Art in the Third Reich Bibliography
1. Backes, Klaus. Hitler und die Bildenden Künste: Kulturverständnis und Kunstpolitik im dritten Reich (Hitler and the fine arts: art appreciation and politics in the Third Reich). Cologne: DuMont, 1988. 234 pp.
2. Baker, Kenneth. "A nightmare of an exhibition that really
happened". Smithsonian 22, no.4(July 1991): 86-95.
Note: The "Degenerate Art" exhibit held in Munich
in 1937 was the end of modern art in Nazi Germany and the beginning of Nazi
Art. The author examines some of the art shown at that exhibit.
3. Barr, Alfred. "Art in the Third Reich - Preview 1933".
Magazine of Art 38, no.6(October 1945): 212-222.
Note: Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art from its
inception in 1928 until 1943, displayed "almost prophetic insight"
on his visit to Stuttgart at the very beginning of Nazi rule in 1933. In Stuttgart,
Barr found that The "Battle Band for German Culture", an early official
Nazi group with affiliates in every important German city, dominated almost
every phase of German cultural life right from the beginning of the Nazi regime.
He also found that modern art, offensive to the Third Reich, was attacked in
Stuttgart, a city which had embraced the modern International Style in art and
architecture - a reasonable attachment since the International Style was German
in origin.
4. Barron, Stephanie. "The Gallery Fischer Auction".
In 'Degenerate art': the fate of the Avante-Garde in Nazi Germany, 135-169.
Los Angeles and New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Abrams,
1991. (LACMA exhibition catalog published in conjunction with 1991 exhibits
at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago).
Note: The Gallery Fischer in Lucerne put on sale over one hundred
works of "degenerate" art, described as "Modern Masters from
German Museums", on June 30, 1939. Barron lists the objects' origin and
notes whether they were from public or private collections. Most of the art
was sold to US private collectors; a small amount went to museums in Liege and
Basel.
5. Barron, Stephanie. Exiles and emigreés: the flight of European artists from Hitler. New York: Harry Abrams, 1997. 423 pp. (LACMA exhibition catalog published in conjunction with exhibits at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, February 23-May 11, 1997; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, June 19-September 7, 1997; and the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, October 9, 1997-January 4, 1998).
6. Barzun, Jacques. "Art in the Third Reich: editorial
and a memorandum". Magazine of Art 38, no.6(October 1945): 211.
Note: Barzun, in Germany when the Third Reich came to power,
discovered that Hitler immediately turned his attention to art as a political
tool. Barzun found that Hitler's condemnation of modern art as decadent was
clearly a popular policy - an adoption of lower middle class cultural standards.
Upon Barzun's return to the U.S. in 1934, he tried unsuccessfully to interest
others in this cultural revolution.
7. Birkmeyer, Karl M. "Observations on the tour of Berlin
masterpieces". College Art Journal 9, no.1(Autumn, 1949): 19-24.
Note: This essay on the U.S. tour of the Berlin Masterpieces
calls for more attention to artistic collections as a means of saving future
art.
Filed in Library at B20.
8. Blatter, Janet and Sybil Milton. Art of the Holocaust. New
York: Rutledge Press, 1981. 272 pp.
Note: This is the first survey of the artistic record left
by the victims of Nazi terror who were also professional artists. This art was
produced in ghettos, labor camps, and in hiding. It serves as a living document
of their world at that time.
Shelved in the Library at N7417.6.B59.
9. Brenner, Hildegard. Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsocialismus
(The art politics of National Socialism). Hamburg: 1963.
Note: An overview of the cultural policies of National Socialism.
10. Brenner, Hildegard. "Art in the political power struggle of 1933 and 1934". In Republic to Reich: the making of the Nazi revolution. New York: Vintage, 1973. xx, 491 pp.
11. Clinefelter, Joan Lucinda. The German Art Society and the
battle for "pure German" art, 1920-1945. Indiana University, 1995.
