sun city anthem performing arts club

The study of design was one of several initiatives in arts scholarship to look beyond high culture. Manuela Schwartz, Eine versunkene Welt: Heinrich Strobel in Frankreich (1939 1944), in MusikforschungFaschismusNationalsozialismus: Referate der Tagung Schloss Engers (8. bis 11. Zortman, Bruce. Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, published in 2015, successfully outlines and dismisses many myths about Nazi Germany, but it nevertheless singles out the Reich Culture Chambers as the epicenter of cultural Gleichschaltung and reaffirms Hitlers power over dictating artistic tastes.7 The catalog of the 2014 What Is Known and What Is Believed 3 exhibition Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany 1937 at the Neue Galerie in New York reasserts that the National Socialists produced mediocre, politically motivated art and aesthetic irrelevancies and undermined the conditions of real art and destroyed artistic modernism.8 The purpose of this book is to understand why certain assumptions about the Nazis manipulation of the visual and performing arts have remained so compelling, even as mounting evidence continues to erode their credibility. In 1985, in the midst of strengthening ties between West Germany and NATO, U.S. president Ronald Reagan accompanied German chancellor Helmut Kohl to commemorate the end of World War II with a visit to the Bitburg cemetery, where some of the graves of fallen German soldiers were those of men from the ranks of the SS. Darmstadt, Postwar Experimentation, and the West German Search for a New Musical Identity. In Music and German National Identity, edited by Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, 205217. Zhlsdorff, Hitlers Exiles, 126127; and Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, 298300. On closer inspection, we can see that individual institutions as well as entire industries often welcomed the bailout prospects the newly created government provided, especially those of the Propaganda Ministry. Uwe Fleckner (Berlin: Akadamie Verlag Berlin, 2007), 189305; and Anja Tiedemann, Die entartete Moderne und ihr amerikanischer Markt: Karl Buchholz und Curt Valentin als Hndler verfemter Kunst (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013). . Schfer, Hans Dieter. Brenner, Art in the Political Power Struggle, 398. Berlin: Nicolai, 2006. 120. See the catalogs of these exhibitions: Janos Frecot, Elisabeth Moortgat, Barbara Volkmann, and Lorenz Dombois, Zwischen Widerstand und Anpassung: Kunst in Deutschland 19331945; Ausstellung in der Akademie der Knste vom 17. The Frankfurt School in Exile. See, for example, Michael Patterson and Michael Huxley, German Drama, Theatre and Dance, in The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, ed. 80. Dussel, Ein heroisches Theater? Outside instructors must have the approval of the SCAAC Club Board. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007. For a useful typology for the more accurate application of the terms exile, refugee, immigrant, and cosmopolitan nomad, see Anna Wessely, An Exiles Career from Budapest through Weimar to Chicago: Lszl Moholy-Nagy, in Exile, Science, and Bildung: The Contested Legacies of German Emigre Intellectuals, Studies in European Culture and History, ed. 182. See also Jews, extermination of European Holz, Keith, 5152, 221 Hoover, Calvin, 132 Horkheimer, Max, 7275, 7880, 148, 160, 213 House of German Art (Munich), 6 fig., 25, 105, 125; opening of, 5; renamed House of Art, 5, 141 House of Soviet Culture, 105 House Un-American Activities Committee. Musik und Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland. The majority of movies produced at the time were intended for pure entertainment, and the desire of most filmmakers to compete in the international marketplace was in itself a strong deterrent to injecting German cinema with heavy-handed ideology.34 In the theater, German officials had learned well before 1933 that censorship had to be handled with extreme caution. A shocking example of the latter came from one of the Third Reichs most powerful art critics, Robert Scholz. Brenner, Kunstpolitik, 1314. Vollnhals, Clemens, ed. Even basic introductory textbooks on modern German history had by this time rejected the notion of a central ideology. Nadar, Thomas R. The Director and the Diva: The Film Musicals of Detlef Sierck and Zarah Leander; Zu neuen Ufern and La Habanera. In Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich, edited by Robert C. Reimer, 6583. 171. German Drama, Theatre, and Dance. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, edited by Eva Kolinsky and Wilfred van der Will, 213232. And in the same manner the state says to the artists, so perfectly organized, so immaculately regimented: Create!115 There were also a handful of independent institutes (most notably the Warburg Institute, the Frankfurt School, and the Wiener Library) that, like Mann, could sustain themselves financially, and they were consequently able to exercise a greater degree of intellectual freedom. . As Allied troops liberated the concentration camps and discovered the horrors of mass extermination, they could only conclude that the physical wasteland they encountered was the inevitable outcome of a cultural wasteland in which Hitler had eradicated all traces of Germanys past achievements. See David Pike, The Politics of Culture in Soviet-Occupied Germany, 19451949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 88135. There were close analytical assessments that placed at least as much weight on the substantive differences between the two as on the similarities, as well as more ambitious proposals that we view