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and the Nazi Regime: The Use of Art to Enflame War”

A thesis submitted to the Art Faculty of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning University of Cincinnati In candidacy for the degree of Master of in

Stephanie Petcavage April 2016

Thesis Chair: Dr. Todd Herzog Abstract

For centuries, political leaders have used to promote ideology and acts of military aggression. In his studies of this concept, Walter Benjamin, in his aestheticization theory of historical experience and sense perception focused on Nazi ’s use of and propaganda to redefine the political as the autonomous realm of absolute power over ethical norms. The Third manipulated Nazi culture and aesthetics to create a backdrop for political ideology and the coordination of all cultural expressions during the Nazi period. Under

Hitler and the realm of the Third Reich, fascist politics infiltrated the arts and industry tapping its access to the masses. Two events indicative of the exploitation of art for propaganda use were the Great Exhibition and the syndication of ’s film . Discussed in this paper is Hitler’s use of art as a tool to influence the populace and recruit support for his cause. Using a qualitative method and a sociological case study research design supported by a critical literature review and the conceptual framework of

Benjamin’s theory of Aestheticization of Politics under German , I examine how Nazi propaganda, using the arts of the time selectively apportions acceptance of its social members.

Acknowledgements

Ever since my undergraduate studies at Kent State University, I have been enamored with the history and radical movement of the Nazi Regime and their use of art in propaganda. This thesis is an expanded research study on examining the exploitations of the visual arts for authoritarian administrative power. Philosopher Walter Benjamin theorizes on this subject of linking visual aesthetics and politics rendering to sense perception with specific focus on Nazi

Germany. The Nazis recasts the political realm as the “aestheticization of politics.” Writers, such as Lutz Koepnick, Aristotle Kallis, and Martin Jay contribute support and extend Benjamin’s analysis of Nazi fascism. Each of their publications has been useful in the completion of my own research on the work of fascist aesthetics in .

I would like to extend my gratitude to The Mary Ann Meanwell Art History Research

Support Fund, through the School of Art in the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and

Planning at the University of Cincinnati. The funding provided by Mary Ann Meanwell helped defray academic costs in purchasing primary source materials about Leni Riefenstahl’s film legacy and propaganda in Nazi Germany. It also provided research-related travel expense to several libraries and archives for other related research.

I am indebted to my thesis committee members. First, I want to thank Dr. Harold Herzog for giving me advice and encouragement. As my thesis chair and Director of Graduate Studies in the German Studies Department and Director of European Studies, he has helped me to understand the dense writings of Walter Benjamin and found time to look over my chapters and sit down for numerous meetings. I am grateful for Dr. Morgan Thomas for her time, dedication, and willingness to listen and offered her assistance throughout my thesis development. Dr.

Kimberly Paice’s interest and enthusiasm for my subject area is also greatly appreciated.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1

Literature Review………………………………………………………………………………….3

Chapter 1: and the Aestheticization of Politics………………………………………….10

Chapter 2: The Use of Film in Nazi Propaganda……………………………………………...…17

Chapter 3: The Use of Art in Nazi Propaganda………………………………………………….34

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….……43

List of Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………….…47

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….….48

Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………………52

Introduction

Literature expounds on examples of political propaganda used to promote ideology and acts of military aggression. Philosophers have theorized a strong link between aesthetics and politics. The politicization of aesthetics implies the redefining of the state as the authenticity of its proletariat culture; art is ultimately subordinate to political life. Walter Benjamin, a German

Jewish philosopher and cultural critic, theorizes on this subject with specific focus on Nazi

Germany. Benjamin sees the aim of aesthetics politics to be the redefining of the political as the autonomous realm of absolute power over ethical norms.1

Benjamin’s aestheticization theory of historical experience and sense perception with its

Nazi Germany focus is a historical phenomenon. Lutz Koepnick, author of Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, argued that neither pre- nor post-fascist societies evolved similar structures as those that facilitated fascist aestheticization to effect the ultimately catastrophic role achieved in Nazi Germany.2 In his essay, “The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical

Reproduction,” Benjamin lamented the loss of the aura of originality to fascist aesthetic politics that mobilized the lives of the masses. The power of autonomous agency and self-assertion was stripped from the masses and transferred to a charismatic political leader.3

The Third Reich manipulated Nazi culture and aesthetics as if creating the backdrop for political ideology and the coordination of all cultural expressions during the Nazi period. This manipulation as highly choreographed; military parades and rallies were lavish. Elongated banners hung in the massive halls of the Third Reich. Filmmakers such as Leni

Riefenstahl used idiosyncratic techniques such as close-up shots of crowd scenes surging forth

1 Lutz Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 3. 2 Ibid., 13. 3 Ibid., 118.

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after Nazi speeches. Exploiting the power of the visual, the operatic extravaganzas of Nazi culture and aesthetics remain today in the postmodern imaginations.4

World War I changed the German artistic landscape forever. Politics had infiltrated the arts and film industry tapping its access to the masses. By the end of , the government was developing to use as propaganda tools.5 I set the stage for uprisings, economic collapse, and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. took advantage of the troubled economic times of the Weimar to indoctrinate public opinion using the arts. In his aestheticization thesis, Benjamin saw this as a Nazi attempt to recast the political realm as picturesque in order to compensate for disenchantment.

Two events in which this was most evident were in the Great German Art Exhibition and the syndication of Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will. Both were used to familiarize the population with the acceptable beliefs and idealisms of the time. Discussed in this paper is

Hitler’s use of art as a tool to influence the populace and recruit support for his cause. Using a qualitative method and a sociological case study research design supported by a critical literature review and the conceptual framework of Benjamin’s theory of Aestheticization of Politics Under

German Fascism, I examined how Nazi propaganda selectively apportioned acceptance of its social members. Fascist Nazi propaganda was designed with such skill as to explicitly identify what was acceptable to the society, while implicitly through exclusion, identifying the interloper.

4 Lutz Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, 1. 5 Thomas G. Plummer, Film and Politics in the (Minneapolis: Holmes & Meier Publication, 1982), 25.

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Review of Literature

Propaganda and War

In its most impartial sense, propaganda is used to disseminate or promote an idea. In

“Semantics and of Propaganda”, Jay Black examined the social and semantics of propaganda, noting the influence propaganda has on individual ethics, belief systems and values. Over time the word has taken on an undesirable overtone, as it is generally associated with military aggression and “the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”6

Human history abounds with instances of propaganda tracing back to ancient for philosophical and theoretical beginnings. Propaganda & Persuasion, written by Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, followed the use of propaganda through the myriad of world conflicts from to current global issues. By the , the evolution of mass media increased the complexity and efficiency of propaganda’s use for molding public opinion.

In Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes Jacques Ellul noted that the emergence of mass media provided a platform for propaganda techniques on a societal scale. According to

Aristotle Kallis in Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War, propaganda could provide a response to fundamental societal needs, such as integration, guidance, motivation, continuity, and relaxation.

However, Kallis goes on to state that active complicity or passive consensus cannot be taken for granted, even in a totalitarian system. Replacement of traditional values with

6 Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion, (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2015), 7.

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revolutionary ideology approaches requires a step-by-step cultivation.7 Studies of propaganda and its use in wars by authors such as Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell in which they described psychological warfare as the use of symbols to promote policies, and Anthony

Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson who, in their book Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and

Abuse of Persuasion reported Hitler and Goebbels’ extensive use of symbols and monuments to sell the Nazi regime, identify the psychological aspect of involvement to propaganda resulting in a certain predictability of outcome. Walter Benjamin recognized this Nazi manipulation to recast the political realm as the “aestheticization of politics,” a central factor to fascism, and in particular German Fascism.

Aesthetics of Politics

In “Theories of German Fascism,” Walter Benjamin formulates the basic principles of his analysis of German fascism. National instilled aesthetics into the political realm in order to turn the German nation into a unified work of art. Fascism presents art as tools of propaganda to mold the public into a unified ideological commodity. Nazi fascist art, considered by Benjamin as propaganda art, reshaped aesthetic ideas of beauty in order to extend political terror in the service of future warfare. This link between aesthetics and politics was seen as an instrumental rationalization for the seductive fascination of fascism.

In his “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” essay, Benjamin sheds light on the staging of political action in all cultural expressions in creating a , a “national rebirth” in Nazi Germany. Lutz Koepnick, author of Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of

Power helps to examine Benjamin’s works on the relationship between mass culture and fascism.

Koepnick and Martin Jay contribute support to the link between aesthetics and politics of Nazi

7 Aristotle A. Kallis, Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 4.

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Germany and to what extent Benjamin’s analysis of fascism holds up to recent historical analyses. In his “‘The Aesthetic Ideology’ as Ideology: Or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize

Politics?” essay, Martin Jay considered the critical effects of the aesthetic in the “aestheticization of politics”. He connected this practice to Hitler’s efforts in making fascism seductive by presenting it as compelling and satisfying through certain formal and thematic qualities.

Referring to Walter Benjamin, Jay also discussed the pleasures of the sensory image in relation to the aestheticization of politics as seen in fascist films such as Triumph of the Will. Fascism is obsessed with visuality, a distraction to the real contradictions of Nazi terror.

