, Gilkey noted that German soldiers produced combat art for the Nazi regime prior to the war’s beginning, with artist soldiers using military subjects from World War I and exhibiting or selling their works to Nazi dignitaries. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of combat artists swelled; though they were not yet officially part of their own unit, artists often tagged along as ‘war correspondents’ with magazines and newspapers. Gilkey even claimed that artists occasionally ‘cooked up’ images from the comfort of their own ateliers to illustrate the war effort, a practice that Adam later hoped to eliminate with the SdbK. According to Gilkey, war art from 1939 to 1941 was ‘over the top’ and meant to galvanize the viewing public and glorify the war effort. Gilkey implied that this situation changed at least marginally under Adam after 1942. US forces had shared this tradition of combat art (since 1917), though the program during World War II was largest and best developed in Germany. The army’s familiarity with the program and goals of combat art programs certainly contributed to the high level of interest in – and respect for – the German War Art Collection following its seizure. The man appointed head of the SdbK, Luitpold Adam, had served as a Kriegsmaler during the previous war. In June 1941, Adam was assigned to the Propaganda Center in Potsdam, where he oversaw the output of the group of ‘War Painters and Newspaper Artists.’ This group was the foundation for the SdbK. When Adam took his post in Potsdam, these artists were in dire need of equipment and space. Adam went to work, ordering the construction of an art supply depot and gathering new supplies for the artists in preparation for their deployment. He also secured a ‘safe space’ in vacated rooms of the Society of Berlin Artists, to be used as an archive and exhibition area for the paintings arriving from the front. By the spring of 1942, the nascent SdbK comprised 80 combat artists, a number that would reach 300 by the war’s end, with half of them assigned to the Heer(army) and the other half to the navy and Luftwaffe. Their art was exhibited throughout Germany and occupied Europe for ‘educational and cultural purposes’. Quick sketches produced by artists were sent back and used to produce large-scale studio paintings that adorned the walls of army museums and the offices of Nazi dignitaries. A purchase commission also met with Adam and some of the painters regularly and selected their favorite paintings to hang in the German army headquarters and museums. In the expected event of an Allied defeat, the works were designated to narrate the German victory, commemorative visual reminders of the Wehrmacht’s successful struggles over the Allied forces. The artists were enticed not only by monetary and equipment compensation but also by the promise that they would be allowed relative freedom in the expression of their ideas.

Adam initially had no control over the artists’ subject matter or output, as this was left up to the leader of each individual so-called Propaganda Company (Propaganda-Kompanie [PK]), though Adam later reviewed each piece of art as it arrived in Potsdam. This promise both combats the long-held idea that Nazi visual ideology was rigidly defined and controlled by the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer [RKK]) and confirms newer research that characterizes the RKK as a trade union rather than an organization that inflexibly prescribed a specific aesthetic to artists. It also continues the tradition of relatively newer scholarship that challenges the conception of ‘Nazi artwork’ as thematically and stylistically ill-defined, varied, and malleable. Each PK employed one ‘fine artist’ and two commercial artists. Because war painters sometimes found themselves in need of new subjects if their company had been stationary for a long period of time, Adam pushed for company leaders to send their war painters to the front while battles were in progress in order to record more stirring narratives. Adam often fought with PK leaders on this point, as many of them preferred to keep their Kriegsmaler away from the front lines, instead ‘cooking up pictures’ removed from the scene. According to Gilkey’s recollection, Adam was ultimately successful in receiving authorization from higher command (of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) for an operational procedure that allowed the artists three months in the combat area to paint or draw and then required a return to Potsdam to register their watercolors or drawings, pick up supplies, and work on finishing their paintings in the studio for another three months. Like Gilkey and the Americans, Adam viewed the role of the Kriegsmaler and their immersion on the front as vital not only to history and future audiences but also to the spirit of the troops on the front lines. In his support of embedding artists on the front, Adam emphasized that the war artists were expected to visualize ‘not just the horrible side of war, but war’s episodical [sic] and lyrical moments.’ Adam’s understanding of the Kriegsmaler as combatant and artist – as someone who not only took part in and contributed to the action and war effort but also experienced and then visually rendered the war, immortalizing it for generations to come – was echoed by war artists and, ultimately, the US occupying forces.

