Degenerate Art

Degenerate Art
Unknown authorUnknown author · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · source
Title	Degenerate Art exhibition
Caption	Poster for the 1937 exhibition in Munich
Year	1937
Type	Exhibition, propaganda
Location	Munich, Germany

Degenerate Art was a pejorative label used by the Nazi Party to condemn modernist and avant-garde art forms they considered harmful to their ideology. The term anchored a state-sponsored campaign that culminated in a 1937 exhibition in Munich designed to mobilize public opinion against artists associated with movements deemed "un-German." The campaign affected museums, collectors, and individual artists across Europe and prompted international reactions in cities such as Paris, London, and New York City.

Definition and Origins

The label originated within institutions of the Nazi Party and affiliated cultural offices such as the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda led by Joseph Goebbels and the Reichskulturkammer under Hans Hinkel and Alfred Rosenberg. Intellectual antecedents drew on debates involving figures like Adolf von Hildebrand, Julius Langbehn, and critics in publications tied to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The concept intersected with policies from the Enabling Act of 1933 and legal measures enforced by officials including Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, and curators such as Ludwig Heinrich Bachhofer to purge collections in state institutions like the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and regional museums in Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne.

Nazi Exhibition and Propaganda

The 1937 exhibition in Munich was organized by city officials, curators, and party operatives including Adolf Ziegler and Göring-appointed committees; it ran concurrently with the "Great German Art Exhibition" at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. The show displayed works seized from institutions like the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and private collectors such as Alfred Hess and Paul Cassirer to contrast them with state-sanctioned art. International responses came from cultural centers including Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, and Stockholm while critics in journals associated with Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, and Munich debated censorship. Photographs and catalogues circulated to nodes such as Berlin, Hamburg, Basel, Zurich, and Florence to amplify propaganda aims.

Artists and Works Targeted

The campaign targeted artists across movements: painters like Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Georges Braque, Egon Schiele; sculptors such as Alberto Giacometti, Auguste Rodin, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Constantin Brâncuși; and printmakers like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz. Also affected were architects and designers associated with Bauhaus figures including Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy and industrial designers tied to Deutsche Werkstätten. Composers and performers loosely connected through modernist circles—such as Arnold Schoenberg and Kurt Weill—faced parallel marginalization. Collectors and critics implicated included Alfred Flechtheim, Paul Westheim, Galerie Fischer in Frankfurt, and institutions like the Neue Galerie.

Legal and Cultural Consequences

Measures included seizures authorized by municipal and state authorities involving officials like Göring and bureaucrats from the Reichskulturkammer, dismissals from posts at institutions such as the Berlin State Museums, and prohibitions against teaching at schools linked to Bauhaus locations in Dessau and Weimar. Auction houses and dealers in Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf, and Vienna mediated forced sales that dispersed works into collections of museums in Princeton, New York City, Chicago, and private hands in Buenos Aires. Some artists emigrated to destinations including Amsterdam, London, Paris, Zurich, New York City, Los Angeles, and Buenos Aires while others faced incarceration or professional ostracism by institutions like the Deutsche Reichsbahn and municipal cultural offices.

Reception and Legacy

Contemporary reception varied: commentators in London and Paris condemned the exhibition while sympathetic voices in Rome and among certain circles in Vienna endorsed the regime’s aesthetic. Postwar recovery involved restitution debates in tribunals influenced by legal frameworks from the Allied occupation and institutions such as the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program. Museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam later recontextualized affected artists. Scholarly reassessment in universities such as Harvard University, University of Oxford, University of Vienna, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Yale University reframed discourses on modernism and censorship.

Controversies and Reassessment

Debates persist around provenance issues involving collectors like Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and dealers such as Nazi-era art market intermediaries, with restitution cases adjudicated in courts in Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Berlin, New York City, and London. Exhibitions and publications by institutions including the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Bundesarchiv, the Wolfsonian, the Jewish Museum New York, and the Ludwig Museum have prompted renewed inquiry into ethics, ownership, and museum acquisition policies. Contemporary controversies involve loans and retrospectives at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Neue Galerie New York, and debates within academic conferences hosted by Columbia University, Princeton University, and the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Category:Exhibitions in Nazi Germany