Benjamin believed that the aim of aesthetic politics was warfare. The fascist phenomenon is not only supposed to reconcile a deeply shattered society but to mobilize its subjects for imperial war. Aristotle A. Kallis published Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War, in which he identified strategies and tactics of social-psychological warfare. Kallis saw the formulation of systematic propaganda beginning in WWI in Germany and elsewhere.

Dissemination of propaganda was seen as an “efficient information strategy to bolster morale at the and mobilize society.” 8

Another author recognizing a pattern of conscious of the populace through propagandistic strategies was David Welch. In The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda,

Welch recognized Germany’s programmatic approach to controlling and leisure as essential to providing a medium for barraging audiences with symbols archetypal of Nazi values.

These symbols would process with reference to a perception of reality as mass information intertwined with mass entertainment.

8 Kallis, Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War, 1.

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In their anticipation and planning, the Nazi government worked to create a social shift in individual value systems and fundamental beliefs.9 Recognizing the mass distribution of art and film and its impact on social perception, the Third Reich exploited these two mediums, employing them as a large part of their propaganda campaign. Through the application of

Benjamin’s theory on aesthetics and German fascism, I analyzed the structure, management, and effectiveness of propaganda art used in Germany in WWII by focusing on two case studies, the

Exhibition” and the Triumph of the Will.

Case Studies

The idea of a superior race governed Adolf Hitler’s policies and conduct of war. Hitler saw the elimination of the Jewish race as essential to achieving a purified . Goebbels’ propaganda machine manipulated the powerful mythologization and beautification of Nazi ideology.10 The Reich’s systematic plan to discredit, expropriate, and eventually eliminate the

Jews was the focus of propaganda works such as the 1935 film by Leni Riefenstahl The Triumph of Will and the 1937 “Degenerate Art”. In the end, Hitler’s regime was responsible for the deaths of 40 million people, many attributable to the worst in the history of mankind.11

The Triumph of the Will

Hitler made use of film to bring his ideals to life. He recruited Leni Riefenstahl to produce films that revolutionized the world of Nazi propaganda. Leni Riefenstahl, German director, producer, screenwriter, editor, photographer, actress, and dancer, is best known for her imposing films in support of the National Socialist Party during the . Steven Bach, author

9 David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda (2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002), 810. 10 Klaus Hilderbrand, “Hitler's War Aims,” The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 3 (1976): 525-27. 11 , “Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism,” Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 2 (2004): 239.

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of Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, discussed how her films promoted the acceptance of Hitler’s regime and instilled the desire in millions of to follow Hitler.

In this thesis, I focused on her most famous film, Triumph of the Will, as an example of portraying the ideal Aryan society. This film is considered a prominent example of propaganda in film history. Jürgen Trimborn, author of Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, analyzed the idiosyncratic techniques that Leni Riefenstahl developed and used throughout her film career, particularly in

Triumph of the Will.

Compared to artworks, Leni Riefenstahl’s work in film was able to reach the public on a grander scale, exposed to schools, theaters, and even international film festivals. Rainer Rother’s book, Leni Riefenstahl the Seduction of Genius, addressed her innovative techniques with close ups, filters, long shots, reverse angles, and reactions shots achieving national and global fame.

Steven Bach also discussed Leni Riefenstahl’s filming process of the Rally of 1934 describing the way she set up her camera angles around the town and on the political figures.

Hitler would be the star of the film Triumph of the Will, coming from the sky to liberate the

German people. In Ken Kelman’s article, “Propaganda as : Triumph of the Will,” he discussed Riefenstahl’s choice of motifs for disorientation and animation. Disorientation was achieved through mainly showing only the upper parts of things and people as “spiritualized”.

Close-ups and obscure camera angles from laying in ditches to climbing up ladders achieved the effect of animation for a figurative reality.12 I discussed the importance of film in Nazi propaganda in preparing audiences for social change and impending war, and how it was valued as an essential propaganda instrument of enormous power to underscore Nazi ideology.

The Degenerate Exhibit

12 Ken Kelman, "Propaganda as a Vision: Triumph of the Will," Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture 7, no. 2.4 (2003).

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Aryan was the alleged answer to the purification of the degenerates. In

Hitler’s drive to purge the German population, the National Socialists took charge of fascist aesthetics through the arts. An exhibition titled “Degenerate Art”, which circulated from 1937 to

1941,13 illuminated exclusion of discredited artists that produced works after 1910, works that offended the German sentiment, and works that did not meet Hitler’s criteria for adequate craftsmanship or natural form. It was under these criteria that Hitler denounced the avant-garde style, which included , , , and . It was planned as a counter-exhibition to the first annual exhibition of “Great German Art”, which opened a day earlier. The “degenerate” art was considered sullied reflections to similar works that were sanctified in the “Great German Art” exhibition at the House of German Art in the same city.

Neil Levi wrote, “‘Judge for Yourselves!’-The ‘Degenerate Art’ Exhibition as Political

Spectacle” examining whether or not the Degenerate Art exhibition was a success or ultimate failure for the potential purpose of the Nazi regime. Other resources on the distinctions of the

“Degenerate Art” and “Great German Art” exhibitions include: Berthold Hinz’s book Art in the

Third Reich, Stephanie Barron’s book "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi

Germany, and Olaf Peters’ catalogue Degenerate Art: The Attack on in Nazi

Germany, 1937. These provided information on how the exhibitions were a part of the political propaganda campaign of reinforcing a German idealistic nation.

These exhibitions were considered as case studies to support my premise claiming their role as propagandist tools to emphasize a unity against all that was ungermanized. I dissected the intended purpose of the exhibitions, articulated the layouts, and analyzed the public’s reaction to

13 Neil Levi, “‘Judge for Yourselves!’-The ‘Degenerate Art’ Exhibition as Political Spectacle." October 85 (1998): 41.

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explain why the “Degenerate Art” exhibition was considered an ultimate propagandist failure and the “Great German Art” exhibition a success.

Films including the Triumph of the Will and exhibitions such as the Great German Art were intended to gather disenfranchised individuals into an embracing homogenization. In addition, the French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, in Heidegger, Art and Politics: The

Fiction of the Political, described the link between art and politics as unseverable. At no time in history was this more apparent than in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Though evident in other fascist states, the Nazis sought to break down modern boundaries between politics and aesthetics “to turn life into a unified work of art”.14

14 Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, 2.

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Chapter 1 Nazism and the Aestheticization of Politics

Fascism, in Walter Benjamin’s understanding, interrupts the dialectics between aesthetic and popular , between avant-garde art and modern industrial culture. --Lutz Koepnick15

Aestheticization of Politics Defined

A discourse on aestheticization of politics must include the accepted definition of the aesthetic it presumes; this is particularly true with the somewhat cryptic approach Walter

Benjamin’s writings take. S. Brent Plate, author of Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics:

Rethinking Religion through the Arts, challenged readers to identify Benjamin’s definitions of terms like “aura”, “allegory”, and “history”; as Benjamin’s definitions kept slipping throughout his writings. Consequently, for this paper, I used the pre-Kantian notion of aesthetics as sense perception. This interpretation comes from the Greek aesthesis, having to do with perception through our senses. Beyond the defining terms of “beauty” or “artificial” often attributed to the word, the Greek focus of the term is on how we perceive the world through the stimulation of our six senses. Sensations emerge when stimuli is received through bodily organs. Interpretive meaning of these sensations evolves in the conscious brain, guided by learned structures of the mind. As perception links the inner and outer world and is interpreted from learned structures, this aesthetic activity can be decidedly influenced by political propaganda.16

Essential to this study is the belief that sense perception is a principal receptor and creator of the idealized political realm. As we move through the world, we are constantly stimulated by the smells, sights, and sounds of social life. The process of selecting, arranging and

15 Lutz Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 4. 16 S. Brent Plate, Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics: Rethinking Religion through the Arts (New York: Routledge, 2005), vii-2.

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forgetting some of these impulses shapes our world.17 Benjamin recognized the depth of boundary transgression this inferred in terms of political influences on this process. For Walter

Benjamin, this implied a creative reception of experienced destruction and then (re)creation as fascist propaganda permeated all of social life. For Benjamin, this process was grounded in the technologically reproduced and dispersed works of art. The onset of the mechanical age of reproduction changed the way of thinking about the artwork’s authenticity, mystery, eternal value, and sense of distance.18 Art’s reproducibility changed society’s relationship to art and the way the masses experienced the world. In short, the onset of mass art shattered the aura unique to each piece of traditional art, consigning its interpretation and posturing to the whim of the governing ruler.19

Aesthetics and Fascism

In the early part of the 20th century, fascism grew out of an attempt to reject alleged degenerative elements of the modern age and a fear that influences of corruption were undermining civilization. Fascism sought to reunite a deeply devastated society and mobilize its populace for war. Aristotle A. Kallis published Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War, in which he identified strategies and tactics of social-psychological warfare. Kallis saw the formulation of systematic propaganda beginning in WWI in Germany and elsewhere. The dissemination of propaganda was an “efficient information strategy to bolster morale at the home front and mobilize society.” 20

17 Plate, Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics, 5. 18 Corey McCall, “‘Fiat Ars Pereat Mundus’: The Relevance of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ for Understanding the War on Terror,” Radical Review 12, no. 1-2 (2009): 164. 19 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” ed. , trans. Harry Zohn, Illuminations (1968). 20 Kallis, Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War, 1.