Combat art: between realism and immortalization
A glance at the paintings and sketches produced reveals a tension felt by the Kriegsmaler between exalting the war and documenting day-to-day horrors and malaise felt by those on the front. Adam’s artists produced art with style and subject matter that both reinforces and challenges expectations often prescribed to Nazi-era art. Stylistically, the works that Gilkey encountered in 1946 ran the gamut from portraits of noble military leaders and triumphant soldiers to melancholic and abstracted images that attempted to convey both the trauma of war and a certain degree of introspection. Importantly, the works also fit into a broader canon of war art produced during the period by other combatants. Specifically, the combat paintings of the German soldiers shared much with the art of its US counterparts. There is no written evidence that Luitpold Adam explicitly set rules to what the soldier artists could and could not record, and many of the works are typical by the standards of the 1930s and 1940s, as evidenced by analogous works of US combat art. Kriegsmaler Olaf Jordan, for example, specialized in realistic and probing portraits of volunteer Cossack soldiers as well as likenesses of German army leaders, such as his portrait of Generalmajor Helmuth von Pannwitz. Wilhelm Wessel made several heroic charcoal portraits of soldiers from the Afrikakorps. These bear a resemblance to the gallant portraits of American combat artists like Peter Hurd, who painted the famed 8th Air Force Bomber Command. The stylistic similarities challenge the notion of a monolithic ‘Nazi art,’ even among German artists, suggesting instead that the heroic realism of officer portraits was an international trend understood by artists on both sides of the Atlantic. More broadly, a survey of US war art suggests that, while there may have been a slightly greater degree of variation in terms of style and subject matter within American combat art than in German war art, the variation is not striking enough to separate them into two entirely discrete art historical traditions based simply on the political situations that produced them. The fact that there existed more similarities than differences in paintings produced by a democracy and those produced under a dictatorial regime seemed to both intrigue and trouble American officers like Gilkey. Other works, such as the melancholic watercolors of German combat artist Rudolf Hengstenberg, deviate from the figurative realism of portraiture, approximating more closely impressionistic forms also present in some US combat art. Several sketches of Herbert Agricola employ near-abstracted forms to convey the smallness of German troops seeking shelter on the face of a mountain. Heinrich Amersdorffer specialized in picturesque landscapes and townscapes, his works unfettered by the horrors of war until one notices small details – for example, a black blot approximating a battleship – that allude quietly to the ongoing violence. Still others, including Bavarian artist Otto Bloß in his eerily apocalyptic Landscape of War (undated), seem to have taken inspiration from the fetid color palette of Otto Dix to render the nightmarish deathscape of war, even if the purpose of their renderings arguable diverged. A sketchbook titled Tagebuch eines Kriegsmalers by Helmut Bibow, a combat artist on the Eastern Front in PK 693, presents grotesqueries that would not be out of place in a George Grosz exhibition: a horse, stomach bulging, dying in a trench; the metal corpse of a Panzer; a jumbled pile of Wehrmacht bodies; a disembodied hand, fingers curled unnervingly, laying in a field while storm clouds gather overhead. Admittedly, the sketchbook also contains caricatures of drunken Cossacks, sometimes contrasted with the capable bodies of Wehrmacht soldiers. Yet even the German soldiers are rendered anonymous, with inter changeable faces, swathed in darkness, suggesting the ‘heroic Aryan’ victor did not always triumph.

The sketchbook’s introductory dedication, penned by a Kriegsberichter named Hans Huffzky, emphasizes Adam’s idea of the war artist as a mythic figure whose task of visually rendering life in battle for posterity set him apart from war reporters and photographers: His [the Kriegsmaler’s] studio was a meadow, his roof a tarpaulin, stretched between the trees, or simply the empty sky, his stool, a petrol canister. … We, the other members of the Propaganda Company, wrote our reports, took photographs, shot footage, broadcast – but good God, our work was missing something, which we would not have known, had our ‘Comrades of the Palette’ not been with us. Just as they do not create their work in a fleeting instant, they also do not create their work for a fleeting instant. Here, the war artist is a humble but great servant of the German war effort, at home in nature and the company of his fellow soldiers. The dedication visualizes a nazified ‘heroic landscape’ in which the landscape – peaceful and bucolic – interacts with emblems of war or technological might. Yet, again, it would be a mistake to construe this romantic understanding of the combat artist’s role as specifically ‘German’ or of the Nazi era. US combat artists, and institutions that exhibited their work, shared this hyperbolic language lauding the importance of the war artist to the tides of history, noting that the destructive beauty of war must be immortalized. The foreword to a 1943 show of US war artists commissioned by Life Magazine expressed: ‘[I]t is inescapable to military men and civilians alike that there is also in war a certain desperate beauty’ and that ‘in these days it is not only the opportunity but the inescapable duty of the war artist to see one in terms of the other.’ Other exhibitions emphasized that the role of the war artist was not simply to ‘glorify’ war but also to portray ‘the realism of the day.’ Like the Tagebuch, which celebrated the artist as an exceptional figure grounded by the raw experience of war, exhibitions of US combat artists praised ‘courage, skill, [and] watchfulness’ as important attributes of both soldiers and artists. Ultimately, in the words and images that they produced, the combat artists of the US and German battalions were more alike than different. This is perhaps another reason that Gilkey, as well as subsequent viewers and consumers of German war art, often felt a certain closeness to the art that was seized following the war – it was familiar. And if it seemed familiar, perhaps the enemy was closer than once imagined.
From Jennifer Gramer, ‘Monument of German Baseness? Confiscated Nazi war art and American occupation in the US and postwar Germany’. Published in the International Journal of Cultural Property (2021).

