The birth of “degenerate art”
MúzeumCafé 32.
The special relationship between dictatorship and the arts has been extensively studied and the lessons are not reassuring. Besides their profound disdain, authoritarian regimes have sometimes turned to the arts solely to increase their own legitimacy. Cultural barbarism reflected such a pure type of formula in Hitler’s Germany and in the Soviet empire. Yet in the former it was more spectacular and more evident, since it received greater publicity from the beginning. Exactly 75 years ago this year the witch-hunt began with the pillory of Entartete Kunst (degenerate art), which culminated in the destruction of many works of art in Berlin’s bonfires. It was as if all that the novel Mephisto by Klaus Mann about the dictatorship’s hatred of arts summarised with a general validity in 1936 had been verified. The anger directed against modern art emerged in National Socialist ideology already before the takeover. In 1937 propaganda minister Goebbels instructed the chairman of the Arts Chamber of the Reich, Adolf Ziegler, to survey German museums and clear out works of degenerate art. A large number of avant-garde works were removed from permanent exhibitions and storerooms. Munich, the Bavarian capital noted for its Academy of Art, became an important place for Goebbels. The House of German Art was opened on 25 July 1937 and a day later the exhibition Degenerate Art opened in the Hofgarten. Hitler was present at both events. After pondering for a few days, Goebbels ordered that the works be destroyed. Thus the entire collection of 1004 paintings, 3825 water colours and drawings were piled in the courtyard of the Berlin fire brigade headquarters in Köpenicker Strasse. 20 March 1939 became the black day of cultural barbarism. That was the day when the flame under the pile of artworks flared up in a bonfire. Part of the national wealth turned into smoke and ash.