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The core tenets of fascism included , , , one-party state, charismatic leadership, , , , populist nationalism, and .21 Residual socio-political tensions from WWI and the Russian were the catalyst for these tenets to forge together fascist single party states. Though Griffin recognized these fascist components in other states such as Franco’s and the Romanian , he focused on and Hitler’s Germany. Within these two regimes, Griffin saw elements that in “the extreme conditions of inter-war could endow some variants of nationalism and racism with extraordinary affective and destructive power”.22 There existed profound differences in Mussolini and Hitler’s ideas of the new national culture. Yet both states exhibited archetypal examples of fascism’s utopian aspirations as a revolutionary development and its praxis as a regime.

Manifested in both Mussolini and Hitler’s governments were the tendencies to convert political events into scenes, precessions, and melodramatic mass rallies. The fascist exhibition organized modern experience to deploy sensory perception for the purpose of political coordination and total mobilization. In Benjamin’s view, fascism was unequivocally the introduction of aesthetics to politics. This staging of political action demoted autonomous art into the realms of political action and everyday life; thus, mechanical reproduction fashioned the existence of generically fascist art. Benjamin saw art relegated to the third-rate melodramatic posturing of the political leader.23 As such, Benjamin affirmed a strong relationship between

21 Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991). 22 Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning Under Mussolini and Hitler (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 2. 23 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

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fascism and the aestheticization of politics; a relationship Benjamin feared threatened the land of his birth.24

In their writings, Lutz Koepnick and Martin Jay supported Benjamin’s view of a connection between aesthetics and Nazi Germany politics. For Koepnick, the language of the

Third Reich transformed the and expressions into public speeches and ritualized events. Koepnick saw the propaganda art and films as tools to supplant individual direct experience with conceptions of group or crowd experiences. He recognized the appeal the ostentatious had to strong emotions and desires.25 In Jay’s essay “‘The Aesthetic Ideology’ as

Ideology: Or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics?” he considered the critical effects of the aesthetic in the “aestheticization of politics”. He associated this practice to Hitler’s efforts in making fascism seductive by presenting it as compelling and satisfying through certain formal and thematic qualities. In reference to Walter Benjamin, Jay discussed the pleasures of the sensory image in relation to the aestheticization of politics as seen in fascist films such as

Triumph of the Will. Fascism was obsessed with visuality, a distraction to the real contradictions of Nazi terror. Benjamin believed that the aim of aesthetic politics was military aggression. In seminal works, Benjamin saw the use of art in aesthetic fascism to control perception and response. In later essays, he proclaimed the real objective of aesthetic politics to be warfare.

Benjamin postulated that the reasonable outcome of fascism revolved around the establishment of aesthetics into politics. In the epilogue of his essay “The Works of Art in the

Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin distinguished the expressive dimension of Fascist aesthetics from the revolutionary dimension of Marxist aesthetics. Rather than altering the class

24 McCall, “Fiat Ars Pereat Mundus,” 158. 25 Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, 65, 159.

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structure of society through revolution as undertaken in Russia by the Bolsheviks, Fascism depended upon the aestheticization of politics through war.26

German Fascism – Aestheticization of politics

World War I sowed many of the seeds resulting in fascism. In his essay “Theories of

German Fascism,” Benjamin suggested the German state had taken the loss of the war more seriously than the war itself. Having lost the greatest war of all time, the material and spiritual devastation was significant to the German people. The military virtues and devout patriotism with which the later marched off to war were transformed into a specific type of heroism during the last battles of World War I. The aestheticized heroism of the front soldier’s experience of annihilation became legend within the Germanic volkish spirit.27

As National Socialism emerged in Germany, Walter Benjamin documented the social shifts and coordination of all cultural expressions; the infusion of aesthetics into fascist Nazi politics in an attempt to turn life into a unified work of art. Benjamin theorized that the reasonable outcome of fascism revolved around aestheticized politics, which exploited the power of the visual. Roger Griffin, in Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning Under

Mussolini and Hitler, described the inception of fascism as the vehicle for by using the power of human creativity to create a new culture; a total act of creation with art serving as its foundation.28

Hitler embraced the concept of fascism as a “revolutionary form of nationalism, one which set out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the people into a dynamic

26 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” McCall, “Fiat Ars Pereat Mundus,” 158. 27 Ansgar Hillach, “The Aesthetics of Polities: Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theories of German Fascism’,” New German Critique no. 17 (1979): 100-105. 28 Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, 4.

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national community under new elites infused with new heroic values.”29 The Nazi leader trusted that the core myth of national rebirth (palingenesis) could end the surge of decadence and mobilize the masses. Nazism proved to be an outstanding specimen of generic fascism when analyzed in terms of this core myth.30

In his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Benjamin’s view of aestheticization of politics was ominous. Benjamin emphatically noted, “All efforts to aestheticize politics culminate in one point. That one point is war”.31 In retrospect, McCall interpreted Benjamin’s point as such:

Benjamin points out that Fascism grants the newly proletarianized masses

expression rather than rights, and entertainment rather than autonomy.

The masses in Germany are given the right to express themselves not

as individuals but instead as a mass, and the Nazi regime was brilliant in harnessing the

technologies of mass media to give the masses this freedom to express their rage.32

Cleverly orchestrated by the regime, the masses redirected rage and violence caused by a government denying them autonomy, to real and imagined “enemies of the state.” Initial demonstrations of anger were in the form of such as the 1938 , an organized attack on Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues. The Nazi propaganda machine fueled the rage by portraying in Germany as an enemy within. Visual works such as the 1935 Triumph of the Will and the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition, and later 1940 film The

Eternal Jew, explicitly identified those accepted and those excluded within the Aryan society.

Fanned by the propaganda machine, the flames of rage escalated into a total mobilization

29 Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, 49. 30 Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, 61. 31 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 32 McCall, “Fiat Ars Pereat Mundus,” 160-161.

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heading into war. This intensification of organized violence gave cause for Benjamin’s observation of Fascism using war as a form of art and a means of expression. 33

Benjamin noted, “the manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.”34 During the realm of Nazi Germany, German culture was committed to its aesthetic imagination. Reality blurred with fantasy in films like Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

Contrary to the implication of the glorification of mass media and the cinematic image, readers often take away from Benjamin’s “The Work of Art” his revelations were much more sinister. Susan Buck-Morss, in “The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades

Project,” reiterated Benjamin’s grave concerns of the dangers inherent in both film and print media.35 In the epilogue of “The Work of Art”, Benjamin made clear the distinction between

Fascist aesthetics and the revolutionary Marxist approach to upending class structures of a capitalist society through revolution. Fascism depended upon the aestheticization of politics through war.36 The fascist spectacle that played out in Germany under the Nazi regime is in

Benjamin’s view a historical phenomenon; such that Lutz Koepnick argues neither pre- nor post- fascist societies entail structures of experience identical with those that enabled fascist aestheticization to assume its ultimately catastrophic role.37

33 McCall, “Fiat Ars Pereat Mundus,” 161. 34 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 222. 35 Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 312. 36 McCall, “Fiat Ars Pereat Mundus,” 158. 37 Koepnick, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, 13.

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Chapter 2 The Use of Film in Nazi Propaganda

Crowds watching films learn from the screen to know themselves as a crowd: moviegoing becomes a group rite, or a place where strangers meet to dream together. The crowd comes to know itself as film.

---Alice Yaeger Kaplan38

Nazi Fascism and Film

By the early 1930s, the well-established German film industry was seen as very powerful in Europe. Second only to Hollywood, the German cinema greatly influenced the thematic and stylistic direction of the European cinematic industry.39 Hitler recognized the influence of the

German and exploited this to gain a broader base of support for his Nazi ideology. Unlike Stalin or Mussolini, Hitler understood the potential of the new technologies of filmmaking as a tool for access to the masses.40

The use of visual arts had a significant impact on the rise of the Nazi regime. Propaganda was used to undermine the democratic republic and sell the masses on the belief of a strong, authoritative government.41 Hitler made use of film to bring his ideals to life. , minister of public enlightenment and propaganda for Hitler, deluged the country with nighttime bonfires, torchlight parades, Nazi processions, mass formations of marchers, and other ostentatious displays of Nazi ideology.42 These ostentatious exhibitions provided great fodder for film directors such as Leni Riefenstahl.

38 Alice Yaeger Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 154. 39 Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 2nd Rev. ed. (: I.B. Tauris &, 1998), 142. 40 Steven Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 104. 41 Shearer West, The Visual Arts in Germany, 1890-1937: Utopia and Despair (New Brunswick: Press, 2001), 182. 42 Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 104.