314 pp. (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1995).
Note: The German Art Society (Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft),
a culturally conservative art group active between 1920 and 1945, sought to
defend pure German art. During the Weimar Republic, the Society fought degenerate
modernism and by 1932 the Society has supporters in the Nazi party and other
rightist organizations. The German Art Society was given a role in organizing
degenerate art exhibits during the Third Reich as well as organizing pure German
art shows. After 1937, the Nazis ignored the Society as old-fashioned and pressed
for a more distinct art form.
12. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Temporary
retention in the U.S. of certain German paintings. Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1948. iii, 89 pp. (80th Cong. 2nd sess., S. Hrg., Mar. 4 and April 16,
1948).
Note: Hearings about German paintings confiscated by the US
after WWII.
13. Decker, Andrew. "Nazi art returns to Germany".
ARTnews 83, no.9(November 1984): 143, 145.
Note: Negotiations call for return to Germany of these paintings,
commissioned by the Nazis during WWII for propaganda purposes and seized by
the US in 1947.
14. 'Degenerate art': the fate of the avante-garde in Nazi Germany. Los Angeles and New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Abrams, 1991. 12 pp. (Brochure published in conjunction with exhibits held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, February 17-May 12, 1991 and the Art Institute of Chicago, June 22-September 8. 1991).
15. Deshmukh, Marion. "Recovering culture: the Berlin National
Gallery and the U.S. occupation 1945-1949". Central European History 27(1994):
411-439.
Note: The author used NARA's OMGUS records to ascertain American
contributions to Western Germany's postwar cultural identity, specifically that
of the Berlin National Gallery.
16. Dornberg, John. "Munich: Mounting embarrassment".
ARTnews 87, no.4(April 1988): 39+.
Note: A collection of Nazi art is kept in West Germany's Stadel
Institute. The author brings up the question of what should be done with the
art.
17. Düwell, Kurt. "Jewish cultural centers in Nazi
Germany: expectations and accomplishments". In The Jewish response to German
culture: from the Enlightenment to the Second World War ,edited by Jehuda Reinharz
and Walter Schatzberg, 294-316. Hanover: Published for Clark University by University
Press of New England, 1985.
Note: The psychological isolation of German Jews following
the Nazi takeover in 1933 led to a new consciousness of the religious and moral
roots of the Jewish experience. The German policy of boycott against the Jews
brought about a new organization, Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, which endeavored
with some success to aid Jewish artists and to maintain the Jewish cultural
heritage up to the Nazi prohibitions of 1938.
18. Eberlein, Kurt Karl. "What is German in German art?".
In Nazi culture: intellectual, culture and social life in the Third Reich, 163-164.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968.
Note: Written in 1933, Eberlein's essay connects the German
love for landscape art to their reverence for their homeland, associating homeland
with the soul of the people.
19. Fiss, Karen A. "Deutschland in Paris": the 1937
German pavilion and Franco-German cultural relations (Albert Speer, Paris Exposition
Internationale, Leni Riefenstahl). New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995. (PhD
dissertation, Yale University, 1995).
Note: This dissertation analyzes the French reception of Nazi
culture and ideology as manifested by the German pavilion at the 1937 Paris
Exposition designed by Speer and showcasing dramatic films including Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will. French fascists admired Nazism for having produced a national
culture for the masses which fused an antimodern primitivism with technological
mediation. These fascist ideas influenced public opinion and aspects of fascist
idealogy were considered acceptable.
Abstract filed in the Library at F2.
20. Gardner, Paul. "The case of Herr Klumpp: a first glimpse
of Lyonel Feininger's stolen paintings". Connoisseur 215, no.886(November
1985): 132-135.
Note: About the reappearance of Lyonel Feininger's work painted
in Berlin before 1932 which disappeared after being left with Herman Klumpp,
another artist.
21. Grosshans, Henry. Hitler and the artists. New York: Holmes
and Meirer, 1983. xiii, 145 pp.
