Seeing Degeneracy in Avant-Garde Art in 1937Nazi Germany
Azza El Masri
MCOM 390J
Anjali Nath
May 15, 2015
El Masri
Seeing Degeneracy in Avant-Garde Art in 1937 Nazi Germany
The dirty, small rooms were badly lit. Quotes and
citations were scrolled like graffiti on the walls,
ridiculing the artworks exhibited. People saw unframed and
chaotically-displayed paintings and installations of
disfigured, crippled bodies—bodies that criticized the
heroes of the War; in another room still, Jesus Christ was
de-sacrilized as viewers were forced to move past a garish
sculpture of Christ that distorted the purity of the
Christian icon into horrific shapes. Walking deeper into the
belly of the modern beast, we could no longer distinguish
between artwork and work of insanity. Feast your eyes on the
horrors of modernity that threaten to bring down the
morality of Nordic values; enter and see for yourself the
depravity. In July of 1937, the Nazi regime staged the
“Degenerate Art” exhibition to ridicule avant-garde art,
which had been a landmark of the Weimar Republic after the
First World War. Entartete Kunst, or “Degenerate Art”,
organised by the Ministry of Propaganda, stood as the
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antithesis to the Grosse Deutsche Kunstassellung that had been
inaugurated just a day before in the adjoining Haus der Kunst,
the first Nazi-sanctioned building. In that sense, Entartete
Kunst as the counter-exhibition was embedded in the
discursive practices during the Nazi regime, which were
influenced by pseudo-scientific “discoveries” that became
popular in Germany by the end of the 19th century. The
“Degenerate Art” exhibition was the Ministry of Propaganda’s
ultimate attack on the politics of modern art; but this
attack could not have “succeeded” without mobilizing the
German volk and placing it at the forefront of the spectacle.
Understanding Entartete Kunst: historical, socio-economic, and political
overview
Before the outbreak of the First World War, German
museums and art dealers raced to buy avant-garde artworks
more than in any other European country. The avid support
and enthusiasm for German Expressionism and European
Impressionism and post-Impressionism, amongst other modern
art movements, translated into the staging of a multitude of
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travelling exhibitions from Germany to cities around the
world, as well as the publication of German journals on
modern art. This was a practice unique to German art dealers
and museum directors that continued after WWI. Indeed, in
1897, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin acquired a painting by
French post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, the first museum to
do so (Barron 1991, 13). But while avant-garde was featured
and displayed in most museums around the country, the German
people stood reeling from an economic collapse brought upon
by a humiliating defeat during the First World War and the
transition of an imperial government to a republic.
A shaky economy made more fragile through heavy
taxation exacerbated German people’s already-wary perception
of modern art movements. Cubism, Expressionism, and Dadaism
were thought elitist and intellectual currents, and were
linked to the economic stagnation brought on by the
devaluation of the German currency that was blamed on
Communists and Jews (Barron 1992, 11). The artworks, which
were already foreign to German citizens and were bought at
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seemingly exorbitant prices by the museums, came to
symbolise the government’s inability to cater to the needs
of the average German who was forced to cope with crippling
poverty. The Weimar Republic, established in 1919, saw a
hyperinflation and renewed contentious relationships with
the victors of the First World War. The Republic was at the
forefront of the Great Depression (1930–1933), which led to
a surge in unemployment brought on by a deflation policy.
The failures of the Weimar Republic, with which the German
people came to associate avant-garde art, gave rise to
extremist nationalist sentiment. Organisations like the
German Art Association (Deutsche Kunstegesellschaft)
sprouted against avant-garde art to denounce “the corruption
of art” and promote “art that was pure German, with the
German soul reflecting art,” (Baronn 1991, 11). But soon
after Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the Weimar
Republic crumbled, allowing the creation of a single-party
state and the beginning of Nazi Germany in 1933. National
Socialism’s popularity grew due to its promises to abide by
widely cherished traditional German values, and would later
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go on to label avant-garde art as “degenerate” created by
Communists, Jews, and non-Aryans. To counter this
“degeneracy,” the Nazi regime launched a campaign to
confiscate modern artworks from all public museum, citing a
“cultural collapse” in Germany (Barron 1991, 15). This
campaign, which capitalised on German people’s established
distrust of avant-garde art was coupled with a systematic
and swift reform of cultural departments, art schools, and
independent art institutions like the Bauhaus.