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Leni Riefenstahl was recruited by Hitler to produce films and revolutionized the world of

Nazi propaganda. A German director, producer, screenwriter, editor, photographer, actress, and dancer, Leni Riefenstahl is best known for her imposing films in support of the National Socialist

Party during the 1930s. Riefenstahl’s films promoted the acceptance of Hitler’s regime and instilled within millions of Germans the desire to follow Adolf Hitler and the ideologies of the

National Socialist Party, or more broadly, fascism.43 Generally stated, these ideals stood for the perspective of life as art, the fascination with beauty, the obsession with valor, and the rejection of the intellect beyond that of party heads; in short they stood for the family of man under the parenthood of leaders.44

Goebbels systematically took control of the German cinema. Initially employing a covert approach, the Nazis took control of the composition of the industry’s Universum Film AG

(UFA), the motion pictures production company, through the Reich Film Chamber. Through of films and prior censorship to conceptual ideas for films, the controlled the content of films. Eventually, total control of the industry was taken under the semblance of overt nationalism. In 1934, Goebbels succinctly quantified the Nazi’s use of the film industry:

“The film is one of the most modern and far-reaching media that there is for influencing the masses.”45 Within a short period of time, Goebbels and Hitler had altered the “apolitical and escapist orientation” of the Weimar-era cinema into the totalitarianism that became German society.46

43 Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 117. 44 , "Fascinating Fascism," The New York Review of Books (1975). 45 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 151. 46 Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), 275.

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In reality, all Nazi films were at some level propaganda films. Even entertainment films were made to distract the populace from the Allied bombing and German defeats on the battlefields; they presented a revolutionary message for the German masses. And Goebbels’s control of film distribution ensured that no one within Germany escaped its viewing.47 Through controlled distribution, works of film were able to reach the public through schools, theaters, and international film festivals.

Leni Riefenstahl – her role in Nazi Germany

In 1932, Leni Riefenstahl had witnessed a captivating speech by Hitler during a political rally. The idea of a superior race governed Adolf Hitler’s policies and conduct of war.48 Hitler saw the elimination of the Jewish race as essential to achieving a purified Aryan race. Having recently received harsh criticism from Jewish critics of a recent film, Riefenstahl found solace in

Hitler’s philosophy.49 She saw in Hitler, a protector from future such criticism. She was attracted by the ideas and personality of Hitler even prior to his ascent to Führer. By attending several rallies and speeches, she continued to learn more of Hitler’s dogma and became a believer.50

Thus when asked to produce films for the Nazi regime, she agreed to produce an image of a resilient Germany. Riefenstahl portrayed Hitler as a creative genius, a man of reason, and a great leader protecting the future of Germany.51 In a film titled Triumph of the Will, a 1935 chronicling the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Riefenstahl created a work portraying the ideal Aryan society.52

47 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, 277. 48 Klaus Hilderbrand, “Hitler's War Aims,” The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 3 (1976): 525. 49 Jurgen Trimborn, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, trans. Edna McCown (New York: Faber & Faber, 2007), 55. 50 Trimborn, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, 56. 51 , The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge: Belknap, 2003), 34, 54, 78, 132. 52 Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 128.

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In filming the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Riefenstahl focused on underscoring a bond between the Führer and the people. Though in later years, she would deny any acknowledgement of creating such propaganda. Riefenstahl’s ambition and inspiration resulted in a political piece that transcended Goebbels’s utilitarian definition. Her work transitioned campaign gatherings into historical events and grandiose rituals drawing hundreds of thousands of the party faithful. Riefenstahl worked hard to glorify the party and the strength of Hitler’s power.53 Triumph of the Will has been considered the most successfully and purely propagandistic film ever made. Despite Riefenstahl’s disavowing its intended use for propaganda, critics have declared its “very conception negates the possibility of the film maker’s having an aesthetic or visual conception independent of propaganda.”54

Triumph of the Will – Explicit propaganda

The film, Triumph of the Will, epitomized the narcissism central to Nazi ideology.

Commissioned by Hitler as a record of the sixth Nazi party congress held at Nuremberg

September 5-10, 1934, the film was intended to be an artistic documentary work.55 The

Nuremberg rally itself was crucial propaganda for the moment; a critical demonstration of Nazi strength at a time when Hitler needed to establish his authority as newly appointed over Germany.

Preceding the sixth congress, a series of events took place in Germany, which served to consolidate the Nazi regime. In January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler . Hitler moved quickly to consolidate the country as a one-party state under his direction and control. In July of 1934 a newly established Nazi (SS)

53 Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 113-114, 119. 54 Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism." 55 , "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman," Sight and Sound 3, no. 2 (1993): 15.

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performed a series of political executions; individuals perceived as a direct threat to Hitler’s recently gained power were slaughtered. The Röhm Putsch or “The of the Long Knives” took hundreds of victims, many of whom were leaders of the (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts, with more than a thousand alleged opponents arrested. In addition,

President Hindenburg died in August of 1934 leaving Hitler free to become both the head of state and the leader of the government. As Hitler stepped into the position of Chancellor of Germany, soon to be of Germany, the people were jobless, starving, and desperate for relief.56

The sixth congress rally was fashioned as a gesture of a renewed sense of national identity and unity following the definitive end of the Weimer Republic. It took months to plan and prepare the documentation of the events of the Nuremberg rally. Riefenstahl was unrestricted in resources, unlimited in funds, the crew numbered in the hundreds, and an immense number of cameras were at her disposal. The Führer served as the financial patron of the project allowing

Riefenstahl freedom and mobility with the assignment. Though the city of Nuremberg would bear the cost for hundreds of thousands of extras, costumes, props, and technical apparatus. The public would be led to believe the private film industry UFA financed the project; thereby disassociating any connection to the political party or implication of propaganda.57

In Riefenstahl’s 1935 book Behind the Scenes of the National Party Convention Film (as cited by Susan Sontag, 1975) Riefenstahl admitted, “The ceremonies and precise plans of the parades, marches, processions, the architecture of the halls and stadium were designed for the convenience of the cameras”.58 Through this admission, Riefenstahl demonstrated the radical transformation of reality orchestrated by this film. The staging of the Nuremberg Rally served

56 Joseph W. Bendersky, A Concise History of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945, 4th ed. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014), 5. 57 Trimborn, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, 102. Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 124-128. 58 Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism."

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not only as a mass meeting but also as the stage for a spectacular propaganda film. The event was not an end in itself, rather a setting for a film passed off as an authentic documentary. In effect, the document was no longer the recorder of reality as “reality” had been fashioned to serve the document.59 Structured as a true documentary made up of actual footage, this film transfigured the magic in cinema entertainment by purposefully indoctrinating reality to the will of Hitler. The film industry created a transfiguration or triumph of the will over the world, the dissolution of reality for those willing to purify the German nation.60

Hitler would be the star of the film Triumph of the Will, coming from the sky to liberate the German people. The film starts on the first day of the Party Congress with Hitler’s arrival by airplane immediately following the opening credits and introductory titles. It states:

Twenty years after the outbreak of the World War,

Sixteen years after the beginning of the German suffering (crucifixion),

Nineteen months after the beginning (start) of Germany’s rebirth,

Adolf Hitler flew to Nuremberg to review his faithful followers.61

From the very beginning, the film establishes audience identification with its as he descends from the heavens. Hitler’s plane literally and metaphorically carries the Nazi message that

Germany is “awakening” and its historic mission will be carried out. As clouds part, the camera views Nuremberg from above spotting military troops marching in the streets as if propelling to greet the plane’s arrival. The plane glides over them like an eagle, or a cross, combining Nazi and Christian iconography.62 “The Reich’s eagle, frequently detailed in the film, always appears against the sky like Hitler himself _ a symbol of a superior power used as a means of

59 Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism." 60 Ken Kelman, "Propaganda as a Vision: Triumph of the Will," Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture 7 (2003). 61 Triumph of the Will, dir. Leni Riefenstahl (: Reichsparteitag-Film/UFA, 1935). 62 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 164.

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manipulation.”63 Hitler is cast as a German who will save the nation, if only its citizens will put their faith in the Fuhrer’s capable hands. Hitler is consistently shown throughout the film shawled in a halo-like effect, giving him a godlike aura and furthering his role of savior for the people. Riefenstahl plays with natural lighting as metaphorical of Germany emerging from darkness of the Weimar Republic into the light of the Nazi resurgence. The city is decorated with iconographic paraphernalia also suggesting the embrace of conjuncture from old to new.

“Passionate efforts are made to authenticate the people’s continued existence through multifold picture illustrating Germany’s youth and manhood and the architectural achievements of their ancestors.”64 Architectural details are interwoven as visual emblems linking the Fuhrer with the

German past and its future.65 This imagery is lyrical and messianic to set the metaphoric mood for everything that follows.

The processions of adoring crowds throughout the film are composed of repeated telephoto crosscuts between the Fuhrer and his flock creating suspense of absolute determination and salvation for the revived Germany. Images of maternal bliss, youthful innocence, and nature link Hitler to peace and love creating the impression that he is benign and caring. Riefenstahl continued these alternating shots suggesting both his point of view separate from the crowd, and the crowd’s point of view viewing Hitler from below as their savior.66 Kracauer mentioned that

“throughout the whole Convention masses already open to suggestion were swept along by a continuous, well-organized movement that could not but dominate them.”67 With Germany in a abhorrent state after WWI, the huge burden of reparations had damaged the economy, and the

63 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 303. 64 Ibid., 303. 65 Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 136. 66 Frank P. Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema: Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will,” in Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of and Video, ed. Berry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 104-105. 67 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 301.