Luftgau
The official Staffel der Bildenden Kuenstler of Oberkommandowehrmacht scorned the German combat art efforts of staffs not under their scrutiny, but within the 17 wehrkreise (military districts) and 9 Luftgaue (air districts) of greater Germany. Their war art was reproduced in domestic and military publications of a regional nature, and used as book illustrations for military campaign histories in which exploits were related of personnel of an area who made up the units (i.e., Bavarian regiments, etc.).
In 1945 the collection ‘Kunst der Front’ of Luftgaukommando VI (Münster) was shipped in freight car #10033 by Herr C. Bertelsmann of Guetersloh, 1 September 1944, and arrived at Tegernsee six days later. It was taken to Schloss Ringberg in Bavaria for safekeeping. This is the only one of the district collections to be recovered by us. The Luftgaukommando VII (HQ., Munich) collection remains concealed and intact together with many other Luftwaffe war paintings made up by OKL artists, in a buried bunker in Potsdam (Russian Zone) and watched over by Herr Walter Wellenstein, the art adviser of Oberkommandoluftwaffe.
From: Gordon W. Gilkeys ‘Report on German War Art’, 25 April 1947.

KUNST DER FRONT EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITION KUNST DER FRONT 1942, LUFTGAU VII
Left: Obergefreiter Georg Reisinger, ‘Stuka’s’. Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
Right: Unteroffizier Julius Herberger, ‘Flugwache’ (‘Air Guard’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
   

Left: Oberfeldwebel Martin Sternagel, ‘Landsers Sonntagsmorgen’ (‘Sunday Morning of a Soldier’), 1941. Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
Right: ‘Landsers Sonntagsmorgen’ by Sternagel, the orignal work, in the possession of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Watercolor. Size 47 x 34 cm. Displayed at the exhibition ‘Der Traum vom Museum Schwäbischer Kunst’, 2020, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.
  

Left: Gefreiter Eugen Schickardt, ‘In der Freizeit’ (‘Time Off’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
Right: Edmund Bärwalde ‘Me 110 erfolgreich’ (‘Me 110 succesful’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
  

Left: Feldwebel Adolf Presber, ‘Landesschützen’ (‘Riflemen‘). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
Right: Hauptman Karl Schmidt-Wolfratshausen, ‘Russische Bomber bei Brest-Litowsk, 22. Juni 1941’ (‘Russian Bomber near Brest-Litowsk, 22 June 1941’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.
   

Gefreiter Ludwig Gruber, ‘Der endloze Zug’ (‘The Endless Line’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VII.

EXHIBITION KUNST DER FRONT 1942, LUFTGAU VI
Obergefreiter Wilhelm Imkamp, ‘Arbeitssoldat’ (‘Working Soldier’), signed 1942. Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1942, Luftgaukommando VI.

EXHIBITION KUNST DER FRONT 1941, LUFTGAU VII
Left: Eberhard Pfeiffer, ‘Flugwache’ (‘Air Guard’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VII.
Right: Willi Scharf, ‘Kampfbereit’ (‘Ready to Fight’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VII.
  

Left: Georg Reisinger, ‘FW 200’ (Condor). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VII.
Right: Gefreiter Otto Schäfer, ‘Unser moderner Horizontal- und Sturzkampfbomber’ (‘Our modern Horizontal- and Dive Bombers’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VII.   

Gefreiter Peter feuerstein, ‘Auf Wache’ (‘Guarding’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VII.

EXHIBITION KUNST DER FRONT 1941, LUFTGAU VI
Unteroffizier Prüfer, ‘Wacht im Westen’ (‘Guarding in the West’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VI.

Unteroffizier Prüfer, ‘Auf Posten’ (‘On Post’). Displayed at the exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Luftgaukommando VI.
Right:  ‘Feldpostkarten’, depicting works displayed at the exhibition Kunst der Front 1941. Issued in sets of six.
    

EXHIBITION KUNST DER FRONT, KUNSTHALLE HAMBURG, LUFTGAU
Wilhelm Gesser, ‘Zum Arbeitseinsatz’ (‘Labor Deployment’).  Displayed at an exhibition ‘Kunst der Front’, 1941, Kunsthalle Hamburg, city of Hamburg. Organised by the Luftwaffe (date unknown).
  

Catalogues of the ‘Kunst der Front’ exhibitions organized by the Luftgau, held in various cities (Paris, Amsterdam, Karlsruhe, Brussel, etc).