In the annals of art history, few events compare to the determination of the German Nazi party to suppress the work of leading modernist painters and to force the nation’s art institutions to conform to the Nazi definitions of “authentic” German art. Starting when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 until the end of the Second World War, Germany’s culture was reshaped to comply with the ideology of the ruling political party. That effort provides a cautionary tale for our times, as museums nationwide are having their funds cut, and their collections are under attack for representing “woke” themes, deemed politically unacceptable.

Joseph Goebbels: Czar of Nazi Culture

Soon after Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was created. Headed by Joseph Goebbels, the RMVP controlled the country’s content of art, film, music, theater, broadcasting, and the press.

Yet, well before Hitler’s accession to power, Germany’s cultural heritage was in dispute. As early as the late 1800s, some academics and art historians opposed modern art, charging that those movements did not represent authentic German art and culture. The Nazis’ creed regarding art, says Damon Willick, who teaches art history in the LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts, “was based on an 1870s, very conservative approach to modernism.” Known as the Völkisch movement, it emphasized purity of the German race and art that reflected the true German spirit.

Among those conservative voices was Henry Thode, an influential art historian who had taught in Heidelberg and was named director of the Städelschen Kunstinstitut in Frankfort in 1889. Willick says that Thode believed that art taught at the university level should be pure and without foreign intrusion. “Henry Thode was part of a larger anti-modern art contingent that saw abstraction and the distortions of modernism as antithetical to the supposed purity of ‘true’ German art,” Willick explains.

Given that history, Goebbels’ selection by the Nazis as head of the RMVP was noteworthy, because in the early years of the Third Reich from 1933–36, he collected modernist, expressionist and avant-garde artworks.

Jonathan Petropoulos, author of several books on art in the Nazi era, including “Art as Politics in the Third Reich,” points out that in a 1933 speech to the Reich Chamber of Culture, Goebbels stressed that art should not be determined by party politics. Early in his tenure, “Goebbels tried to bring everyone into the Reich Ministry with the promise that he was just promoting German art, and [as if to say] we could all play together nicely,” explains Margarete Feinstein, who teaches Jewish studies in the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. “He appointed people who were not Nazis to be presidents and vice presidents of various chambers in the ministry.”

Nonetheless, despite Goebbels’ personal taste in art, the political perspectives of the Nazi art culture were changing, with the Völkisch movement being embraced by the party.

Beginning in 1933, propagandistic art exhibitions were mounted throughout Germany. These “Schandausstellung” (modern art shame exhibitions) included the titles, “Art in the Service of Decay,” “Art Which Has Not Come from Our Soul,” “Horror Chambers of Art” and “Reflections of Degeneration in Art.” Artists themselves also faced pressure. “After 1933,” Willick says, “all artists were forced to join the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts. They either joined or set themselves up to be censored.”

In September 1935, Hitler proclaimed, “It is not the mission of art to wallow in filth for filth’s sake, to paint the human being only in a state of putrefaction, to draw cretins as symbols of motherhood, or to present deformed idiots as representatives of manly strength.”

“Many Germans associated modern art with Bolshevism and Judaism before the Nazis came to power,” Willick adds. “The Nazis exploited preexisting prejudices and stereotypes that were already prevalent in German society.”

“By the mid-1930s,” Feinstein explains, “Goebbels realized that he needed to adopt Hitler’s taste in art if he wanted Hitler to back him in a power struggle with Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg who wanted to be put in charge of cultural affairs.” By aligning his views of the arts with those of the Führer, Goebbels received effusive praise from him.

In 1936, when Germany was hosting the Olympic Games, art exhibitions were confined to traditional aesthetic styles. Later that year, Hitler banned art criticism to prevent the dissemination of new and contrary ideas. He deemed that the press had been largely responsible for the proliferation of modern art and that Jews had been controlling the media, along with much of the art market. Works by Jewish artists, including Marc Chagall, Otto Fruendlich, and Ludwig Meidner, were purged from German museums.

On July 19, 1937, the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition opened in Munich. With more than 600 artworks by Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, Georg Grosz, Wassily, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Kirchner, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso and others, the show was designed to besmirch modern and avant-garde art, including abstraction, cubism and Dadaism.

Sculptures and paintings were crowded together. Paintings were hung from the ceiling from long cords, and juxtaposed disharmoniously. Many works were unframed and incorrectly labeled. Jewish artists, including Marc Chagall, were attacked in writings on the walls. In addition to graffiti on the walls, painted slogans included “Revelation of the Jewish Racial Soul” and “Deliberate Sabotage of the Armed Forces.”

“It was heartbreaking for the work to be framed in such a way,” Willick says. “Modern art got cast as a political ploy.”

“The Nazis deployed ‘degenerate’ extensively, as we see with ‘degenerate art’ and ‘degenerate music,” says Elizabeth Drummond, who teaches European history in the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, “but its power comes from the fact that it is not merely a ‘Nazi word.’ It draws on prior late 19th and early 20th century, ideas about degeneration – ideas about racial degeneration connected to concerns about miscegenation in the colonies and eugenics, but also ideas about how modern society — including changing gender roles, alcohol use, the lack of physical exercise because of changes in the kinds of jobs people were doing, etc. — were contributing to the ‘degeneration’ of German society and culture.”

More than two million people viewed Entartete Kunst, in some cases because they admired the work on display. The nearby Great German Art Exhibition, which opened a day later and contrasted with Entartete Kunst, presented Völkisch-inspired art, exalting Nazi ideology, heroic Aryan soldiers, idealized families, and landscapes. Yet the widely promoted show attracted fewer than 500,000 visitors.