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country had gone into hyperinflation. People were desperate for some relief, and Hitler and the

NSDAP offered it. It was all too easy to believe his lies; this film confirms this belief.

Hitler's supremacy was based on the unconditional allegiance of the population. The

German Nazi Party was focused on the devotion of the nationhood under the slogan, “One people! One Reich! One Fuhrer!”68 One of the distinctive characteristics of Nazi propaganda films is the enormous enthusiasm of the crowds conveying approval and encouragement for their

Fuhrer and country. In the choreographed film sequence of the Reichsarbeitsdienst, the Labor

Corps Rally forged the national identity of the working together, despite capitalist class conflict, building one national German community. This agency was formed to help relieve unemployment in Germany and militarize the workforce by indoctrinating Nazi ideology.69 The staging of the outdoor ceremony is of great symbolic significance. It showed numerous men, in uniform, gathered in Nuremberg from all over the Reich, somewhat creating a counterweight for the dwindled SA members. Their performance won over Hitler and the spectators.70

This official state labor service was also used by the Nazis as a conformity of political support of unemployed youth men and was later created along military arms. Hitler saw this agency as a valuable tool in the physical building of his New Germany, molding the new of Hitlerjungen, .71 In Triumph of the Will, there is a recurrence of youthful exuberance. As Hitler addressed them as His German youth, he stated, “We want to be a united nation and you, my youth, are to become this nation. In the future, we do not wish to see classes and cliques, and you must not allow them to develop among you. We want to see one

68 Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. 69 Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” 107. 70 Kiran Klaus Patel, Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933- 1945 (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 2005), 93-94. 71 Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” 106.

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Reich one day.”72 Riefenstahl uses cinematic means to impart the same idea of totalitarianism

Hitler bestows on the Hitlerjungen for German renewal. Surveying the enormous assemblage standing and shouting in the name of the Fuhrer, the camera frame alternates an overflow of closely packed idealized Aryan youngsters (figure 1). This imagery links the visual and verbal themes of subtle Aryan dimensions to the idea of national unity.73

Through the speeches made during the film, the ideological message comprised a unified theme by amplifying German unity under one leader. Many oaths of loyalty from various support groups and supreme leaders are evident. Many speeches promoted the values asserted by the

Nazis, including the defense of , the belief of their charismatic leader, the renewal of the people’s nation, and intuitively, the creation of Nazi .74 For the opening speech of the rally and film, , the Deputy Fuhrer, passionately spoke of leadership, loyalty, unity, and German strength. Each dialogue in the film was formulated to coerce its audience with an everlasting narcotization for its Fuhrer and instigation for his pursuit of an idyllic race and nation in years to come. “Speeches tend to appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect of their listeners; but the Nazis preferred to reduce the intellect by working primarily upon the emotions.”75 There was no attempt to conceal the National Socialist message since the German people was likely to associate with the thoughts and feelings being projected from these political speeches. These rally speeches were portrayed in fragments at various times to consolidate political sophistication. Riefenstahl even requested some speeches to be redelivered after the rally in studios for dramatic impact. Edited by the director herself, it emanated the absolute

72 Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. 73 Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” 109. 74 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 142. 75 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 300.

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loyalty of the Fuhrer.76 The rally was considered a success by swaying the populace with emotional stimulants establishing a “” around Hitler, a mystical aura associated with a “folkish” family-based patriotism.77 Even after the rally, the film itself would propagate these ideas among the German people through theater screenings.

The leading figure of this film personified the best characteristics of his chosen people: strength and perseverance, simplicity and reverence, compassion and generosity. This is the only film that was constructed around Hitler himself. There would be no other filmmaker to elaborate on the myth that Leni Riefenstahl had depicted in Triumph of the Will.78

Leni Riefenstahl’s Innovative Editing

Leni Riefenstahl’s innovative filming techniques with close ups, long shots, reverse angles, and reaction shots achieved national and global fame. Triumph of the Will used crowded wide shots, sometimes diagonal, of massed characters and then shifted to close-ups that isolated a single passion. Focusing on clean-cut people in uniforms, cameras would catch them grouping and regrouping, as if seeking the right choreography to express their euphoric loyalty to Hitler and the Nazi party.79 Riefenstahl was meticulous in the way she set up her camera angles around the town and on the political figures. Her choice of motifs for disorientation and animation was achieved through showing merely the upper parts of objects and people, achieving a conception of “spiritualized”. Close-ups and obscure camera angles from laying in ditches to climbing up ladders achieved the effect of animation for a figurative reality.80 Kracauer confirmed, “This film

76 Rainer Rother, Leni Riefenstahl the Seduction of Genius (London: Continuum, 2002), 179-180. Bach, Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, 137. 77 Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” 101. 78 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 154. 79 Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism." 80 Kelman, "Propaganda as a Vision: Triumph of the Will."

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represents an inextricable mixture of a show simulating German reality and of German reality maneuvered into a show.”81

Triumph of the Will was in a continuous state of movement. The numerous cameras at

Riefenstahl’s disposal constantly surveyed faces, uniforms, salutes, and marches, to transport the viewer into a fabricated reality. She would introduce a certain photographic aesthetic into areas of crowds, power, and politics.82 Her use of rhythmic montage, showing a series of short shots suggesting a passage of time with special optical effects, glorified the event of a fascist stage of submission and valor. Editing 61 hours of film, Riefenstahl worked five months to produce the final fantastical version of Triumph of the Will.83 Each cinematic mechanism, camera angles, editing, music, set design, lighting, and narration, was arranged to appeal to the irrational character structure of its audience.84 In addition to outstanding filming techniques employed, it was Riefenstahl’s editing techniques that produced the world-renowned recognition the final product received.

Leni Riefenstahl’s cinematic techniques earned Triumph of the Will recognition as one of the greatest propaganda films in history. It premiered in Berlin on March 28, 1935 at the Ufa-

Palast am Zoo. Within the Party and larger Reich cities, the film proved successful. Nazi press and publications celebrated the film as “a symphony of the German will,” a “national document,” and an “exceptional event in an exceptional form.” For her efforts, Leni Riefenstahl was rewarded the Gold Metal at the Venice Film Festival and the German National Film Prize in

Berlin in 1935, and the Grand Prize at the World Exhibition in 1937.85 With these awards,

81 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 303. 82 Elsaesser, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman." 83 Taylor, Film Propaganda, 163. 84 Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” 102. 85 Trimborn, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, 118-120.

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Leni Riefenstahl would cite most of her life that the film could not be propaganda but a purely historical artistic product.

Films such as Triumph of the Will were used as tools to liberate the energy and spirit of the German people through a dynamic new movement with roots deep in their racial consciousness. “Symbols chosen for their stimulative power helped in the total mobilization: the city was a sea of waving swastika banners; the flames of the bonfires and torches illuminated the nights; the streets and squares uninterruptedly echoed with the exciting rhythm of march music.”86 Triumph of the Will is an amazingly successful attempt to demonstrate to the world the new strength of the Nazi party, the unity of the people, and the magnitude of German power.

Siegfried Kracauer recognized how “Triumph of the Will is the triumph of a nihilistic will.”87 He also stated, “At Nuremberg, therefore, steps were taken to influence the physical and the psychological condition of all participants.” Propaganda is considered the art of persuasion and

Triumph of the Will is a superb example of artistically documenting and compressing core Nazi ideology, political speeches and unified marches into a masterpiece of film propaganda indoctrinating its captive audience.

Eternal Jew – Implicit Propaganda

In cinema, more than in theatre, the spectator must know whom he should hate and whom he should love. --Fritz Hippler88

Adolf Hitler was driven by the idea of an Aryan . The Nazi campaign saw the cleansing of the Jewish race as essential to achieving a purified superior race. Goebbels’s

86 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 301. 87 Ibid., 303. 88 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 174.

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propaganda machine exploited the powerful myth of the Eternal or .89 The

Reich’s systematic plan to discredit, expropriate, and eventually eliminate the Jews was the focus of propaganda works such as the 1935 film by Leni Riefenstahl The Triumph of Will, the 1937

“Degenerate Art” exhibition and the 1940 film The Eternal Jew by . In the end,

Hitler’s regime was responsible for the deaths of 40 million people, many attributable to the worst genocide in the history of mankind.90

The Germans saw World War I as “a purging of European cultures that were poisoned and contaminated.” 91 A part of transforming Germany, according to Hitler and the Nazi

Party, was the creation of a single racial state. Much attention was devoted to idealizing the

Aryan race. In , Hitler defined this idealized race as the purest example connected to the original racial stock of prehistoric Eurasia before interracial contaminations.92 To garner national support for this superior race, Nazi ideology portrayed the Aryan race as being threatened by inferior groups both inside and outside of Germany.93 As the Nazis’ racialized political agenda spread, ethnic groups, more visible due to propaganda, became targets for racial actions and crimes.94 The Nazis invested great effort in revolutionizing the Nazi State, even if it meant massive violations of human rights toward the minorities. Information was dispersed to label Jews and other minorities as the exceptional , working within the nation to subvert racial purity.

