Art Criticism - The State University of New York

todian of the Entire Intellectual and Spiritual Training and Education of the
Party and All Coordinate Associations."g Hitler's support of Rosenberg
stemmed from the importance he placed on art to create a new mythology. This
new mythology was partially a means by which a totalitarian government could
control the spirit of a people. But it was also sincerely believed that the decaying
elements in culture were causing a cultural decline, and these elements had
to be exorcised.
Soon after Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he passed a law that
legalized the removal of all government employees who did not obey the National
Socialist ideas. 9 This meant that many museum and gallery employees
were fired and replaced by those aligned with the party. The new organization
Reichskulturkammer would regulate all non-government culture, with all artists
being required to join and no Jews or Communists being allowed to join. Already,
the famous persona in the Bauhaus had left and Wilhelm Frick, as Minister
of the Interior and Education, had turned the institution into a German
craft organization under Schultze-Naumburg's control. In addition, films by
Eisenstein, Brecht, and Pabst were banned.1O Frick had also begun to clear
works by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc and others
from the Schloss Museum in Berlin under the reasoning that they were Judeo­
Bolshevik. Due to the conflict between the avant-garde and German nationalistic
realism, the work of the avant-garde, with its complexity and inability to be
readily understood, came to be seen as intellectual, elitist, and foreign by a
nation demoralized by the effects of World War I. This was compounded by
many artists' involvement in socialism during the Weimar era being communicated
in their art so that more abstract works came to be identified with socialism
and internationalism as opposed to nationalism.
In the 1920s, following the influence of Nordau and others, the German
Art Association was founded to combat "corruption in art" and "promote
pure German art," which did not include the progressive elements of the avantgarde.
1I Similarly, in 1927, the Combat League for German Culture was founded
to fight for creativity that was thought to have been tainted by foreign influence
and was no longer able to attend to the demands of daily life. The seeds
for the Munich exhibits were being set. The ideology of what would be acceptable
had been arrived at through the writings of Nordau, Guenther, Clauss,
Schultze-Naumburg, and Rosenberg. As Hitler became dictator in late 1933, it
would be his taste combined with the developed ideology that would decide
what was to be permitted. The false art was said to have been shaken off; from
now on, there was to be no unfinished works, no pacifist works, no works
depicting inferior races. the non-heroic, the Communist, or the Jew. 12 Art was
to be used to give German culture a sense of strength, and, in particular, to help
rebuild the notion of the German warrior. But to be clear, the attack on modem"
ism was not just a device to gain the support of the German people who had
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