most of twentieth-century Germany as the epoch of totalitarianism, starting in 1918 with the emergence of communism and Fascism and ending in 1989 with the fall of the wall.20 There were also forays into trying to explain the two systems and their propaganda mechanisms as substitutes for religion and all of its trappingsdoctrines and rituals, evangelists and infallible leadersfocusing mainly on the Nazis most blatant manifestations of propaganda (Degenerate Art, the Thingspiel, propaganda films, and the ban on criticism) and Hitlers personal tastes and architectural plans and comparing these with the SEDs grandiose building plans, propaganda films, and the constraints imposed on humor and satire.21 In a similar vein, a 2013 study looking at film relied on a classic theory of totalitarianism to demonstrate that both states exercised close control of film production, emphasized political 220 Cultural Histories after the Cold War content over entertainment, created larger-than-life portrayals of leaders (Hitler and Ulbricht), and promoted stereotypes of ideological heroes and villains.22 The revival of totalitarian comparisons has also turned attention to the role of ideology,23 even though a number of historians had previously questioned the usefulness of conceiving of a uniform ideology in Nazi Germany. It was time, she argued, to recognize the ideals common to Ausdruckstanz and National Socialism: neo-romanticism, life reformism, and cultural pessimism of turn-of-the-century Germany, . M O D E R N I SM A N D T H E I S O L AT IO N O F NA Z I C U LT U R E 1. 67. 3 (April 1936): 40723. Gttingen: Steidl, 1988. And evidence does show that Hitler and Goebbels considered controlling all media to be of the highest importance and that both men recognized the power of print, radio, and film in winning over the German public. Munich: Prestel, 1993. Marquant, La politique culturelle, 125126; Gilmore, Frances Postwar Cultural Policies, 135142; and Thacker, Music after Hitler, 8085. Prior to the 1980s, the subject of music in Nazi Germany had been surprisingly overlooked in West German scholarship. Kunst und Technik in den 20er Jahren: Neue Sachlichkeit und Gegenstndlicher Konstruktivismus. Plant! Even so, Siegfried Kracauer has argued, All Nazi films were more or less propaganda filmseven the mere entertainment pictures which seem to be so remote from politics. All films, fiction or nonfiction, were laced with ideological subtexts. Studien zur Zeitgeschichte. But cracks in these programs foundations became evident when it came to actually implementing them, both in terms of the denazification of personnel and, more subtly, the attempts to denazify, democratize, and internationalize cultural life. A section on The Assault of Totalitarianism equates the official art of Italian Fascism, Nazism, and Leninist-Stalinist Bolshevism with assaults on human freedom, concluding that neither Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union ever produced an artist or artwork of any value.32 While he duly lambastes the Soviet assault on artistic freedom, he reserves the lions share of his rage for the more evil of these evil twins: The most vicious and ignoble attack on the freedom of creative man was perpetrated in totalitarian Germany, where racial arguments touted the elevation of the Nordic superman, that monstrous emanation of Wagner, and Hitler ably steered the campaign against modern art. Grunberger, Richard. Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, by Richard Wolin 8. Visual and Performing Arts in Nazi Germany: What Is Known and What Is Believed xi xiii xv 1 2. The most compelling case of an early critic of expressionism who went on to celebrate its renaissance after 1945 is that of Franz Roh. For a brief period of time, the Propaganda Ministry also financed the building of numerous open-air theaters designed for specially commissioned theater pieces (Thingspiele) that fused hypernationalist (vlkisch) myth with such common themes as the martyrdom of Nazi heroes and the injustices of World War I. 30. 4 (1991): 402423. Munich: Ellermann, 1982. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974. 171. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Hughes, Sea Change, 119125. With regard to the other media, essays on painting and architecture focused on the rediscovery of German expressionism and the Bauhaus, an essay on sculpture chronicled modernism from the preWorld War I years, and an essay on film expressed frustration over slow developments in West Germany.197 A similar kind of overview appeared in English in 1974, with translations of some of the same essays that appeared in the special issue of Documents. Similarly, given the chaos of Weimar administration and the power vacuum left by the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the concept of the Fhrerprinzip might very well have conjured up feelings of relief and security by giving people hope that order and hierarchy would be restored. 48. Drner, Ulrich, and Georg Gnther. Holz, Modern German Art, chapter 4. Igor Golomshtoks Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the Peoples Republic of China also considers the topic, albeit obliquely. Faletti, Heidi E. Reflections of Weimar Cinema in the Nazi Propaganda Films SA-Mann Brand, Hitlerjunge Quex, and Hans Westmar. In Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich, edited by Robert C. Reimer, 1136. Hinkel, Hans, ed. Publications of the German Historical Institute. Bergius, Hanne. Artists featured in the exhibition included Willy Baumeister, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lyonel Feininger, HAP Grieshaber, Erich Heckel, Karl Hofer, Adolf Hlzel, Alexei Jawlensky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, August Macke, Franz Marc, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Otto Mller, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Oskar Schlemmer, Notes to Pages 116121 281 Rudolf Schlichter, Ernst Barlach, Kthe Kollwitz, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Gerhard Marcks, Ewald Matar, and Ren Sitenis. 