Note: Hitler wanted the painting and sculpture of Nazi Germany
to express Nazi society. In this book, Grosshans traces the relationship between
Hitler's artistic and political views: Hitler's failure to achieve notice as
an artist; linking modern "degenerate" art with national decline;
and his growing anti-Semitism.
22. Hammond, Mason. "War and art treasures in Germany".
College Art Journal 5(March 1946): 205-218.
Note: A Harvard University art scholar, Mason Hammond describes
the great cultural losses in Germany, while noting the elaborate and generally
successful protection measures taken by the Nazis.
23. Hinz, Berthold. Art in the Third Reich. New York: Random
House, 1979. 268 pp.
Note: According to the author, the Third Reich used all available
aesthetic means to project its image: marches, mass meetings, pageants, party
rallies were organized as mass aesthetic. Visual arts, including paintings,
were bestowed high social value. The author believes that there was a direct
association in Hitler's mind between his failure as architect and artist and
his pursuit of political leadership.
24. Jackman, Jarrell C. and Carla M. Borden. The muses flee Hitler: cultural transfer and adaptation, [24 pp.]. Washington: Smithsonian, 1983. (Based on a colloquium in honor of Albert Einstein during the centennial of his birth, Smithsonian Insitution, February 7-9, 1980).
25. Jelavich, Peter. "Metamorphosis of censorship in Modern
Germany". In Culture and politics in nineteenth- and twentieth- century
Germany, 9-19. Washington: German Historical Institute, 1992. (This German Historical
Institute's Occasional Paper no. 8 resulted from a symposium "Culture and
politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany", in Washingon, DC,
held on May 8. 1992.).
Note: Jelavich writes of the forms of censorship under five
German regimes and how they effected the political acceptance of cultural productions.
He notes that even under the Weimar years, the constitution proclaimed freedom
within the limits of the general laws.
26. Jones, Stacy V. "Art for Hitler's sake". Liberty(April 1946): 57-63.
27. Kirstein, Lincoln. "Art in the Third Reich - survey".
Magazine of Art 38, no.6(October 1945): 223-242.
Note: Kirstein writes that Hitler's code, "Art is sublime,
a fanatical obligation", appeared over the entrance to his eight annual
salons featuring Nazi painting and sculpture. He notes that the finest contemporary
German sculpture is memorial, honoring death rather than life. In remarking
on Hitler's influence on architecture, Kirstein mentions that just as the world
was grateful to Mussolini for making the trains run on time, so tourists should
be grateful to Hitler for providing us with the Autobahn, Hitler's strictly
military highways which were also used as intermittent airstrips.
Filed in the Library at M25.
28. Koonz, Claudia. "Culture, politics, and the censor".
In Culture and politics in nineteenth- and twentieth- century Germany, 33-37.
Washington: German Historical Institute, 1992. (This German Historical Institute's
Occasional Paper no. 8 resulted from a symposium "Culture and politics
in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany", in Washingon, DC, held on
May 8. 1992.).
Note: Koonz notes that censorship has co-existed with democratic
institutions. She also relates how informal taboos on images related to the
Holocaust has stifled artists and writers, how censorship can call attention
to offending images,.
29. Kuhn, Charles L. "German paintings in the National
Gallery: a protest". College Art Journal 5, no.2(January 1946).
Note: A renowned German painting scholar who served as Deputy
Chief of the MFA&A Section, Kuhn protested the U.S. decision to send German
works of art to the US to be held in trusteeship until their return "if
and when the German nation had earned the right to their return".
30. Lehmann, Hartmut, ed. Culture and politics in nineteenth-
and twentieth- century Germany. Washington: German Historical Institute, 1992.
45 pp. (This German Historical Institute's Occasional Paper no. 8 was a presentation
at the symposium, "Culture and politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century
Germany", in Washingon, DC, held on May 8. 1992.).