The need to assert German unity behind National
Socialism’s causes were transcended into the art scene.
After outlawing art criticism and modern art in 1936, the
Ministry of Propaganda staged a number of exhibitions to
either vilify Nazi enemies, as was the case of “The Eternal
Jew,” an exhibition held a year later in Munich, or glorify
Nazi-sanctioned artworks “based exclusively on German racial
tradition” (Barron 1991, 12). This was precisely the case of
the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (The Great German Art
exhibition, pictured below), which opened a day before
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Entartete Kunst on July 18, 1937 at the newly inaugurated Haus
der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art).
The exhibition, which took four years to assemble, was meant
“to further shape cultural policy” (Barron 1991, 15). German
citizens were invited to submit artworks that demonstrated
“the triumph of German art in the Third Reich” (Barron 1991,
17). Out of 15,000 works presented, 600 paintings and
sculptures were selected by a committee chaired by Hitler
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himself. The Great German Art exhibition was meant to act to
wipe out “any hint of modernism that had permeated the
museums, galleries, journals, and press since 1918” while
the artistic “horrors” of the Weimar Republic were being
exhibited a few feet away at the Entartete Kunst (Barron 1991,
17). The Degenerate Art exhibition, then, was linked to a
particularly discredited government in German political
history, and came to reflect its failures.
Deconstructing Degeneracy
Adolf Ziegler, President of the Reich Chamber of Art
and Hitler’s favourite painter, was appointed by Minister of
Propaganda Joseph Goebbels alongside a 5-member committee to
select “degenerate” works in all major museums to be
showcased at the same time as the Great German Art
exhibition. The directive issued defined “degenerate”
artworks as those that “insult German feeling, or destroy or
confuse natural form, or simply reveal an absence of
adequate manual and artistic skill” (Barron 1991, 19). The
purpose of such an exhibition, according to Barron (1991),
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was to denigrate the artists but also condemn the actions of
institutions, directors, curators, and dealers involved with
the acquisition of modern art.
This practice was firmly rooted in recently popular
pseudo-scientific theories from the second half of the 19th
century and early 20th century. The term “degenerate” is
typically used in a medical context as it designated those
who had allegedly strayed from accepted “normal” behaviour
“because of shattered nerves, inherited abnormalities, or
behavioural or sexual excess” (Mosse 1991, 25) that is
supposedly dependent on the subject’s race. These discursive
practices can be traced back to physician Max Nordeau in his
book Degeneration (1892), whose eudo-scientific theory was
later picked up by Nazi loyalists like racial theorist and
architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg’s Art and Race (1928).
Schultze-Naumburg “proved” that the avant-garde artist was
equated with the insane and the Jew, who is supposedly
inherently degenerate and therefore more susceptible to
scrutiny (Barron 1991, 12). By that time, associating
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“degeneracy” to modernism was a typical practice in the
critique of art and had reached the masses. This discursive
power, adopted and endorsed by the National Socialists early
in their rise to power, would centre its authority on the
necessity of a “pure Germany.” Influenced by Darwin’s The
Descent of Man which will later justify German racism (Barron
1991, 11), the pseudo-medical legitimacy given to
“degeneracy” allowed the Nazi regime to regulate the masses’
bodies and classify them either “healthy” or “unhealthy”,
“normal” or “abnormal” by exercising its sovereign right to
“make live and let die” (Foucault 1992, 241) through the
promulgation of a body ideal that would preserve the Nordic
traits of a true German subject. Foucault (1992) called this
a biopolitical practice whereby “techniques of power”
emerged revolving around the body (242). The politicisation
of the German body, through the creation of a threat linked
to unfounded Nazi practices of racial hygiene, allowed to
create an “un-German” subject that is forcibly excluded from
society through coercive, regulatory manners: Jews, for
example, were first forced to relocate to ghettos, awaiting
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to either be transported to camps in order to either meet
their death or engage in hard labor. This biopolitical
practice was also applied in the conception of art, whereby
neoclassical and neoromantic art were officially adopted by
the Nazi regime for being “racially pure” (Mosse 1991, 25).