44. He then became a target of the Fighting League for German Culture, most likely because he coedited a book on photography that featured a photomontage by the Soviet photographer El Lissitsky on the cover, which made him a cultural Bolshevist by association. Even the most noteworthy productions of German theater, such as the scenes from Brechts Fear and Misery in the Third Reich that won Walter Benjamins praise, were staged on a modest scale and generally attracted audiences only from within the exile community.61 After England entered the war, the exile community formed the Free German Culture League (Freier Deutscher Kulturbund), which produced theater and other cultural events intended to introduce the British public to the other Germany that was not only living in their midst but also resisting Hitler within Germanys borders (the latter was showcased in the leagues 1942 exhibition, Allies Inside Germany). By establishing themselves in influential academic positions in law, sociology, political science, psychology, and philosophy, they not only served as important consultants but also influenced the next generation of intellectuals. 61. The earliest published expos of Nazi cultural policy was Paul Ortwin Raves Art Dictatorship in the Third Reich (Kunstdiktatur im Dritten Reich, 1949). Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 19551975, Studies in German History. The Concept of Totalitarian Dictatorship versus the Comparative Theory of Fascism: The Case of National Socialism. In Totalitarianism Reconsidered, edited by Ernst Menze, 146166. 15. The next lengthy debate among historians was the intentionalist-functionalist (or intentionalist-structuralist) debate. Cultural Histories after the Cold War 233 Even contemporary commentators in the 1930s called attention to the features, present in all three countries, of centralized control, charismatic leadership, and promises of equality following the devastating failure of capitalism. It no longer needs percussion instruments for accompaniment; for the cry of hungry children, the beat of the soldiers feet throughout the land, serve the dancer much better. Ibid., 180. Those from the former GDR highlighted the problems with conceiving of Marxism and socialist realism as static, monolithic concepts and noted the difficulties in assessing the communist system only four years after it ceased to exist.18 Nevertheless, these comparisons have quietly persisted in recent examinations of Nazi and East German festivals celebrating the music of Bach and Handel, sometimes embracing a polemical tone.19 In the years that followed, theorizing over the two German dictatorships moved in a number of directions. A unified program of music this is not. At the same time, however, they distanced themselves from the practice in other Western zones of compiling lists of acceptable personnel and balked at blacklisting classic German theater or musical works.115 Occupation, Cold War, and the Zero Hour 111 The French left much of the operation of theaters to local German personnel, who at first favored a steady run of the classics (such as Goethe and Schiller, but also Shakespeare and G. B. Shaw). Entartete Musik 1938: Weimar und die Ambivalenz; Ein Projekt der Hochschule fr Musik Franz Liszt Weimar zum Kulturstadtjahr 1999. 332 Works Cited Erdmann, Karl Dietrich. By the time of the blockade, the abandonment of denazification, the introduction of Zhdanovs edicts, and the shift in American policy from reeducating Germans to reorienting them toward anti-communism129 had situated Germany to become a cultural staging ground for Cold War confrontation. Krohn, Claus-Dieter, Elisabeth Kohlhaas, and Society for Exile Studies, eds. Kanzog, Klaus. 1 Visual and Performing Arts in Nazi Germany What Is Known and What Is Believed What do we know about the visual and performing arts in Nazi Germany? By contrast, musical performances, whether live or broadcast on the radio, were more ephemeral, and even the most stable artifactspublished musical scorescould be read and understood by only a small segment of the population. His pronouncement, however, was the exception rather than the rule, arising as a result of the negative publicity the Goebbels-Rosenberg rivalry had attracted and the need to restore an image of solidarity and harmony. He expounds upon how much of the Nazi rhetoric and strategies could be emulated and intensified in the hands of Dymshits and his successors, concluding that the art policies of Government and Party in the Republic of East Germany are significant not only because they show such striking similarities to the Nazi policies but also because they are a faithful reflection of the art policies of the U.S.S.R.31 Around the same time, Werner Haftmann firmly established the totalitarian paradigm within the art history canon in his influential textbook Painting in the Twentieth Century (1960, originally published in 1954 as Malerei im 20. 24. Theyre quite impressively big. London, Theatre under the Nazis, 222226; and Kolland, Wagner-Rezeption im deutschen Faschismus, 494503. Weimar-era theater architecture and lighting techniques were the inspiration for Albert Speers staging of the Nuremberg party rallies.

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sun city anthem performing arts club