Note: Lehmann notes the struggle for Germans to cherish its
cultural heritage inspite of its political past. The papers given at this Symposium
emphasize the relationships, the tensions, and the discrepancies in the development
of culture and politics in modern Germany.
Shelved in the National Archives Library at DD67.C78 1992.
31. Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut. Art under a dictatorship. New York: Oxford, 1954. xxii, 277 pp.
32. Marwell, David George. Unwonted exile: a biography of Ernst
"Putzi" Hanfstaengl. Binghamton: State University of New York, 1988.
xis, 529 pp. (PhD, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1988).
Note: Hanfstaengl, a German with American family ties and a
past that involved studying at Harvard and dealing with art in New York City,
was involved with Hitler very early. A co-conspirator during the 1923 Beerhall
Putsch and a member of the Nazi Party, Hanfstaengel escaped to England in 1937
where he was a wartime advisor to the Western allies.
33. Milton, Sybil. "The camera as weapon: documentary photography
and the Holocaust". In Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, 45-68. Chappaqua,
NY: Rossel Books, 1984.
Note: This paper examines the chronological, geographic, and
photohistorical context of images produced by Nazi, Jewish, neutral, and Allied
cameramen. The Nazis used photography as a threat: warning citizens that whoever
frequented Jewish stores would be photographed. In turn, the Nazis prohibited
taking photographs near concentration camps.
34. Mosse, George L., ed. Nazi culture: intellectual, culture
and social life in the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968. xli,
386 pp.
Note: The author has skillfully chosen major documents of the
Hitler era to show how Nazi ideals of race, blood, and soil influenced every
aspect of German life.
35. Mosse, George L. The crisis of German ideology: intellectual origins of the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964. vi, 373 pp.
36. Myers, Bernard. "Postwar art in Germany". College
Art Journal 10, no.3(Spring 1951): 251-256.
Note: The author describes the postwar artistic situation in
Germany, as well as the situation of the German museums which were divested
of their modern works during the Third Reich.
Filed in Library at M15.
37. Myers, Bernard. "Postwar art in Germany". College
Art Journal 10, no.3(Spring 1951): 251-256.
Note: The author describes the postwar artistic situation in
Germany, as well as the situation of the German museums which were divested
of their modern works during the Third Reich.
Filed in library at M15.
38. Nicholas, Lynn H. "World War II and the displacement
of art and cultural property". In The spoils of war - World War II and
its aftermath: the loss, reappearance, and recovery of cultural property, 39-48.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. (Paper presented at international symposium,
The Spoils of War, sponsored by Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative
Arts, New York, January, 1995).
Note: An overview of the unprecedented scope of WWII art displacement
accompanied by ideological, legal, and political justifications and watched
over by highly trained art specialists assigned to the armies of most of the
belligerents. Nicholas traces the importance of art to Hitler's idea of a pure
Germanic Empire, purged of "degenerate" art and rich with plundered
artworks in accordance with Nazi laws and theories. Thanks to the American museum
and archival establishments, the Roosevelt administration assigned archivists
and art-specialist officers, "monuments officers' to army groups who secured
and sorted out cultural caches at the end of war for restitution to rightful
owners. Great Britain had a similiar approach, but the USSR considered cultural
treasures as trophies to replace their own wartime losses.
39. Petropoulos, Jonathan. Art as politics in the Third Reich.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. xviii, 439 pp.
Note: This revision of Petropoulos' Harvard University Dissertation,
concentrates on the Nazi use of visual arts to display Germany's power and authority.
The Nazi art plunder is described chronologically within the framework of the
competing administration bureaucracies of Himmler, Goebbels, Rosenberg, Speer,
Ley and Rust: the discrediting of modern 'degenerate' art and artists, the looting
of art from Jewish collectors, and, finally, the plundering of cultural treasures
in conquered territories, all with the goal of creating huge German art centers
in Hitler's hometown, Linz, and in Berlin. The author, providing extensive documentation
and rigorous scholarship, attributes the competition between Nazi leaders to
share Hitler's cultural interests, and to use art as a means of rewarding favorites
as the motivation behind their plunder.
