Art of the Third ReichNearly fifty years after the collapse of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, the officially sanctioned art of his National Socialist regime remains largely unknown. Since 1945, few people have seen these controversial works: many were destroyed in World War Two bombings; most of what survived is hidden away, accessible only to scholars. In Art of the Third Reich, Peter Adam--who grew up in Berlin in the Hitler era--has gone back to Germany after years in England as a BBC documentary-film producer and made an extensive study of the art of the National Socialists. Adam explores its complex ramifications, which led to a traditional German style linked to nature, family, and the homeland and to the suppression of modern art--associated by the Reich with large cities, internationalism, and decadence. Painting, sculpture, architecture, film, and all the other art disciplines were compelled to serve as vehicles for the transmission of National Socialist ideology, intended to forge the people's collective mind in the Nazi mold. Hitler's belief that architecture was the most forceful manifestation of absolute political power lay at the heart of his grandiose schemes for redesigning Munich, Berlin, Nuremberg, and more than a score of other German cities. Hitler also virtually created a new art--the art of manipulating mass emotions, which he skillfully used at Nazi Party rallies and in mass sports events, such as the notorious Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. How this art form was enacted against a backdrop of colossal architecture makes a fascinating and important leitmotif in this study. The research for this engrossing book took Adam to hidden repositories in both the United States and Germany. Fromoften tattered books and magazines of the period, he has gleaned many of the 321 illustrations covering the broad spectrum of National Socialist art, which scholars are now beginning to recognize as an essential source of information about the perplexing Third Reich. |
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Academy Adolf Hitler Albert Speer Alfred Rosenberg Architect architecture Arno Breker art historians artists battle beauty became Berlin built celebrated century Chancellery created decoration Degenerate Art designed Deutsche Dritten Reich eagle Emil Nolde Ernst expression feeling feet fight film Franz Fritz Führer German Art Exhibition giant Goebbels Göring hall Heinrich Hermann Giesler heroic Hitler Youth House of German idea ideal ideology intellectual Jewish Josef Thorak Kampf Karinhall Karl KiDR Kunst im Dritten landscape Linz magazine mass Mein Kampf modern art monumental Munich museums National Socialism National Socialist Nazi Nordic NSDAP nudes Nuremberg official Olympic Stadium painters paintings Paul Ludwig Troost peasant plans political portraits propaganda race regime Reich Culture Chamber Rosenberg Scholz sculpture soldiers soul speech spirit strength studio style swastika symbol theater Third Reich tion tional Socialists tradition ture visual arts Volk volkish Werner Werner Peiner Wilhelm workers wrote