Preview

Naziism in Art & Architecture

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
378 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Naziism in Art & Architecture
Examine the impact of the Nazi regime upon architecture and art in Germany[/i:5f8267538c]

In the 1920's Germany was a centre for modern art and forward thinking architecture. Art styles and schools such as cubism and Dada developed in Germany, and schools of excellent architecture such as the Bauhaus school developed in this liberal and free thinking period. However this all changed in1933 due to the rise to power of the Nazis. This essay will examine the effect that the Nazi regime had upon the styles of art and architecture in Germany during their rule.

The Nazis believed that art and architecture would be an important factor in the large propaganda operation they planned to operate. Once Nazis came to power they took control of society and began to spread their influence to many different art forms. These included theatre, architecture, fine art, sculpture and photography.

Soon after the Nazis came to power they began to exert their influence over art forcing their preferred styles to be adopted. The preferred styles chosen by the Nazis were based on Hitler's taste. Hitler saw himself as an art connoisseur and an architecture expert. This was due to his background and everlasting wish to become a professional architect.

This exertion of influence by the Nazis and the mass book burning ordered by propaganda minister Josef Goebbels in 1933 served as a warning to many artists that their work would not be welcome in the "new" Germany. This led to a mass exodus of artistic talent from Germany to many other countries such as France and the USA. In was in this way that Germany was culturally purged of all but a few talented artists who specialised in the styles of art which were preferred by the Nazis left.

After the book burning the Nazis next step toward changing Germanys art was to "cleanse" all of her art galleries of any art which was not to the Nazis liking. The styles of art disliked by the Nazis were modern art because they believed that they

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Speer’s rise to prominence began when he formally joined the Nazi Party in 1931 as he was inspired by Hitler’s speech and was a “follower of Hitler.” Speer was an architect, who obtained an important connection with Karl Hanke, a high district leader, who rose ranks as the Nazi’s gained more power in 1933. Hanke and Speer developed a close relationship, as he was the chauffeur for the Nazi Party. This contributed to Hanke’s appointment of Goebbels Secretary, which led to greater architectural opportunities for Speer. The first architectural job offered to Speer was in 1933, where he renovated Goebbels propaganda ministry building in Berlin and stated in his book, Inside the Third Reich as “the luckiest turning point in my life.” He completed the job in two months and was put into designing and staging the Nazi rallies. The staging’s included the 1933 May Day Rally and the Nuremberg Rally, personally asked by Hitler.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    albert speer essay

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Speer’s first architectural commission from the Nazi Party was from Geobells and it was to renovate the Gauhaus. Shortly after this, he was given the task of organising the backdrop for the May Day rally in Berlin in 1933 (day/month??). Hitler was very pleased with the effect.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In conclusion, it is because of Albert Speer and his actions through his time in the Nazi Party, that significantly contributed to his period of national and international history. Through his Minister of Armaments role, the Germania project and, his well-known architectural skills, was he able to influence thousands of people either to follow the Nazi Rallies, or to be under his control within the workforce. It is also because of Albert Spear, Germany was able to continue fighting in the war for the length of time that occurred, however, he was also one of the main reasons for the holocaust and concentration camps. While historians praise Speer for his skills in architecture, there is a lot of evidence to prove that Speer was a sinister whom…

    • 137 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The propaganda used by the Nazis was the key to their power and policies, and their main objectives was to establish enemies in the population’s minds such as the nations that imposed the Treaty of Versailles, Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and Bolsheviks. Jews were blamed for robbing Germans jobs and for the Bolshevism, communism, and Marxism (the major enemies of the Germany in Hitler’s mind). A Nazi newspaper, even told Germans that Jews kidnapped small children before they needed the blood of a Christian…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Albert Speer

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages

    On the back of this development that saw architects in Europe questioning this reliance on the past for artistic inspiration, was the resurgence of pan- German nationalism. (Individuals in Modern History : Leni Riefenstahl & Albert Speer, Frappell, 2002, pg. 61-62) It is through this renaissance movement that saw architecture becoming a significant part of Nazi propaganda, despite the initial Nazi concept of “blunt und boden” which characterised the debate over “the city versus the country”. Like the great states in antiquity, Hitler wanted the stone ruins of Nazism to be a reminder a thousand years into the future of the grandeur of National Socialism. (Albert Speer - Personality Study, Kelly, 2012, pg. 15) Speer helped fulfil Hitler’s desires in his early work in the Nazi Party by impressing Hitler with his May Day rally and Nuremberg Rally designs that saw the strong incorporation of monumental neo-Classical features. Speer noted that the iron and steel reinforcement used in modern buildings, ultimately made a building look unattractive when it deteriorated. Speer felt that…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Holocaust Lost Paintings