Following the opening of Entartete Kunst, some artists fled Germany. Max Beckmann went to Amsterdam. Max Ernst and Wassily Kandinsky went to France. Chagall went to France and then to the United States. Paul Klee spent his years in exile in Switzerland. Ernst Kirchner, who was singled out by the Nazis, committed suicide in 1938.

Other artists stayed in Germany. “Many simply did not have much of a choice about whether to emigrate, given the difficulties and costs involved in doing so,” says Drummond. “Some of those people simply sought to try to navigate the regime so that they could survive, while others did take advantage of opportunities to work within the regime. And some (e.g., Emil Nolde) were ideologically aligned with the Nazis.”

Entartete Kunst closed in Munich in November 1937, but then was shown as a traveling exhibition in other German and Austrian cities. The shows provoked, amused, horrified, and even educated viewers about modern art.

In 1937, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Special Staff of Reichsleiter Rosenberg) began confiscating more than 20,000 works of modern art from 100 museums, dealers, and private collections. Several museum directors were fired. Artists including Willi Baumeister, Max Beckmann and Otto Dix were dismissed from their teaching positions.

Acceptable art, on the other hand, included paintings by Flemish and Dutch masters, medieval and Renaissance German work, Italian Renaissance work, 18th century French and 19th century German realistic paintings.

In 1938, the Nazis passed a law legalizing the sale of confiscated art. On June 30, 1939, a large auction was held in Lucerne, Switzerland. “Paintings and Sculptures by Modern Masters from German Museums” offered 125 major works for sale. Nazi Party members, with Goebbels at the helm, profited greatly from the sale of the works by artists including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. They used the proceeds to enrich the regime and financially compensated some of the museums that they had looted.

During those windfall years, the Nazis also dealt with an increasing number of art dealers in Germany, Paris, London, and Zurich, with many transactions ignoring the provenance or record of ownership of the magnificent art pieces.

Hitler’s passion to eradicate Jewish history and culture was so intense that in 1940, he empowered Alfred Rosenberg to direct the looting of Jewish synagogues, libraries, and archives. With the Nazi declaration that all Jewish art collections were ownerless and that Jews throughout Europe were stateless with no property rights, the Gestapo raided homes, apartments, and shops.

Baron Louis de Rothschild of Vienna, for example, was arrested and imprisoned for nine months because he was Jewish. He was finally released upon agreeing to ransom his 1,000-plus old masters collection of paintings, including several by Rembrandt, to the Nazis.

Approximately one-third of the stolen artworks disappeared, some presumably into private hands, as “the Nazi leaders kept some of the confiscated art for themselves,” Drummond says. And they burned about 4,000 paintings, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró.

Lavish Personal Art Collections

It seems counterintuitive for Nazi leaders, who were masterminding the abuse and collective murder of their fellow citizens, to also be cultured, informed art collectors who displayed work by old masters and finely wrought German paintings. Yet their collections and displays of these fine art pieces mirrored Hitler’s lifelong love of art, and was a means to achieve greater social status in the Party and to adopt the veneer of Germany’s upper-class culture.

Hitler’s Völkisch-inspired artworks included an estimated 6,000-plus old masters paintings and contemporary Nazi art. Other Nazi officers were following Hitler’s example of amassing lavish personal art collections.

Goebbels availed himself of funds and contacts, gathering an impressive art collection for his palatial home. Nazi officer Hermann Göring reportedly had the second largest art collection in Germany, with an estimated 1,375 paintings, 250 sculptures, and 168 tapestries, including paintings by François Boucher, Rembrandt, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Heinrich Himmler’s collection of artifacts, encompassing prehistoric pieces owned or co-opted from museums, included antique handcrafted armor, ceremonial spears, an Etruscan bronze helmet, and prehistoric bowls. To affect being cultured, Martin Bormann acquired many fine art pieces, while possessing little understanding of their significance. Other Nazi officers including Albert Speer and Joachim von Ribbentrop fit seamlessly into Hitler’s example as patrons of the arts.

Recovering Stolen Art

Even before the end of World War II, efforts were underway to recapture art that had been seized by the Nazis. In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took steps to establish the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives under U.S. Army auspices. The group was known as “The Monuments Men,” although women also played a crucial role in the work. In 1945, the MFAA discovered Greek and Roman works, woodcuts, and a Rubens painting. Additional works of art were found in a castle and in salt mines in the Austrian Alps.

In the years since the end of the Second World War, the work of recovering looted artworks has continued. Many pieces have been returned to the descendants of their rightful owners, often after lengthy lawsuits. Nonetheless, it is estimated that some 100,000 works of art remain unrecovered.

Willick believes that the lesson history offers from the Nazis’ abuse, plundering, and suppression of their own nation’s artistic and cultural heritage “should be that freedom requires an ability to hear ideas and see images that some may find disagreeable and/or offensive.”

Drummond is skeptical that history provides prescriptive answers.

“What we can learn from the Nazis cultural policy is that the Nazis made extensive use of the arts in a variety of different settings to advance ideological messages,” she explains. “And they did that by supporting the kind of art that they wanted to see made.”

Nonetheless, she says, it’s telling that the attendees of the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibit dwarfed the number of those who viewed the Nazi-approved Great German Art Exhibition that took place simultaneously.

“Whether they thought the art was degenerate or not, or whether they thought the artists were degenerate or not, they found the degenerate art more interesting than the art that Hitler was a fan of. The Nazis not only couldn’t suppress the art in the long-term, they couldn’t suppress it in the short term,” Drummond says.

“You can’t control reception.”

Liz Goldner, an award-winning art and cultural journalist, has written for publications including PBS SoCal, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Women in the Arts, and AICA-USA magazine. She currently is writing a book about the founding of the Hilbert Museum of California Art, in Orange, California.