When we think of culture, European culture, we can clearly get a broad feel of most countries. The French have elaborate, functional architecture, they have easily recognizable music (the movie Ratatouilles or the Aristocats are good examples of the typical French style), the art is distinguishable as they boast art exhibit after art exhibit (Manet, Monet, van Gogh, etc.),and the literature is many times inherent of the French past: Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame-- the Victor Hugo greats.
Britain is the Globe Theater, Big Ben, St. Paul's, castles, Scotland, thatched roof cottages, Regency... the literature abounds: Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolkien; the art is medieval, a sturdy throw back to Celtic tradition. It's tea and biscuits.
Ireland makes you think of green, shamrocks, leprechauns, and quaint villages with a local pub. Celtic art permeates the culture even still today with its geometric designs and knots. It's James Joyce, the Book of Kells, and Oscar Wilde.
Italy is Rome, Venice, Florence... from the ancient Romans to the golden Renaissance, from ruins to the Sistine Chapel. Of course art is Michelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli, among dozens of others. The literature is Dante's Divine Comedy, The Decameron, Machiavelli, and Petrarch. And all this surrounded by bowls of pasta.
These things are all cultural identifiers for these countries, but what of Germany in the 20s and 30s? These other countries and cultures developed over centuries. While there were plenty of Germanic tribes and states, a unified Germany was barely sixty years old, had been plagued with many long years of war and even more years of unemployment and destitution. They had long wanted an identity, in fact a good bit of the reasons behind the first world war was to perpetuate their unified identity and make their own "place beneath the sun." The question was "Who did Germany want to be when they grew up?" Everyone had an opinion, there was no unifying political ideal, there really was no desire to figure out where they were going as a nation as for many the concern was about the next meal or the next season. A cultural and national identity was somewhere in the trenches of the Great War.
And then Hitler. His vision was overarching, a romanticized ideal, and something that could be recognizable German. He had a solid, unified political base, he made promises and he kept them, and he had a clean slate in which to create a culture based on a hybrid folklore from old, pre-Christian, pagan mythologies and themes, and racial, Aryan ideals.
Hitler's favorite German composer was Richard Wagner, and his works harkened back to an era of Germanic greatness. Lohengrin, Tristan & Isolde, Der Ring des Niebelungen bring forth epic themes of a Germanic past. The Ride of the Valkyries is perhaps one of his most well known works. Hitler adored this. Of course, it also helped that Wagner was antisemitic and his views of race fell in line with Hitler's. On an off note, Hitler did not have an appreciation for another German composer, Mendelssohn, unsurprisingly because of his Jewish heritage.
But how did Hitler put his vision to reality?
Architectural greatness: Hitler's Supercity, Part 1 and Hitler's Supercity, Part 2
We stopped the second link about 4:25 and the building of the Olympic Stadium built for the 1936 Olympics. This event was the world stage to show the world the might and strength, proving to the world that the Third Reich were no longer a downtrodden nation held down by the Treaty of Versailles.
The Olympics: 1936
The movie Race is a great dramatization of the triumph of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a thumbing of the nose at the supposed racial superiority of the Aryan ideals.
Art in the Third Reich:
In September 1933, Joseph Goebbels (Reichsminister für Völkskaufklärung und Propaganda-- Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propoganda, a pompous title for a small, frail like man) established the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber). Using this office, he and Hitler began writing the guideline for "good" and "acceptable" culture. One idea Hitler proposed was an art exhibit of Nazi approved art, called the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (the Great German Art Exhibit).
Goebbels thought of one better: create an exhibit nearby the first exhibit that would show what unacceptable art in the Reich was. Ausstellung Entartete Kunst, better known now as the "degenerate art" exhibit. This exhibit would showcase the art of the now defunct Weimar Republic, Goebbels called the "era of decay." This was art that showed decadence, weakness of character, racial impurity, and mental disease. Degenerate Art on Charlie Rose, gives examples of both exhibits.
Among the unacceptable artists were the modern artists, the impressionists, Kandinksky, Chagall, Picasso, and Otto Dix. We spoke of Otto Dix, The German Painter Who Fought in the Trenches last semester and how he used art to express his experiences in the Great War. You can imagine why Hitler was adamantly against Dix and his emphasis on the perils of war and its aftermath.
The degenerate art exhibit turned out to be wildly popular. Running from 19 July to 30 November, 1937, the exhibit saw over two million visitors, more than 20,000 per day.
Hitler's War on Literature:
Nazi Book Burning
In Berlin, the book burnings were in Bebelplatz, before the Humboldt University Library (on the right in the photo below).
This plaque is on the wall to the right of the main doors. "In this place Nazis destroyed the best works of German and World literature. The fascist book burning of 10 May 1933 be a reminder of imperialism and war."
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