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the Holocaust there were many paintings that had gone missing. Some were lost in the holocaust, and some were found. Many of these artifacts we know of because of the jews telling us about their stories about the artifacts. What the paintings meant to them, why they wanted them. This paper will tell you about 7 lost, stolen, or found art pieces.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    When Hitler came to power, he changed things for them, including their beliefs. Nazis were originally German workers from 1919-1921 until they became soldiers. Before Hitler, Nazis held racist, Nationalist, and antisemitic beliefs. When Hitler came to power, he still held that but made them more of a cleaner and more organized army. Hitler tried to make the democratic committee with a single leader who would have ultimate control.…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nazi book burning was a big event in World War II. Students from universities throughout Germany were the ones who planned out the book burnings. Also,…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On January 30 1933, millions of people didn’t know their lives were going to change when they chose Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler Had a better “vision” for a good German, he thought white skin tone, blue eyes, blonde hair people were “the perfect German” , If you didn’t fit into that description you were eliminated Hitler had many ways to torture and kill people but one main thing he used were gas chambers in the concentration camps. Hit…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nazi Study Guide

    • 2002 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Artist- creativity. One should embellish on this more, that art went beyond creativity and was the basis of nation building, and much of the foundation of Nazi ideology.…

    • 2002 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Adolf Hitler

    • 426 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Adolph Hitler and Hermann Goering were dominant, pitiless leaders that were obsessed with art. As Edward Dolnick quoted Goering “I love art for art’s sake”. Hitler aspired to be painter, and applied to an art school in Vienna, but was rejected as mentioned in “rape of Europa”. According to rape of Europa, this perturbed Hitler because abstract modernists were accepted over him and generally Hitler hated what was going on in modern art. The fact that he has been dismissed from Vienna art school in favor of abstract and modern styles grew his hatred more for modern paintings as talked in Barron and rape of Europa. He hated modern art because of its abstract figures, shapes of the figures and its undefined lines. Hitler wants art that represented the Aryan nation that is from Europe descent. In the “forgers spell”, Dolnick adds that Hitler fantasized to build an art museum in his hometown of Linz, Austria (51). Baron says Hitler wanted to prove to the world that he was powerful. He demonstrated this by filling up his museum with the most valuable paintings in Europe.…

    • 426 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    During the process of choosing a topic, I had many ideas that I wanted to research. I thought about exploring areas in Art and English but I constantly kept having thoughts about history. I love to learn about our history and I was attracted to choosing a topic that had to do with Hitler’s Germany. History is one of my most favorite subjects in school. I always look forward to becoming more educated in areas that have to do with our world’s past. For many years I have briefly learned about The Holocaust, Nazi Germany and Hitler, but I wanted to learn more. Choosing Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party was a common theme that I have always longed to do. Even though I have no family that actually experienced life in Nazi Germany, I have met people who told me amazing stories about their knowledge of Germany during the early twentieth century. Writing a paper on this subject matter will not only be very interesting but at the same time enjoyable to study.…

    • 2101 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    One of the larger similarities was that Nazi ideology as well as Wagner both thought Jewish art was merely a facsimile of true European culture because Jewish artists, even if they were German or any other variety of European, “would always think and act like Jews... [therefore] Jews could never really pursue an authentically German culture, but only contaminate that culture with their own innately Jewish sensibility” (Steinweis, 17). This ideology was expressed by Wagner throughout his work, Das Judentum in der Musik, because he felt that Jewish musicians were unable to create true European art because their Jewish qualities seeped into every aspect of their works, making their art instantaneously not European. Nazi beliefs mirrored this way of thinking as they thought it was important to separate themselves from any cultural aspect or artist that they considered to be “contaminated by alien influences” (Steinweis, 17). Another stark similarity between the views of Nazism and Wagner’s personal beliefs was that Jewish musicians were seen as an aesthetic blight on German culture. Wagner’s views on Jewish musicians’ aesthetics applied to their displeasing sounds, among other complaints, in their works that could only be the product of their Jewish ancestry trickling into their art and eliminating any actual semblance of German aesthetics. According to Wagner,…

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    German Expressionism was an artistic movement that preceded World War 1 in Germany, and culminated in the 1920’s with Expressionist cinema. It was an extremely influential genre that showed cinema could be an art form, not just a source of…

    • 1733 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Book Burning

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages

    On May 10, 1933 a crowd of 40,000 people gathered for the book burning while there was singing and bands playing. They watched soldiers, police, people from the German student association and the Hitler youth burn books that were “Un-German.” The books that were burnt in…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays