How the Nazis Waged War on Modern Art: Inside the “Degenerate Art” Exhibition of 1937

Before his fate­ful entry into pol­i­tics, Adolf Hitler want­ed to be an artist. Even to the most neu­tral imag­in­able observ­er, the known exam­ples of the esti­mat­ed 2,000 to 3,000 paint­ings and oth­er works of art he pro­duced in his ear­ly adult­hood would hard­ly evi­dence aston­ish­ing genius. They do show a cer­tain tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence, espe­cial­ly where build­ings are con­cerned. (Twice reject­ed from the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vien­na, the young Hitler was advised to apply instead to the School of Archi­tec­ture, a sub­ject for which he also pro­fessed a pas­sion.) But their lack of imag­i­na­tion and inter­est in human­i­ty were too plain to ignore.

Could Hitler’s fail­ure to gain entry to the art world explain any­thing about the cul­tur­al pol­i­cy of the Nazi Par­ty he went on to lead? Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured that pol­i­cy’s sin­gle defin­ing event: Die Ausstel­lung “Entartete Kun­st,” or the Degen­er­ate Art exhi­bi­tion, staged in 1937 at the Insti­tute of Archae­ol­o­gy in Munich’s Hof­garten.

Pre­sent­ing 650 con­fis­cat­ed works of art pur­port­ed to “insult Ger­man feel­ing, or destroy or con­fuse nat­ur­al form or sim­ply reveal an absence of ade­quate man­u­al and artis­tic skill,” it soon became a great hit, attract­ing one mil­lion atten­dees in its first six weeks.

That may not come as much of a sur­prise when you con­sid­er the artists whose work was on dis­play: Paul Klee, Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, Hen­ri Matisse, Pablo Picas­so, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Piet Mon­dri­an, Marc Cha­gall, and even Grant Wood, to name just a few. It seems that the Nazis could come up with noth­ing quite so fas­ci­nat­ing for the planned first Große Deutsche Kun­stausstel­lung, or “Great Ger­man Art Exhi­bi­tion,” whose col­lapse inspired Hitler’s chief pro­pa­gan­dist Joseph Goebbels to sug­gest putting on a show not of the work that the Nazis approved, but of the work they didn’t.

An admir­er of cer­tain Expres­sion­ists, Goebbels dis­played more cul­tur­al open-mind­ed­ness than the Führer, who prac­ti­cal­ly declared a war on mod­ern art itself. You can learn more about it from David Gru­bin’s doc­u­men­tary Degen­er­ate Art, which is avail­able to watch online. The Nazis con­fis­cat­ed more than 5,000 works of art, and even main­tained files on no few­er than 16,000 that they’d labeled “degen­er­ate,” a his­toric inven­to­ry that has been made avail­able to the pub­lic. Sur­pris­ing­ly, their black­list did not include the oeu­vre of Gus­tav Klimt, which they attempt­ed to use for their own ends. It could be that, deep down, Hitler, the failed artist, knew good art when he saw it — and that it just made him all the more resent­ful.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

How the Avant-Garde Art of Gus­tav Klimt Got Per­verse­ly Appro­pri­at­ed by the Nazis

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II

When Ger­man Per­for­mance Artist Ulay Stole Hitler’s Favorite Paint­ing & Hung it in the Liv­ing Room of a Turk­ish Immi­grant Fam­i­ly (1976)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.