Review of book filed in Library at P2.
40. Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Not a case of "art for
art's sake": the collecting practices of the Nazi elite". German Politics
and Society no. 32(Summer 1994): 107-124.
Note: According to the author, Nazi elite approached the visual
arts and its collection, as "a means of articulating their fundamental
ideologic tenets, a mode of legitimizing authority, and an expression of their
position within the social and political hierarchy of that elite." Collecting
art became a means of expressing power relationships among the Nazis and establishing
the collectors' sense of identity as an elite group. Looting art was justified
as repatriation by the Nazi prescription that no foreign country should possess
German cultural objects.
Filed in Library at P10.
41. Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Berlin's cultural history:
making the Weltstadt accessible". German Politics and Society no. 23(Summer
1991).
Note: Petropoulos' review of three books, "Berlin: culture
and metropolis", "Art in Berlin, 1815-1989", and "The 'golden'
twenties" art and literature in the Weimar Period", points out the
vital interplay of culture and politics that has existed throughout twentieth-century
Berlin.
Filed in the Library at P5.
42. Petropoulos, Jonathan. "For Germany and themselves:
the motivation behind the Nazi leaders plundering and collecting of art. Part
I.". Spoils of War no. 4(August 1977): 66-70. (Among National Archives
Library's periodical holdings).
Note: Based on his book, Art as politics in the Third Reich,
the author relates the personal and political motivations for Nazi plundering.
43. Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Saving culture from the Nazis".
Harvard Magazine 92, no.4(March-April, 1990): 34-42.
Note: During the Hitler regime, Harvard University became a
haven for many German artists and scholars forced into exile by the Nazi regime
(in 1933, 28 of Germany's museum directors were forced into exile). Harvard
also became a haven for art rejected by the Nazis: works by Klee, Kandinsky,
van Gogh, Picasso, Nolde and others. In 1939, Harvard also organized the American
Defense/Harvard Group, a team of art historians knowledgeable about European
art, to identify and locate valuable artworks in the war zone; this Harvard
team worked in cooperation with the American Commission for the Protection and
Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas to protect Europe's
art. The two groups were superseded by a government organization in 1943.
Filed in Library at P22.
44. Plaut, James S. "Hitler's capital". Atlantic Monthly
178(October 1946): 57-63.
Note: Plaut, Director of the OSS Art Looting Investigation
Unit of the OSS during WWII, tells the story of Linz, Austria, as Hitler's art
capital.
Filed in Library at P4.
Online: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/nazigold/hitler.htm.
45. Rabinbach, Anson and Gail Stavitsky. Assault on the arts: culture and politics in Nazi German. New York: New York Public Library, 1993.
46. Reinharz, Jehuda and Walter Schatzberg, eds. The Jewish
response to German culture: from the Enlightenment to the Second World War.
Hanover: Published for Clark University by University Press of New England,
1985. xii, 362 pp. (Essays based on papers delivered at the International Conference
on German Jews, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, October 8-11, 1983).
Note: These essays survey the dominant themes characterizing
the Jewish response to German culture during the two hundred years prior to
the Holocaust.
47. Saltzman, Cynthia. Portrait of Dr. Gachet: the story of
a Van Gogh masterpiece: modernism, money, politics, collectors, dealers, taste,
greed, and loss. New York: Viking, 1998. xxii, 406 pp.
Note: The author's story of this van Gogh illuminates the ways
in which art, politics, and the market have intersected in this century. The
painting, confiscated as "degenerate art" by the Third Reich's Propoganda
Ministry, was secretly sold by the Nazis.
48. Saltzman, Cynthia. "Modern art and the Third Reich:
propaganda, confiscation, and export". In Portrait of Dr. Gachet: the story
of a Van Gogh masterpiece: modernism, money, politics, collectors, dealers,
taste, greed, and loss, 161-216. New York: Viking, 1998.
