Art under Nazism and Why Art Matters
- Rossella BLUE Mocerino
- Apr 11, 2018
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 31
This cover of The New Yorker clearly depicts people at an art opening who are too involved in talking to each other about the shocking state of our country to pay any attention to the artist and art displayed on the walls. Many people think of art as superfluous anyway—a luxury to be enjoyed by the well-to-do, a flourish that is not relevant to our lives. And yet, art matters. Art matters deeply. Today, I want to talk about what happened to art, artists, and art collectors under Nazism. Afterwards, I hope you will look at art differently and see that there is a lot more to a painting than just a pretty picture.
We all know Hitler went after Jews and other "undesirables," but you may not know that he also declared war on modern art. What he set in place was so massive in scope that today we are still coping with the aftermath of the Nazis' unprecedented theft of art in Europe. Practically any artist who was anybody in the art world was labeled as "degenerate," and their works were removed from museums. Artists themselves were forbidden to work or exhibit. Of course, if you were both an artist and Jewish, the consequences were much more severe. At the same time these works of art were being publicly mocked, the Nazis went about looting from Germany and all the other occupied countries, specifically targeting Jewish collectors for their collections. What followed was a human tragedy of immense proportions.
Avant-garde German artists were branded by the Nazis as both enemies of the state and threats to German culture. While many fled into exile, others chose to remain in "internal exile." Otto Dix, for instance, retreated to the countryside to paint uninhabited landscapes in a meticulous style designed not to provoke the authorities.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German Expressionist painter and printmaker. In 1933, his work was branded as "degenerate" by the Nazis, and in 1937, more than 600 of his pieces were either sold or destroyed. Devastated by these events and the ongoing regime, he committed suicide by gunshot in 1938.
Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky was scorned by both the Soviet and Nazi regimes. After the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus school where he taught, he left Germany and eventually passed away in Paris. Today, he is widely celebrated as the father of abstract painting.
Max Beckmann left Germany after hundreds of his works were confiscated by the Nazis. This self-portrait was painted while he was in exile in Amsterdam. Art critic Holland Cotter describes the painting: "Max Beckmann... dressed in a red robe striped like a prison uniform and grimly eyeing a trumpet he holds in his hand as if wondering whether to sound it." Beckmann eventually emigrated to New York.
Although the German press had once praised Marc Chagall's work, the Nazis later made a mockery of his art, describing it as "green, purple, and red Jews shooting out of the earth, fiddling on violins, flying through the air... representing an assault on Western civilization." In fact, very few of the artists who made significant contributions to the German Modernist movement were Jewish.
The Nazis forbade artists such as Emil Nolde from purchasing painting materials. Nolde secretly carried on painting using only watercolors so as not to be betrayed by the telltale odor of oil paints. Despite these strictures, Nolde was a Nazi sympathizer who actively tried to join the Nazi Party. Ultimately, his allegiance spared him nothing; a total of 1,052 of his works were removed from museums—more than those of any other artist.
On July 18, 1937, Adolf Hitler opened the first annual Great German Art Exhibition in Munich; hardly anybody showed up. Only one day later, another exhibition opened just down the block. Entitled Degenerate Art, this counter-show included hundreds of Modernist artworks confiscated from German museums at Hitler's request. Over the next four months, more than two million people crowded into the exhibition to view the forbidden art.
The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, painted by Gustav Klimt, was confiscated by the Nazis during World War II. Klimt had originally titled the painting after its subject, but when Nazi soldiers seized the artwork from the Bloch-Bauer home, the family was sent to concentration camps. When the painting was put on display in the early 1940s, its original title was stripped away. It was renamed The Woman in Gold so that it could be publicly exhibited without making any reference to a prominent Jewish family.
Alfred Flechtheim was a prominent art dealer with galleries in Berlin and Düsseldorf who supported avant-garde artists. He was targeted by the Nazis both as a Jew and as a promoter of what they considered "Degenerate Art." After fleeing Germany in May 1933, he died penniless in London four years later at the age of 59.
Zoran Mušič was a Slovene painter. In 1944, he was arrested by Nazi forces and sent a month later to the Dachau concentration camp, where he secretly made more than 100 sketches of camp life under extremely perilous circumstances. After being liberated by American forces, he eventually settled in Venice, where he passed away at the age of 96. I was fortunate enough to see an exhibition of his work in Venice; in his paintings, the figures are mere shadows of their former selves—seeming more gone than alive.
Felix Nussbaum was a German-Jewish painter. From 1940 to 1944, he and his wife lived in hiding. They were eventually arrested, sent to the Mechelen transit camp, and given the numbers XXVI/284 and XXVI/285. On August 2, they arrived at Auschwitz; just a week later, Felix was murdered at the age of 39. Within one year, the entire Nussbaum family had been killed. Shown here is a section of a painting where he portrays himself wearing a Jewish star and holding a Jewish identity card. His fear is palpable, and his isolation from everyday normalcy is starkly illustrated by a wall separating him from streets lined with trees and houses.
The Nazis declared war on modern art, but Peggy Guggenheim, a prominent Jewish art collector, was undeterred. Before leaving France, she began buying artwork directly from the artists themselves, purchasing a painting a day. She then successfully smuggled these 50 paintings out of the country by packing them into crates hidden beneath everyday household items like casseroles, sheets, and blankets. She herself fled the capital just two days before Hitler's troops marched into Paris.
The artist Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler suffered from mental illness throughout her life. On July 31, 1940, she was murdered along with the majority of the other residents at the Pirna-Sonnenstein psychiatric institution as part of the Nazi "euthanasia" program, Action T4.
Madonna and Child by Michelangelo was stolen by the Nazis from the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium, in 1944. It was hidden deep inside the Altaussee salt mine in Austria, where the Monuments Men eventually discovered it. Thanks to their efforts, the masterpiece was later returned safely to the Church of Our Lady.
The Night Watch by Rembrandt was removed from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in September 1939 at the onset of World War II. It was safely hidden in a specialized vault within the St. Pietersberg caves outside Maastricht, which later remained secure throughout the Nazi occupation. Discovered by Monuments Man George Stout in 1945, the masterpiece was eventually returned in triumph to the museum.
Since the discovery of the hidden Cornelius Gurlitt art collection, the rightful owners of just five of the works have been identified. Depicted here is Two Riders on a Beach by Max Liebermann. The masterpiece was returned to the heirs of the German-Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann and subsequently sold at auction in June 2015.
So, next time someone tells you art is frivolous, you can answer: "My dear friend, art is anything but frivolous."
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