89 Idalovichi, “Creating National Identity through a Legend–The Case of the Wandering Jew,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 4, no. 12 (2010): 3- 26. 90 Ian Kershaw, “Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism,” Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 2 (2004): 239-240. 91 Panikos Panayi, Weimar and Nazi Germany: Continuities and Discontinuities (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2001), 12. 92 Ibid., 226. 93 Kershaw, “Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism,” 247. 94 Panayi, Weimar and Nazi Germany, 221.

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In order to get the populace to accept a totalitarianism that would destroy their individual rights, films were massively distributed lauding sterilization and institutionalization of unhealthy or “defective” members of society.95 Similar methods were used to turn German society against

Jews, suggesting that Jews were a threat to a stable, wholesome population. Nowhere was this more evident than in Fritz Hippler’s film The Eternal Jew (Der Ewige Jude). This film was ranked one of the most malicious propaganda films of anti-Semitism ever made. Made in 1940, it was formatted as a documentary film of the world of Jewry, similar to Triumph of the Will as a supposed “documentary” of the 1934 Nazi party rally. Its powerful effectiveness in the pretense of documentary objectivity, The Eternal Jew had a purpose to tell the truth about Jews. These images claimed to depict Jews as they really were, accentuating disgust and horror toward these supposed oriental barbarians.96

The German invasion in provided its viewers “actual shots of the Polish ghettos, showing the Jews as they really look before concealing themselves behind the of civilized

Europeans.”97 However, the overcrowded and unhygienic conditions of the ghettos, the oldest and most run-down city units, were a direct result of the Nazi racial policy for the ghettoization of Polish Jews. The film commentator stated, “there’s a plague here: a plague that threatens the health of the Aryan peoples. once said, ‘The Jew is the demon behind the corruption of mankind.’ And these pictures prove it.”98 The visual and verbal commentary at points was supposed to be portrayed as disgusting and grotesque. The film’s objectivity is

95 Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003), 118, 155. 96 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 174-175. 97 The Eternal Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler (Deutsche Film Gesellschaft, 1940). 98 Ibid.

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misleading by claiming that “they live for generations in the same dirty and bug ridden dwellings.”99

The narrator persists the claims that the only object of value is money by living off the

“host” nations as “parasites.” The Jews allegedly portray a dangerous illusion, creating only a guise for parasitic exploitation.100 In , stories of wandering from place to place benefit the film’s notion of settling like a plague of rats. “Parallel to these Jewish wanderings throughout the world is the migration of a similarly restless animal: the rat. Rats have been parasites on mankind from the very beginning.”101 Revealing powerful and stirring scenes of rats swarming sewers and fondling over sacks of grain in unsavory conditions ensured viewers that

Jews are literally less than human.

By creating a tenacious society, it is important to define who is excluded from membership. In one scene of The Eternal Jew, we are made aware of how Jews disguise their appearance in a more European manner to hide his/her racial origins (figure 2-3). This is another asserted form of illusion that Jews fabricate to undermine their “host” nation. “But the Jew is still a rootless parasite” no matter how outwardly they strive to fit in with their hosts.102 By exploiting pre-existing images and stereotypes, Nazi propagandists portrayed Jews poisoning culture, religion, and economy. This revolting depiction of Jews is neither new nor unique, yet for the

Nazi Party it was iconic.

The film goes on to show Jews influencing and corrupting the artistic life of the nation.

“Jews are most dangerous when permitted to meddle in a people’s culture, religion, and art, and pronounce their insolent judgment on them. The concept of beauty of the Nordic man is

99 Ibid. 100 Idalovichi, “Creating National Identity through a Legend–The Case of the Wandering Jew,” 5. 101 The Eternal Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler. 102 Ibid.

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incomprehensible to the Jew by nature and will always remain so.”103 A series of from the Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937 is shown stating the corruption of art by the Jews. This exhibition took place at a similar time when the first anti-Semitic exhibition, “The Wandering

Jew,” was being held in at the Library of the German Museum.104 The audience can once again feel animosity against Jewish artists defacing the German society.

To further demonstrate the undesirability of the Jews, the film includes footage of the kosher-style slaughter of animals. The images of butchers slicing the throats of animals and letting the blood drain onto the floor are very graphic. A notification from the National Socialist movement appears on the screen avowing knowledge of this torture and advises viewers of Adolf

Hitler’s actions to forbid Jews from conducting this ritual slaughter. “Under leadership of Adolf

Hitler, Germany has raised the battle against the eternal Jew.”105

The film ends with Hitler expressing his thoughts on the Jews at the Reichstagssitzung on

January 30, 1939.106 The threats he inferred make it clear that the ritual slaughter sequence is an allegory for the fate that is awaiting the Jewish race in Europe. Nazis clearly express, based on this film, that Jews are no better than animals. The commentator finalizes the film by saying, “In this spirit, the unified German people march on into the future.”107 The film concludes with a sequence of the crowds saluting their Fuhrer, alternating to close-ups of Aryan blond boys and girls grinning with immense hope for the future. The Nazis march toward a future of world domination and racial purity. Similar to Triumph of the Will as the German people put their trust in their Fuhrer and the National Socialist party, The Eternal Jew dissolves from images of the

103 Ibid. 104 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 182. 105 The Eternal Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler. 106 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 185. 107 The Eternal Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler.

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swastika to absolute darkness. There is a note of hope for Nazi Germany. Once again, Hitler is depicted as the savior of the Aryan race.

Premiered on November 28, 1940, The Eternal Jew is perceived as a prelude to the

Holocaust, a record of the early stages of the extermination of the Jewish race.108 The Nazis’ use of the arts permeated National Socialist methodology and was used to portray Hitler’s view of the world.109 In occupied Poland, Nazi propaganda reinforced quarantining Jews to ghettos by rendering them a health threat. Such marketing of fear desensitized the public to the growing of the Jews. “Race, far from being a mere propagandistic slogan, was the very rock on which the Nazi church was built.”110

108 Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, 186. 109 West, The Visual Arts in Germany, 182. 110 Hilderbrand, “Hitler's War Aims,” 525.

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Chapter 3 The Use of Art in Nazi Propaganda

For this ‘modern art’ National Socialism desires to substitute a ‘German’ art and an eternal art. --Adolf Hitler111

National Socialist Art Policy

After World War I, Germany and the National Socialist Party feared a degeneration of the German culture. The members of the National Socialist Party advocated the use of violence to cleanse all aspects of political and cultural degeneracy of decay. In the early 1930s, the Nazis carefully engineered a plan for cultural cleansing. Deleterious events such as the banning and burning of books were the prequel to the purification of degeneration.112 Visual imagery sought to manifest the healing of a German idealized nation.

Once Adolf Hitler and the Nazis assumed power in 1933, they encroached upon every aspect of German cultural life, eventually seizing control over the German museums and art galleries. The propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was the first to conceive the idea of an exhibit used to propagate the Aryan ideology through an exhibition composed of works designated to be from “the era of decay.”113 The Nazis confiscated thousands of artworks throughout Germany for the purpose of public ridicule and sterilization of degenerate elements.

It was implied that the removed art was so radical; it was essentially “non-art.”114 The National

Socialist degenerate art policy, Entartete Kunst Aktion, empowered the notion of ridding the nation of all degenerate influences, especially in an artistic manner in accordance with academic

111 David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 205. 112 Berthold Hinz, "'Degenerate' and 'Authentic': Aspects of Art and Power in the Third Reich," in Art and Power: Europe under the 1930-45, compiled by Dawn Ades, Tim Benton, David Elliott, and Iain Boyd Whyte (London: Hayward Gallery, 1996), 330. 113 Olaf Peters, Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern , 1937 (Munich: Prestel, 2014), 113-114. 114 Stephanie Barron, “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), 11.

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formalist principles.115 Entartete Kunst Aktion was the legal means by which modern art was to be eradicated and purified from German art culture.116 , the Reich Chamber of

Visual Arts, was in charge of collecting art containing perceived asymmetries, abstraction, skewed perspective, distorted human forms, the non-figurative, and violent color contrasts.117

Many German museum directors and curators devised counterattacks against the confiscations; these actions resulted in their forced removal from office.118 This act of art removal was intended to avert the public from cultural ridicule of their national aesthetics being portrayed in certain degenerate imagery. It was meant to provoke public opinion in opposition of all forms of modernism.119

This art removal was effective in initiating Nazi racist policies. In Munich in 1937, two art events were sponsored largely for the purpose of their perceptual contrast. This much- publicized confrontation was between the unvalued minority and the valued majority staged in the domain of art.120 These two art exhibitions became a visualistic view in creating a dramatic contrast of the German society.

Great German Art and Degenerate Art Exhibition

The Nazi Party hastened to form their aesthetic vision by displaying artworks that represented the idealistic human form in the language of in the first annual Grosse

Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibition) in the newly structured Haus der

115 Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will, The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990), 135. 116 Joan L. Clinefelter, Artists for the Reich: Culture and Race from Weimar to Nazi Germany (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 91. 117 Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 40. 118 Barron, “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, 15. 119 -Carol Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine to the Rise of National Socialism (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1993), 307. 120 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic’: Aspects of Art and Power in the Third Reich,” 330.

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Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art).121 This House still stands today as the oldest civic building constructed by the Nazis. From the time the foundation was set in 1933 to the museum’s dedication in 1937, Munich was regarded as the major cultural center of Germany. It was the birthplace of National Socialism and functioned as the capital city of German art.122 In Hitler’s inaugural address of the dedication of the House of German Art, he labeled it a “temple of

German art.”123 The first of Hitler’s prestigious public buildings, and showpiece projects for

Nazi propaganda, the House was to epitomize the strength and health of the Nazi nation.124

Located across the street in Munich, occupied in the former Institute of Archaeology, a second exhibition opened with the purpose of attacking works of modern art considered as

“other.” The Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) showcased art works by artists that were the standard-bearers of the German avant-garde.125 This location was considered an insinuation to how these artworks should no longer exist. This art was anti-classical in form and style, described as products of insanity, impudence, and ineptitude.126 Opened one day after the Great

German Art Exhibition, the Degenerate Art Exhibition served as a contradictory positioning in art. The minority and majority paradigms of art were defined based on elusive characteristics, allowing the Nazi aesthetic to express an unequivocal value judgment against the degenerate.127

The term “degenerate” was denoted by the Nazis to be an inferior racial, moral, or sexual type. During the 1930s, it befell to the reference of a taste in cultural ideologies that were

121 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic’: Aspects of Art and Power in the Third Reich,” 330. 122 Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1983), 95-97. 123 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 330. 124 Bruce Altshuler, The Avant-garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 136. 125 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 330. 126 Peter Guenther, “Three Days in Munich, July 1937,” in “Degenerate Art:” The Fate of the Avant- Garde in Nazi Germany, ed. Stephanie Barron (Los Angeles: LA County Museum of Art, 1991), 38. 127 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 330.

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unacceptable or abnormal.128 Art that appeared to deviate from naturalism or the formal standards of was declared as degenerate. The Degenerate Art Exhibition was organized around this anti-formal quality. It was to show the public what constituted as degenerate, to persuade the public on its potential for demoralization, and to exploit the art as an attempt to create cultural and political by undermining traditional values. The demoralized art featured in the exhibition were essentially abstract and expressionistic, including all the modern art movements, such as Expressionism, Cubism, , Constructivism, and

Dada. However, these modern artist groups deliberately sought to represent visual aspects that rejected the norm.129 Their goal was to disrupt the classical pictorial representation. This route led to much criticism. Artists of the confiscated art such as , , Emil

Nolde, and were humiliated and forbidden to continue the art practice.130

Many of these ridiculed artists were expelled from their teaching posts, forbidden to exhibit elsewhere, and had to turn to other ways of earning a living. Some artists left the country in search of salvation. Others continued to work and sometimes even sell inconspicuously. It was to be believed that these artists were visually dysfunctional, unable to see objects accurately.

The Nazis claimed that this “degenerate” art was the product of Jews and Bolsheviks, yet only about six artists featured in the exhibition were actually Jewish. German Expressionist works were presented as overpriced commodities and considered “out of place” in German society. The most heavily represented German Expressionist in the exhibition was .

He was one of the first Expressionist painters and considered one of the greatest painters of the

20th century. He was a supporter of the Nazi party and shared similar views with Joseph

128 Barron, “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, 11. 129 Neil Levi, "‘Judge for Yourselves!’-The ‘Degenerate Art’ Exhibition as Political Spectacle,” October 85 (1998): 44-45. 130 Ibid.

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Goebbels on opinions of Jewish artists. However, this did not save him from becoming defamed during the Nazi “cleanse” of modern art. Emil Nolde’s The Prophet (figure 4), from 1912, is a quintessential German Expressionist print, and was on display at the Degenerate Art Exhibition.

He had more than a thousand works confiscated for the exhibition and was banned from exhibiting and practicing art thereafter.131

There is one true eternal art according to Hitler, “Nordic-Greek” art.132 In his Mein

Kampf, Hitler believed art to be an exterior form that embodied an inner national idea.133 He saw that classical art was uncontaminated by Jewish influences and modern art was a feat of aesthetic violence by the Jews and Bolsheviks against the German spirit.134 “To be German is to be clear,” stated Hitler.135 For Hitler and the National Socialists, beauty and clarity in art portrayed a perceptual functionality and acuity. Nazi Art was modeled after classical Greek and , characteristic of alleged German bourgeois aesthetic values. Other art was excluded on the basis of perceptual defects.

The Great German Art Exhibition was representative of the monumental style typical of the Nazi aesthetic idea consistent with the paintings and that emanated within the

House walls. Hitler conceptualized art that encouraged and supported the ideals of the German people. At least 800 artworks were exhibited, including portraits of Hitler, contrasting with the form and style of the Degenerate Art.136 Guidelines were formed to define true German art; it

131 Levi, “‘Judge for Yourselves!,’” 44. 132 Adolf Hitler, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-, trans. by Norman H. Baynes, vol. 1 (New York: Howard Fertig, 1969), 567. 133 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. by Ralph Manheim, 15th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971). 134 Barron, “Degenerate Art,” 10. 135 Adolf Hitler, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, 587. 136 Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists, 99.

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must be national, comprehensive, eternal, and representative of the good and the beautiful.137

Depictions of military, domestic and genre scenes, female nudes were representational of a

Neoclassicism complementary to its structure in which it is housed. Glorified German men were naturally represented with healthy, lean bodies ready to protect the nation in a time of war, and women as bearers of life and culture; both embodied the creators of a new generation. Such aesthetic ideals were expected to reflect the Nazi’s political ideology.138

There was no subject matter that remained unaffected. Landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes all had to represent romanticized depictions of National Socialist of a pure and stable peasant life in an idyllic country setting.139 This new art was created in a neoclassical style that Hitler considered to be the highest standards of beauty. Figures and scenes were depicted in detail with easily comprehensible forms, as opposed to the abstractions Hitler was trying to eradicate. He stated that the highest culture was a combination of Hellenic and Germanic civilizations.140 However, this new Nazi art projected a false representation of life contradictory to the modern industrial and urban existence in Germany.

Contradictory in subject matter, the Degenerate Art and Great German Art exhibitions were also opposite in exhibition design. Hitler encouraged the German public to judge the two art exhibitions. However, the stages were set for visitors to see certain ideals and values on what is and is not considered German art.

The arrangement for the Degenerate Art was purposefully incompetent; pictures were hung too closely together, many were incorrectly attributed and labeled, separate artistic movements were grouped together, and quotations from critics were displayed without regard of

137 Mary-Margaret Goggin, “‘Decent’ vs. ‘Degenerate’ Art: The National Socialist Case,” Art Journal 50, no. 4 (1991): 85-86. 138 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 332. 139 Clinefelter, Artists for the Reich: Culture and Race from Weimar to Nazi Germany, 62. 140 Taylor and Van Der Will, The Nazification of Art, 135.

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accuracy.141 An example of this is the “Dada” installation section, which featured a quote by

George Grosz in 1920 saying “Take Dada Seriously! – It’s Worth It” (“Nehmen Sie Dada ernst!

– Es lohnt sich”). Below were two works by the German Dadaist and two title pages from the Dada magazine. The section also incorporated works by Paul Klee and Wassily

Kandinsky, neither of whom was connected to the Dada movement (figure 5).

Many artworks were taken out of their frames, laminated with poor lighting, and partly covered up by Nazi propaganda slogans, or derogatory slanderous remarks, distorting the actual intent of the artist. It was a chaotic installation where narrow corridors led to small, cramped rooms with low ceilings and rickety staircases creating a sense of claustrophobia and spatial disorder. Chaos was especially transmitted through the concurrence of paintings suspended at times from very low and unappealing angles the publics attitude to suggest disparaged qualities in modern art.142 Many books, graphic prints, drawings, and photographs were also found throughout the exhibit.143 They too would be combined with text in the most provocative and aggressive manner.

The exhibition was divided into nine categories, each representing some “negative” aspect of modern art.8 Several rooms were grouped thematically; one room represented blasphemy, one room contained works by Jewish or Bolshevik artists, and another on the degradation of German women, soldiers, and workers. One room contained all abstract paintings, one was labeled “The Insanity Room,” and the rest had no particular theme. As well as the wall labels, a guide was provided with derogatory and inflammatory manner. The catalogue was used as a reference guide for visitors walking through the exhibition, and to endorse the illustrations

141 Levi, “‘Judge for Yourselves!,’” 41. 142 Guenther, “Three Days in Munich, July 1937,” 43. 143 Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, “Entartete Kunst, Munich 1937: A Reconstruction,” in “Degenerate Art”: The Face of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, ed. Stephanie Barron (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), 45-82.