In turn, the “crippled,” “disformed,” and garrish bodies
portrayed and sculpted by avant-garde artists were a
flagrant reflection of a lack—a racial, sexual, and mental
absence—which was justified by the popularity of knowledge
production, like Schultz-Naumburg’s Art and Race, centered on
the argument of biodeterminism and the preservation of a
pure German race (Bauer 2010). Rancière understands such
aesthetic processes as “forms of visibility that disclose
artistic practices, the place they occupy, what they ‘do’ or
‘make’ from the standpoint of what is common to the
community” (2004, 15).
This is made possible by the medical support given to
“degeneracy”, exacerbated with the help of religious and
educational institutions, that led German masses to
internalise its standards, giving Nazi regime a new way to
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impose its authority.By utilising this visuality, it
recognises a threatening “other” that has no claim to
political or aesthetic space (Merzoeff 2011, 1). The
biopolitical discourses revolving around the mental
capacities of non-Aryan subjects and objects made it
possible for Nazis to rewrite history “that manifests [its]
authority” (Merzoeff 2011, 2). The legitimacy given to these
biocultures of evolution make the visualisation of
degeneracy “self-evident,” allowing to distribute “those who
have a part in the community of citizens” (Rancière 2004,
12) and what is allowed to be visible, which is neoclassism
and neoromanticism in German art and excludes the avant-
garde by classifying it as “degenerate,” “abhorrent,” and
“unhealthy.” The Degenerate Art exhibition becomes,
therefore, the antithesis of the Great German Art
exhibition. Avant-garde is then an illustration of the
aesthetic regime which Rancière defines as a regime that
“stands in contrast with the representative regime” (2004,
22), meaning that it doesn’t fall into the realm of the
sensible brought on by Nazi authority.
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In tandem with the biopolitical discourse of
“degeneracy,” the discourse of “respectability” was linked
to the ideal German body and its discipline. Indeed, the
Weimar Republic, embodied in avant-garde art, was blamed for
attempting to destroy all moral values that German people
held dear, namely family, marriage, chastity, and a
constant, tranquil life (Mosse 1991, 25). It is important to
note, however, that this discourse was not
first used by the National Socialists, but
is actually traced back to just after the
French revolution. In this manner,
“respectability was made political issue
from the very beginning” (Mosse 1991, 25).
In the case of Nazi authority, the
discourse of respectability came to anchor
German masses and establish order around
traditional values that had been jeapordised before the
Nazis took power (Mosse 1991, 25). Indeed, it served as a
standardising factor whereby even beauty was rendered
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sexless in order to adapt to this discourse. It is therefore
a standard rooted in morality based upon ideals of the 19th
century. When it comes to art, these ideals belong to what
Rancière calls a poetic regime whereby “the notion of
representation or mimesis […] organises these ways of doing,
making, seeing, and judging” (2004, 22). In that sense,
neoclassism and neoromanticism, as the official art
movements adopted by the National Socialists, needed to
conform to an orderly representation of the German subject.
Beauty, therefore, is understood as a “self-portrait of
society, the view it likes for itself” (Mosse 1991, 27).
