SPEAKER 1: We're standing in Munich
looking at the House of Art, which was once
called the House of German Art.
SPEAKER 2: It was built for Adolf Hitler,
and was a place to promote a very specific idea
of German art.
SPEAKER 1: This is thought to be the very first building
that Hitler had commissioned for the Nazi state,
and this was to be the first of many buildings
they were to be constructed around the nation that
were the embodiment of National Socialist ideology.
SPEAKER 2: As we look at this building,
it's hard not to notice that the Nazis were drawing
on the classical tradition of ancient Greek and Roman
architecture.
SPEAKER 1: Yes.
But by way of 19th century classical revival traditions,
especially in Germany, we might think of the work of Schinkel,
up in Prussia, in Berlin, especially,
and we might think of the work of Klenze, here in Munich.
These were artists that took the ancient tradition
and appropriated them for their age.
This building is a little bit different.
It is even more spare.
It is even more stripped down.
But we can see this long door colonnade on either side,
giving a sense of order and power.
SPEAKER 2: And I think timelessness is another words
that we should use about this architecture.
There was an aspiration toward the eternal,
or timelessness-- that ancient Greek architecture stood
for those very values that the Nazis wanted to embody,
as opposed to what they considered
degenerate art, or sickly, unhealthy art, that
was actually exhibited just a few blocks away.
SPEAKER 1: There were two major exhibitions of art
that were opened in 1937 that were meant
to be seen in opposition to each other,
and they were only about a block and a half from each other.
The Great Exhibition of German Art
opened here, at the House of German Art.
But then in a temporary exhibition space
was the first iteration of the Entartete Kunft Exhibition,
the Degenerate Art Exhibition.
SPEAKER 2: We use that word "degenerate,"
and what it really meant for the Nazis was an art that
was sickly and unhealthy-- the art that today
we hold as most dear.
If you go to modern art museums, you'll be looking at the art
the Nazis considered "degenerate"--
artist like Schmidt Rottluff or Paul Klee
or Max Ernst, Kirchner.
All of the great early modernists.
And those artists were drawing on so-called primitive art.
They deformed the human body.
They used extreme colors.
They distorted space.
These were all things that Hitler rejected.
He was looking for an art that was
ideal and beautiful and perfect, and that
represented a kind of timelessness.
SPEAKER 1: So this architecture and the art
that it was meant to house were tied up
in National Socialist ideology.
Germany had gone through a very rapid industrialization.
And the National Socialists, the Nazis,
looked back to a kind of invented agrarian past
that they romanticized.
And so the contemporary ills that
came with industrialization, that came with urbanization,
were vilified.
And art that was representative of those changes,
a kind of international character, a kind of risk
taking-- all of the aspects that we associate with modern art--
is something that was vilified.
And this building was built specifically
as a kind of antidote.
SPEAKER 2: And you could say that another aspect
of modern art is that it's constantly changing.
There's Cubism and Futurism and Dadaism
and all of these movements, always
trying to stay contemporary as opposed
to what Hitler was wanting for the Third Reich, which
was timeless.
SPEAKER 1: In fact, Hitler spoke to this directly.
SPEAKER 2: In the speech that Hitler gave on the opening
of the first exhibition, he said,
"Until the moment when national socialism took power,
there existed in Germany a so-called 'modern art.' That
is, to be sure, almost every year, another one.
National Socialist Germany, however,
wants, again, a German art."
So when Hitler says, "a German art," make no mistake.
What he means by that is eradicating another kind of art
and denying those artists the ability
to make art, sending some of them
off to concentration camps.
The artist whose work appears on the cover the Entartete Kunst
exhibition was sent to a concentration camp
and murdered.
This was serious, frightening propaganda.
SPEAKER 1: So the kind of art that was being exhibited here
was really an art of exclusion, and it was really
a kind of propaganda.
And it reminds us of just how powerful the visual arts can
be as a tool of the state.
And the person who embodies this most
is a man named Adolf Ziegler, who was a painter,
and the man responsible for putting together
the first exhibition of great German art
here in the House of German Art, and also organizing
the Entartete Kunst exhibition.
And Ziegler was a favorite of Adolf Hitler.
In fact, his painting, The Four Elements,
was hung in the Reich's chancellery,
in Hitler's own office in Berlin.
Characteristic of Ziegler's work and characteristic
of much of the painting and sculpture that
was exhibited in this first exhibition in the House
of German Art is a classicism-- we see an emphasis
on eternal properties, like the four elements,
like the four seasons.
And we see an emphasis on a particularity
and a kind of hyper-clarity that we
might associate with 15th century northern art.
SPEAKER 2: And the art that was exhibited in the degenerate art
exhibition was hung with art by people
who were mentally and physically handicapped.
So that was art that was associated with all
that the Nazis were eradicating-- literally
murdering.
SPEAKER 1: And it was wildly popular.
Estimates put the attendance to the Entartete Kunst exhibition
between two and three million people.
And you know what?
Even now, in the beginning of the 21st century,
there is still real controversy about modernism.
People still get upset.
And I think it's important to understand
our uncomfortableness, but also the kind
of historical dimensions by which intolerance of art
can become dangerous.
SPEAKER 2: Very dangerous.
Maybe this is a good time to read a little bit more
from Hitler's speech at the inauguration
of that first exhibition.
"Art can, in no way, be a fashion.
As little as the character in the blood of our people
will change, so much will art have
to lose its moral character and replace it with worthy images,
expressing the life course of our people.
Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism
have nothing to do with our German people.
I will therefore confess now, in this very hour,
that I have come to the final, inalterable decision,
to clean house-- just as I have done
in the domain of political confusion--
and, from now on, rid the German art
life of it's phase-mongering."
Those are chilling words.
SPEAKER 1: And, of course, Hitler
did with people what he also did with the art.
SPEAKER 2: It's interesting to note
that the motto of the Austrian avant-garde-- and Hitler
was, after all, Austrian.
SPEAKER 1: And he was a would-be artist.
SPEAKER 2: The motto was, "to each age its art, and to art
it's freedom"-- the very opposite of the ideals
that Hitler was trying to promote.