Art Criticism - The State University of New York

shown distrust in the new styles. This was certainly a consideration, but there
was also the real belief that art reflected, and even determined, the moral life
and value of the nation and its people.13 If the "corruption" was allowed to
exist, it was believed it would infect the essence of what it meant to be German.
The Nazis had perceived that the modern world was pathological; it was not
healthy for the individual. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had already written it was the
business of the state to prevent people from being driven to madness by
removing from culture "what is bad or unsuitable and continue building on the
sound spot that has been laid bare."14
The period between 1933-1937 would be seen by Hitler as a four year
grace period for artists, dealers, and those working in the arts to reform themselves
to meet National Socialist standards of decency'. However, the methods
that the Nazis planned to use to reform had already been experimented with
during the last years of ideological consolidation. In 1930, the director of the
Zwichau Museum was fined for "pursuing an artistic policy affronting the
healthy folk feeling of Germany."15 The Nationalgalerie was criticized for buying
a van Gogh instead of German works. These protests were not connected
with the Nazi movement, but after 1933 the Reichskulturkammer would use the
resentment shown by these protests to their advantage. A director of another
museum was fired for purchasing modern works, such as a Chagall. The works
were paraded around the town on a truck with the picture of the director and
how much he had paid for the work written on the side of the truck. Many of the
avant-garde chose to leave, and those who stayed were often not allowed to
work and were subject to periodical surprise inspections by the Gestapo. They
were not included in the production of a manifesto that Joseph Goebbels,
Hitler's second in command, oversaw in 1933. The manifesto expressed what
artists expected from their new government, but, as it was written mostly by
non-avant-garde artists who were angry that the art world had passed them by,
it was an expression of party policy, stating that: one, all cosmopolitan and
Bolshevik art should be removed, but first shown to the public who should be
informed about its acquisition, and then the art should be burned. Two, all
museum directors who wasted public money on "un-Gerinan" art should be
fired. And three, there should be no Marxist or Bolshevik connections in the
arts.16 It became a time when opportunist artists who would kowtow to party
policy could gain recognition and become successful while those who would
not were in serious danger.
In the period between 1933 and 1937, the Nazi organizations in the
arts began to consolidate, become organized, and gather energy. It was a fouryear
period of tightening the clamps that would end with Hitler's opening of
the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, his temple of art. It was also to be
the year of the Degenerate Art Exhibition, though this exhibition was to be the
last and final exhibition of a type that had been maturing si~ce 1933 with the
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Art Criticism