Modern artists who strayed from this standard were accused
of having “nervous deformities and stunted growth” (Mosse
1991, 27). For the German body, “beauty without sensuality
was demanded,” according to Mosse (1991, 25). A perfect
German body was “muscular, perfectly proportioned, Nordic
featured” (Bauer 2010, 100) but its nudity was turned into a
stylistic principle to preserve this discourse of
respectability (pictured above). This pure representation
of the German subject was desacrilized by avant-garde
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artists who were thought to make a mockery of German heroism
and values (Mosse 1991, 31).
In that sense, Entartete Kunst
was intentionally conceived to
“be out of the ordinary, a
survey of all that was
indecent and ugly,” and
therefore “degenerate” (Mosse
1991, 30–31).
The Performance of the Degenerate Art Exhibition
When Ziegler invited the German Volk to “judge for
[them]selves!” the degeneracy of avant-garde art, art that
was “Bolshevik,” “Jewish,” or “mentally ill” in nature,
visitors gave into the illusion of participating in deciding
the fate of these works of art. Visitors were coaxed to look
in horror and disgust at the “degenerate” works of “un-
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German” artists. The haphazardous way the 650 paintings and
sculptures were curated, coupled with garish graffiti-like
quotes from the Führer, Nazi officials, and even disgraced
museum directors who contributed to the freak show of avant-
garde art as seen by the Nazi regime. The propaganda
techniques utilised to guide visitors in their perception of
avant-garde were the culmination of a visuality that
succeeded in giving Germans the illusion of sharing that
authority (Merzoeff 2011, 7). In that sense, with the Great
German Art exhibition next door, the comparison available
allowed visitors to conjure their own opinions of what can
be considered as German and what isn’t—or at least, that was
what they were supposed to think. Instead, the Ministry of
Propaganda, alongside the Haus of Bauhaus, stood complicity
of a propaganda campaign staged as an “counter-exhibition”
(Levi 1998, 42).
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By classifying the exhibition and the art included in it as
“degenerate”, the National Socialists actively and
implicitly participate in what Rancière calls the
distribution of the sensible. The author understood this
process as a “system of self-evident facts of sense
perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of
something common and the delimitations that define the
respective parts and positions within it” (2004, 12).
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While National Socialists rested on pseudo-scientific
findings and returned to traditional values to justify the
“degeneracy” of avant-garde art showcased, the fascist
attempt to strip these works of their aura and desacrilize
the masterpieces once regarded with awe allowed masses to
displace it from its “high” status and place it within a new
discourse that likens it to mental illness. The fascist
destruction of the
aura (Benjamin
1970, 306) of
these artworks was
systematic
throughout the
years, a practice
that started with Schultze- Naumburg who juxtaposed
Expressionist works by Karl Schmidt-Rotluff and Amadeo
Modigliani and photos of facial deformities (see right).
This practice was later applied in the curation of the
Degenerate Art Exhibition where where by Kandinsky and Kee
were place with works of mentally ill people and the people
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was forced to disce rn between previously-respected artwork
and arbitrary expression (“Which of these three drawings is
the work of… an inmate of a lunatic asylum?” Levi 1998, 60).
The fascist use of photography to destroy avant-garde’s aura
was an important factor in the creation of such a propaganda
exhibition that aimed to give the visitor an illusion of
inclusion in the decision-making invested in censorship.
Indeed, the Entartete Kunst, held at the Institute of
Archeology, was displayed in such a way as to drive people
to comment, critique, and ridicule —which were the only
sentiments Germans were allowed to feel. The exhibition,
which ran until April 1941 and travelled to thirteen German
and Austrian cities, had been
visited by close to three million
people, a number that has yet to be
matched (Barron 1991, 20).
The old Institute of Archeology
had been emptied out to allow for
the hasty preparation of an
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exhibition where artworks were placed randomly, cramped in a
small space, some with their frames removed, to install a
sense of discomfort to the visitor, as opposed to the
meticulous and spacious arrangement of the Great German Art
exhibition. Over 650 paintings and sculptures were separated
into seven thematic rooms: Religion, Jewish art (only 6 out
of the 112 artists featured in the exhibition were Jewish),
Woman and Family, Degeneracy, Anarchism, and Insanity.
