The Rhineland Bastards

Who were the Rhineland Bastards? Degenerate Music "Rhineland Bastard" was a derogatory term Many black performers and jazz musicians of the commonly used when referring to Afro-German Third Reich had their reputations destroyed, because children. Initially the term denoted only those they played what was known as degenerate music, whose father had been an Allied soldier of or Entartete Musik. Jazz musicians were called African descent, more specifically children of "Gaëtano", meaning Gypsy, and "Schwarzer", soldiers in the French colonial troops who meaning black. Many musicians whose art was occupied the important industrial Rhineland. The considered degenerate went into exile, including term gained popularity during the years of the Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Weimar Republic 1919-1933 and eventually Berthold Goldschmidt, and more. Boris Blacher, began being used exclusively to refer to all Afro- Karl Amadeus Hartmann, and others retreated into German children regardless of their father's internal exile, and some musicians like Viktor occupation or heritage. The Rhineland Bastards Ullmann and Erwin Schulhoff were sent to were victims of persecution, sterilization, and concentration camps. Degenerate music was also Source: suite.io/eric-brothers brutality. displayed in exhibits in Germany in 1938. Source: manchesterwire.co.uk Faculty Advisor: Languages, Dr. Louise Stoehr The Rhineland Bastards Cultures, & Natalia Mujadzic Communication Degenerate Art Commission Number 3 Degenerate Art, or Entartete Kunst, is modern art “Commission Number 3″ was created by the banned during the Third Reich, because it was Nazis to deal with the so-called problem of the considered un-German, Jewish, or Communist in “Rhineland Bastards”. It was a Nazi-formed nature. The Nazis only promoted traditional art that organization that ordered Afro-Germans to be glorified the "blood and soil" values of racial purity, sterilized under the 1933 Law for the obedience, and militarism. Degenerate artists were Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. forbade to exhibit or sell art and were deemed The law permitted over 400 children of mixed enemies to the state. After Hitler's rise to power in parentage to be arrested and sterilized, and the 1933, actions were taken to cleanse Germany of Nazis went to great lengths to conceal what degeneracy, such as organized book burnings, the they were doing. The program began in 1937, replacement of modern art curators by party when local officials were asked to report on all members, and the firing of artists from their “Rhineland Bastards” under their jurisdiction. teaching jobs. Over 5,000 works were seized from What happened to these Afro-Germans is very artists such as Nolde, Erst Ludwig Kirchner, Heckel, complex – their experiences were not uniform. Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Some of these children were subjected to Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh. The confiscated medical experiments and others mysteriously degenerate art was then presented to the public in an disappeared. exhibit in 1937. Source: Wikipedia Source: openculture.com (top) and cnn.com (bottom) .

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