Hans Sarkowicz. Hitlers Künstler: Die Kultur im Dienst des Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 2004. 453 S. EUR 24.80 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-458-17203-1.
Reviewed by Peter Paret (School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study)
Published on H-German (February, 2006)
Art in Support of Dictatorship
The eleven essays in this volume discuss the many writers, artists, and other "cultural professionals" in Germany who, between 1933 and 1945, accepted National Socialism or accommodated themselves sufficiently to its practices to prosper or at least remain active in their professions. The essays are based on a series of talks on German radio, and address a general audience. The authors are, however, well known in their respective fields; they combine serious analysis with biographical narratives and accounts of the government's cultural institutions and policies, and the essays also have much to offer to the better-informed reader. In his introduction, the editor, Hans Sarkowicz, declares that the book's purpose is not to expose Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, but to help the reader recognize and understand the nature and extent of cultural collaboration during these years. The often complex attitudes and actions of men and women, who "for whatever reason placed their art in the service of a dictatorship that despised the individual and individual values" (p. 12) are an interesting and far from marginal part of German cultural and political history.
The volume's first three essays establish the ideological and institutional context in which people lived and made their choices. Wolfgang Benz discusses the double function of propaganda in the Third Reich--to unify society and to control it. Possibly with some exaggeration, Benz sums up the impact of propaganda on people in the arts: "Only the fewest [became] fanatical Nazis, but all were opportunists," who, after 1945, tended to pass themselves off as victims (pp. 35, 37). Jan-Pieter Barbian stresses the intense effort of the National Socialist state not only to control, but also to promote cultural activity. It invested more public funds in the cultural sphere than any previous German government, he writes (p. 68), a policy that further stimulated the opportunism and careerism of many in the arts. Volker Dahm outlines the functions of two new institutions, both under Goebbels's control--the Ministry of Propaganda and the Reich Chambers of Culture. The chambers encapsulated and organized people active in the fine and applied arts according to field, and determined who had the right to work in his or her chosen profession, whether in the medium itself or in such supporting capacities as framers or draftsmen.
The remaining eight essays discuss particular disciplines. In his treatment of architecture, Dieter Bartetzko develops two themes of fundamental importance not only to architects but to "Hitler's artists" in general: first, the predisposition of officially approved styles to the cult of conflict and death, here in the form of building designs and decorations that celebrate destruction and self-sacrifice. The second theme, variations of which appear throughout the book, relates to the facility with which many people's careers traversed opposing ideological and stylistic phases. Bartetzko mentions a representative example, an architect who studied with Gropius in the 1920s, who after 1933 was appointed architect of the Hitler Youth, in which function he built "colossal ... structures ... that are among the perfidiously best work that National Socialist architecture created." After 1945, the same architect built "some of the most beautiful high-rises of postwar modernism" (p. 134). Felix Moeller's essay examines film stars as propagandists. Goebbels, who strongly believed in the power of film to affect public opinion, nevertheless had little faith in the ideological purity of the people who worked in the National Socialist film industry. In 1943, writing about actors and artists in general, he noted in his diary: "I have always known that in the arts in Germany we should not count on fanatical supporters. Artists are simply apolitical. They neither support nor oppose the state. They simply want the state to leave them alone, while it pays them their salaries and offers them major projects" (p. 134). As usual, Goebbels exaggerated. He never had difficulty finding directors and actors for even his most virulent antisemitic films, which, whatever their impact on the public, were an integral part of the policies that ended in the Final Solution. At times he was remarkably tolerant of their egocentric lack of discipline, but he could always subject them to the full power of the state. It was not a commonplace event, but neither was it unheard of when an actor, who between takes made jokes about Hitler, was arrested on Goebbels's orders, tried for sedition, and executed.
Hans Sarkowicz on literature and Henning Rischbieter, writing on theater, both stress the theme of continuity, Sarkowicz concluding that "the literature of the National Socialist period cannot be studied and evaluated in isolation. As a rule, 'Hitler's artists' did not begin to write in 1933, nor did they stop writing in 1945" (p. 209). Rischbieter analyzes the successful efforts to bring theater in Berlin under National Socialist control in 1933, and the party's failure, in the face of public indifference, to establish a new type of outdoor theater that combined actors, massed choirs, and spectators in mystic celebrations of the National Socialist Weltanschauung and the Germanic past that inspired it. Joachim Petsch traces the unsuccessful efforts to create a National Socialist art that was vigorous and creative while expressing the racial and political values of the regime. In the collection's most theoretical essay, Heiner Boehncke discusses interior decoration and industrial and domestic design. He dismisses as fiction the claim that something like an internally consistent National Socialist design style existed. On the contrary, it was made up of "the strangest hybrids, mixtures of styles, combinations of old and new, and even the persistence of certain traditions of classic modernism, even of the Bauhaus" (p. 279). In that sense, it might be added, National Socialist design was characteristic of the Third Reich in general: beneath a facade of constantly asserted uniformity, the regime was made up of different, often competing elements. The most genuinely National Socialist design, Petsch concludes, was the design of public events, "because here the 'corporate identity' of the regime, its ideology, its use of power, its goals and strategies appeared most clearly and with greatest effect" (p. 294).
The last two essays--by Hanns-Werner Heister on classical music, and Volker Kühn on cabaret and popular entertainment--are on fields that in some respects are related, but were subjected to very different treatment. The traditionally high standard of concert and opera performances in Germany made the medium a particularly important instrument of cultural propaganda, both at home and internationally. Alone the fact that performances of the highest quality continued sent the message that the Third Reich remained a respectable and responsible regime. At least in the early years, major figures could expect a degree of tolerance that elsewhere was disappearing: Richard Strauss was able to defend his Jewish daughter-in-law, and for a time could continue to work with his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig. This kind of safety net was absent in popular entertainment. The references to current events in monologues and songs made it by definition an endangered medium, although its value to the state was recognized. As Goebbels explained in a speech to the Hitler Youth in 1941: "At a time when the nation bears such heavy burdens and concerns, entertainment is especially valuable to the state" (p. 347).
As a group, the eleven essays draw an informative and remarkably consistent picture of state-approved and supported arts under National Socialism. An introductory essay, summarizing what Hitler and his senior followers expected of a National Socialist art, might have been useful; but their views come through clearly enough in the discussions of the various media. Among the essays' general conclusions, two stand out for me: first, although control of the arts, as of every area of national life, was taken seriously by the Third Reich, the authorities did not always insist on the demonstrative support of the individual artist. If one was neither Jewish, nor politically compromised, and passively accepted the new conditions, one might well be left alone. A minor detail in the field of classical music characterizes the official attitude: the custom of some conductors to begin a performance by giving the Hitler salute was accepted, but the salute was never officially ordered. Second, it was more common than might be supposed that a writer or artist began as a convinced modernist in the 1920s, after January 1933 expressed National Socialist values with seemingly equal conviction, and from 1945 on once more adjusted to one or the other of the new opposing ideologies in Germany--democratic values in the West, Stalinism in the East. Lack of principles, economic need, and ambition are among the reasons for this intellectual and moral flexibility, and people who did not themselves experience the pressures of living in the Third Reich should not be hasty in their judgment. Nevertheless, the careers of numerous professionals in the fine arts and in other disciplines laying claim to cultural authority, who successively adopted, and worked with the values of one opposing ideology and political system after another, may offer the reader an interesting and very graphic demonstration of continuity in Germany's fragmented history in the twentieth century.
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Citation:
Peter Paret. Review of Sarkowicz, Hans, Hitlers Künstler: Die Kultur im Dienst des Nationalsozialismus.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11445
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