Artworks were classified loosely and hastily in either of
these themes while some were mislabeled and credited to the
wrong purchasing museum. The assembling and display of these
works were meant to illicit discomfort as viewers were
greeted with Ludwig Cries’ Crucified Christ, an imposing wood
sculpture (see right). Upon entering, the writings on the
walls provoked the viewers’ indignation, a sentiment that
would guide them throughout the exhibition as quotes of
ridiculed museum directors were placed beside excerpts of
Hitler’s speech from the 1934 Nuremberg party rally. The
condemnation of these artworks and the destruction of their
aura went so far as curators tapping into the German
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people’s painful memories of the crumbling economy and
hyperinflation associated with the Weimar Republic. Red
stickers displayed prices of the artworks “paid with the
hard earned wages of the German volke” (Levi 1998, 56) with a
reference to the museum that purchased them. In that sense,
the blame for the crumbling economic was relegated to the
disgraced art institutions. This practice, however, was not
copied in the German Art Exhibition. Instead, this tactic
coaxed the spectator to embrace the secure and ordered
values of the Nazi regime. Inflamatory titles (“Under the
Catholic Center’s rule, impudent mockery of the God-
experience” Levi 1998, 51) were scrawled on the walls in
every room to guide the spectator in engaging in an open
ridicule of these defamed artworks and the institutions that
harboured them. In that sense, Entartete Kunst was “very much
an exhibition of words” (Levi 1998, 48) where artworks and
art dealers were defamed by the comparison. Levi went so far
as describing the Degenerate Art exhibition as “a textual
performance that is theatrical precisely to the extent it
forgets its very recent history” (1998, 50). This is further
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exacerbated by the clear contrast Entartete Kunst was supposed
to make with Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung as they were made to
“[‘sully’] reflections of the same generic images that the
Nazis sanctified as Great German Art: farmers, soldiers,
mothers, and landscapes” (Levi 1998, 43). The Degenerate Art
exhibition, therefore, acted as a “counter-exhibition” to
Great German Art. Despite this structural relation, the
“mockery” made of Crhistianity and Jesus Christ was not
redeemed in the Great German Art exhibition. Instead,
religion was replaced by the glorification of the leader,
Hitler. The Führer replaced Christ and was given the title
of saviour in his place, namely because Christ’s racial
origins had been the subject of a long debate within the
ranks of National Socialists. According to Levi, this
fixation on Hitler is equated with Entartete Kunst’s
“prescription with the sacred experience and authority, and
the proper attitude toward that authority” (1998, 52).
The Degenerate Art Exhibition’s “performative function”
(Levi 1998, 50) as counter-exhibition made it a unique
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propaganda experience where the spectator was given the
illusion of participating in the act of censoring whilst
being led by the Nazi regime to denounce the self-evident
“impunity” (Levi 1998, 56).
While National Socialism picked up the remnants of a
destitute Germany society in the aftermath of the First
World War, avant-garde art was used a symbol of the failures
of the Weimar Republic that brought the German economy to
its knees. Viewed as elitist and intellectual by the German
volk, art movements like Expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism,
which were endorsed by museum directors in 1920s, were at
the forefront of an ideological battle for the German
population’s discretization. The performance of the
Degenerate Art Exhibition construed avant-garde artists,
disgraced museum directors, and art dealers complicit in the
suffering of the German people. Nazi propaganda sought to
capitalize on the German people’s insecurities by placing
art at a central position within its regime. This was the
first time in modern history where art played such a
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significant role to “[monopolize] the entire creative
potential of a people, […] every aesthetic instinct […] to
the purpose of the leaders of collective society” (Lehman-
Haut in Barron 1991, 10).
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References
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Bauer, F. (2010). The Transparent Body: Biocultures of
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Benjamin, W. (1992). The Work of Art in the Age of
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