Note: The author gives a clear picture of the Nazi effect on
the European art world with her focus on the plight of the van Gogh work Portrait
of Dr. Gachet.
Filed in the Library at S25.
49. Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Avon, 1970.
xxi, 734 pp.
Note: Albert Speer was drawn to the Nazi Party by Hitler's
personality and his plans, especially architectural plans, Speer wanted to design
and build a new order. In this book, the author writes of Hitler's taste in
art and architecture, as well as the Nazi looting of occupied countries.
50. Steinweis, Alan. "Weimar culture and the rise of National
Socialism: the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur". Central European History
24, no.4(1991): 401-403.
Note: The Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, a conservative
and anti-modern "volkisch consciousness-raising" group, made important
contributions to the Nazi party's cultural strategies before 1936 when the Nazis
began to develop clear policies regarding visual arts, art collecting and art
exhibiting.
51. Steinweis, Alan E. Art, ideology, and economics in Nazi
Germany: the Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1993. x, 233 pp.
Note: Originally presented as the author's doctoral dissertation
under the direction of Gerhard L. Weinberg at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, this work focuses on the fields of music, theater, and the visual
arts in this major study of Nazi cultural administration. Steinweis examines
the interaction among leading Nazis, other German cultural functionaries, working
artists, and art collectors, noting Nazi efforts to purge the arts of "undesirables".
Review filed in Library at S11.
52. Steinweis, Alan E. "Conservatism, National Socialism, and the cultural crisis of the Weimar Republic". In Between reform, reaction and resistance: studies in the history of German conservatism from 1789 to 1945 ,edited by Larry Eugene Jones and James N. Retallack, 329-346. New York: Berg, 1993.
53. Steinweis, Alan E. "'Unreliable and unfit': the Nazi
purge of Jews and other 'undesirables' from German cultural life, 1933-45".
In Holocaust Studies Annual, 3-22. New York: Berg, 1991.
Note: Steinweis examines the Nazi regime's purge of German
artistic and cultural life; the earliest purges were implemented with the help
of policy emergency powers rooted in the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 1933.
The Nazi purge was driven by a highly developed anti-Jewish paranoia fueled
by the success of Jews in German cultural life before 1933.
Filed in Library at S7.
54. Stern, Fritz. The politics of cultural despair: a study in the rise of the Germanic ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961. 367 pp.
55. Talpas, Kathleen Mary. Art, politics, and totalitariansim
in the Third Reich. Irvine: University of California, 1992. 175 pp. (PhD disseration,
University of California, Irvine, 1992).
Note: Dissertation studies the relationship between totalitarian
political institutions and the art world. Author notes that the Nazis, committed
to using art for political gain, were unable to inspire the production of high-quality
art.
56. Weber, John Paul. German war artists. Columbia, SC: Cerberus
Books, 1979. 151 pp.
Note: Wartime artworks by German artists, many of them "war
painters" or specialists trained in war reportage, were removed to the
U.S. in 1947. This book is a documentary history of the confiscation of the
German war art as directed by the Yalta Conference report: "We are determined
to ... remove all Nazi and militarist influences ... from the cultural ... life
of the German people".
57. Wette, Wolfram. "Ideology, propaganda, and internal
politics as preconditions of the war policy of the Third Reich". In Germany
and the Second World War. Volume 1: The build-up of German aggression, 9-155.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Note: Author tells of the carefully planned efforts to coordinate
the ideological and political mobilization of German society for WWII.
58. Wirth, Gunther. Verbotene Kunst, 1933-1945: verfolgte Künstler
im deutschen Südwestern (Forbidden art, 1933-1945: persecuted artists in
southwestern Germany). Stuttgart: Hatje, 1987. 351 pp.
Note: Dissertation about proscribed artists in Baden-Wurttemberg,
their work, and the impact of denunciation by the Nazi regime.