Page 71 - All About History - Issue 72-18

Hitler’s war on art

Crowds begin to gather around
the entrance of the Degenerate
Art exhibition, held in Munich’s
Galeriestraße

was just round the corner from the House of exaggerated. On these seemingly eye- dealt with Jews; while a third contended
Art, the home of Hitler’s Great German Art watering tags, a line read, “Paid for with hard- with the salt-of-the-earth people of Germany,
show. On 18 July 1937, the Great German Art earned tax-payers’ money.” including soldiers, women and farmers.
exhibition opened with much fanfare – but Surrounding the art, graffiti condemning The rest of the exhibition descended into
the popularity of its counter-exhibition that the works was scrawled all over the walls unorganised chaos.
opened the next day was unprecedented; over “Mockery of God”, “An insult to German The Degenerate Art exhibition was a
the course of its showing, the Degenerate Art womanhood”, “The ideal – cretin and whore”. complete fiasco, an embarrassment to any
show reeled in five times as many visitors as Spread across several rooms, only sections curator. Paintings hung mere inches from
its upmarket companion. of the exhibition were themed. The show one another and artworks were commonly
Around 112 artists were exhibited in this opened with a room devoted to blasphemy misnamed or wrongly
hugely popular show, among them Wassily and religious art; the second room
Kandinsky, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Max Beckmann and Oskar Kokoschka,
who was widely considered one of Austria’s
greatest artists of the era.
The art of these anti-Nazi artists, however,
hung side by side with some unexpected
companions. Emil Nolde, a proud and long-
serving member of the Nazi Party, found
his creations tarred as degenerate, and his
paintings featured heavily throughout the
exhibition. It was a catastrophe for the artist,
who had long been supported, promoted and
patronised by none other than Goebbels.
Artworks vied for space on the walls and
floors of the exhibition space with tags
attached to each work that listed the price
that galleries had paid to possess them.
But with the dark, tumultuous days of the
Weimar Republic and hyperinflation not
Paul Klee’s
even a decade prior, the costs were wildly Around The Fish
was confiscated
and exhibited
in 1937

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