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on what the Nazis deemed “bad art.” The exhibition guide explained that the aim of the show was to “reveal the philosophical, political, racial and moral goals and intentions behind this movement, and the driving forces of corruption which follow them.”144

The Degenerate Art Exhibition presented early twentieth-century German avant-garde paintings, which the Nazis declared as fabrications of archaic deformities and mental illness triggering discernments of abhorrence and indignation.145 This exhibition design was intended to exemplify for the German people what type of art was unacceptable and what was deemed nonsense by the Nazi regime. Installed in such haste, less than three weeks, the Degenerate Art

Exhibition emanated the discretization of the artworks prompting a negative reaction of as a poisoning on the German culture.146

In contrast, the House of German Art emulated a flawless aesthetic appearance that continued throughout the exhibition. Each room was monumental in size and space, creating a sense of awe and reverence.147 Uniformed Nazi guards were patent among the German general public that formed a severity of German aestheticism. The interior space and design was defined by what it was not; disordered array of abstractions and derogatory slogans were nowhere to be found. Artworks were celebratory in thematic categories of youth, hopefulness, power, and eternal beauty. Artists such as and , two sanctioned sculptors of the

Third Reich, created monumental hallmarking the archetypal neoclassical tradition.148

144 Fritz Kaiser, Degenerate Art: The Exhibition Guide in German and English (Burlington: Ostara Publications, 2012), 2. 145 Charlotte Klonk, "Exteriority and Exhibition Spaces in Weimar Germany," in Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 176. 146 Altshuler, The Avant-garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century, 138. 147 Barron, “Degenerate Art,” 17. 148 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 332.

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More than 16,000 works were submitted and only 600 were exhibited.149 The Great

German Art Exhibition of 1937 was the first annual sale exhibition. These artworks were to be bought and displayed with pride in German homes to prove how the cultural and artistic sphere in Germany was flourishing under Hitler and the Third Reich.150 Many leading Nazi party members, government officials, companies, and individuals partook in buying such art. Yet no one bought as much as Hitler who spent millions accumulating his collection.151 The Great

German Art Exhibition showcased an academic style of a certain aesthetic criteria that appropriated with the beliefs of the Nazi regime to eliminate those that disrupted the notions of racial purity.

The “Degenerate Art” and the “Great German Art” exhibitions were part of the scheme to showcase pure German culture. The exhibitions formed part of the Nazi worldview and propaganda effort, which sought to link modern art with degeneracy and an assault on classical values. The intention for the German public was to forge a link between physical degeneracy and modern art that formally resembled it. Once the “degenerates” were excluded from the canon of

German art, the nation could be aesthetically pure. Hitler and the Third Reich policies demarcating desirable and undesirable art were inseparable.152 This visualized and radical ideal to incite public hatred through art was to ultimately cleanse the German nation in all aspects of culture, society, and politics.

The Nazis intended the two shows as complementary demonstrations of racial types and political motives in art. As stated before, both exhibitions are opposite in subject matter, style, form, and design. They reflected what they believed to be the good and bad in art, the right and

149 Barron, “Degenerate Art,” 6-7. 150 Clinefelter, Artists for the Reich, 102. 151 Ibid., 102-104. 152 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 331-333.

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wrong. However, they were not complementary. If total attendance is any implication to the success of an exhibition, the Degenerate Art Exhibition was the most profitable than any other

Nazi sanctioned cultural event. It attracted five times as many visitors than the Great German Art

Exhibition. It remains the most visited show of modernist art with a record of 2 million visitors, as opposed to 420,000 people at the Great German Art exhibit.153 In addition, Peter Guenther’s testament described great disparity between the two exhibits. In designing the layout of the Great

German Art Exhibition great care was taken to create a “semiecclesiastical atmosphere through the size of the rooms, their décor, the impressive lighting, and the careful placements of the exhibits.” In contrast, the layout of the Degenerate Art Exhibition was a “blatant intent to discredit everything on view.”154 In the end, Guenther described a feeling of shock, dismay, and sadness upon leaving the Entartete Kunst.

The success of the Degenerate Art exhibit inspired Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, to showcase the exhibition throughout Germany and

Austria from 1938 to 1941.155 Ironically, the degenerate art gained popularity internationally as well as domestically because the Nazis opposed it. Some of the artists featured in the exhibition are now considered among the greats of modern art. After the collapse of the Nazi Party, some of the surviving artwork from the exhibit was found buried underground, others in private collections, and many still yet undiscovered. Historians have deemed it the greatest art theft in history.156

153 Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, "1930-1939," in Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004), 281. 154 Guenther, “Three Days in Munich, July 1937,” 34. 155 Long, German Expressionism, 307. 156 Barron, “Degenerate Art,” 404.

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For the Nazi regime, modern art was a cultural manifestation that indicated a

“degenerate” collapse of the idyllic German community.157 Their aesthetic tastes were visibly manifested in the Great German Art Exhibition. All things German needed to be separated and protected against the destructive forces of urban city life and the “Jew” who sought its destruction.158 This initial separation was performed under the Nazi’s Entartete Kunst Aktion and constituted the basis of the Degenerate Art Exhibition. This exhibition was constituted to identify the works in question as meaningless and unacceptable. It was meant to stir up negative perceptions of the public to modern art, and brainwash the nation as a whole.159

Opening the Degenerate Art Exhibition only a day after the Great German Art Exhibition proved significant for the Nazis. It assisted in defining the “other” through letting the German people vote with their eyes. These exhibitions were classified as forms of propaganda, intended to create a public perception that the exhibited art was either a threat or a defense to German morality.160 The entire operation of “degenerate art” and the identification of a Nazi art played its part in consolidating both the Nazi state and German community, and thus materially contributed to the advent of the Second World War and to its correlated crimes.161

157 Ibid.,15. 158 Dagmar Grimm, “The Works of Art in ‘Entartete Kunst,’ Munich 1937,” in “Degenerate Art”: The Face of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, ed. Stephanie Barron (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), 204. 159 Goggin, “‘Decent’ vs. ‘Degenerate’ Art,” 85. 160 Altshuler, The Avant-garde in Exhibition, 147. 161 Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic,’” 330.

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Conclusion

Political success offered Hitler the narcissistic gratification he failed to receive in his early career as an artist. Hitler’s obsession with aesthetics carried over in his political life. He exploited aesthetics in disguising his hatred and aggression as he remodeled the German culture to meet his own idealized and grandiose self-image. Hitler transmuted his failure as an artist into a fantasy of social transformation. He sought to force global compliance with his archaic views for protection and control. Through conspiracy, tyranny, and terror Hitler conquered Germany, much of Europe and portions of Asia before the Third Reich was defeated.

Art, aesthetics, and culture drove Hitler’s social policy. Upon seizing power, he and the new Reich took violent action to purge Germany of non-Germanic and anti-Nazi persons from positions of cultural leadership. Through use of art and films, Hitler garnered support for his racist policies, accusing these outside groups of conspiracy to demoralize and corrupt the cultural purity of Germany. Hitler achieved and maintained political power through stage-managing the social and cultural aesthetics of the German nation. , uniforms, party rallies, and related props all played a part in creating and propagating the cult and emotional power of Nazi

Germany; much of this orchestrated by film director Leni Riefenstahl and minister of propaganda, Joseph Gobbles.

Amid his ostentatious rallies, Hitler elevated his genius for psychological manipulation through exhibition. Walter Benjamin saw these rallies as microcosms of Hitler’s idyllic world: “a people reduced to unthinking automatons subject to the control not of the state, not even of the party but of him personally- and that unto . Never before was there a clearer example of aesthetics used to promote enslavement and heroic death.”162

162 Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2003), 116.

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Hitler romanticized love and death as ideals. Benjamin interpreted Hitler’s self-alienation as an aesthetic sacrifice for the cause. Hitler’s opposing ideals, culture and vandalism, creativity and destruction, beauty and horror, life and death demonstrated that culture and barbarism could exist side by side and have the same predecessor. Walter Benjamin stated, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”163

163 Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 400.

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List of Illustrations

1. Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens), screenshot, Berlin: Reichsparteitag-Film/UFA, 1996. Transit Film GmbH.

2-3. Fritz Hippler, The Eternal Jew (Der Ewige Jude), screenshots, Uraufführung: Deutsche Film Gesellschaft, 1940. The Hebrew University Spielberg Film Archives.

4. Emil Nolde, The Prophet, 1912, woodcut, 50 x 36.5 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

5. Arthur Grimm, Archival photograph of the ‘Degenerate art’ exhibition held at Archäologisches Institut, Munich, 19 July – 30 Nov 1937, 1937, The Getty Research Institute, The Getty Center, Los Angeles. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi- dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2073

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Figure 1 Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) 1935 Screenshot Transit Film GmbH

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Figure 2-3 Fritz Hippler The Eternal Jew (Der Ewige Jude) 1940 Screenshots The Hebrew University Spielberg Film Archives

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Figure 4 Emil Nolde The Prophet 1912 Woodcut composition: 32.1 x 22.2 cm; sheet: 50 x 36.5 cm The Museum of Modern Art

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Figure 5 Arthur Grimm and unknown artist Archival photograph of the ‘Degenerate art’ exhibition held at Archäologisches Institut, Munich, 19 July – 30 Nov 1937 Courtesy of Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulterbesitz, Berlin

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