NS-pictures in Stuttgart: art in the service of dictatorship

had You might think, about the exhibition "the dream of The Swabian Museum" in Stuttgart's Museum of art not too many words would have to be lost - one of se

NS-pictures in Stuttgart: art in the service of dictatorship

had You might think, about the exhibition "the dream of The Swabian Museum" in Stuttgart's Museum of art not too many words would have to be lost - one of several institutions in the state capital, the accumulated in this case, systematically since 1924 Swabian art and now its brown past, by the curator of the Show, and provenance researchers of the house, Kai Artinger, comprising cutting. What came up, busy, however, not only the meaning of each provenance research; it is also the overall German picture of the break in the art between the Weimar Republic and the NS is able to shake time.

Stefan Trinks

editor in the features section.

F. A. Z.

In the twelve years of national socialist rule, for the Stuttgart Museum of art incredible 2278 works of art were purchased, more than ever before or after, and this part, for astronomical sums, because the was corrupt through-and-through corrupt party, also at the level of the art one Iota less. Like the national socialists in highway construction, existing plans of the Weimar government realised, they took on an American-style "New Deal"project, which brought as a job-creation measure for the painter of the pictures in all the city halls, government offices and hospitals and many of the artists made weighed. With these little-known facts, it starts to be exciting, and far beyond the Swabian horizon out.

In the first hall of the landscapes patches in St. Petersburg hanging all over the walls. More than fifty percent of the NS-purchases of natural images. The national Mar the national socialists, according to a Swabian painter would have been able to allegedly "particularly well" in landscapes Express. What one sees in the almost eighty images that are banal trails, through oak forests, fields of grain. But also curious beads. A large open landscape with three tear the horses of Fritz von Graevenitz around the seemingly endless, impending sky, a morbid mixture of the "monk by the sea", Caspar David Friedrich and the swirling company Menten Turners.

Von Graevenitz was actually a sculptor and painted since a serious eye disease in the year 1939; a convinced national socialist, however, he was almost from the first hour. It makes the image worse. Similar to disturbing the painted black palm silhouettes in the Kitsch-sunset opposite to an extreme portrait format. In a choice of colours and style of painting only, the beautiful African woman was missing, the painting in the Seventies, date. It comes, however, from the tight political painter Fritz Lang, who painted it on a trip to Africa. Unequivocal Propaganda was to operate so little, yet other Langs were purchased and shown.

The core question is: What is the national socialist painting would be clear? Most clearly, the question seems to answer in the image "BDM girl" by Fritz Ketz from the year 1940. The blonde girl is wearing in the binding with the badge of the "Bundes Deutscher Mädel" and the characteristic brown jacket. And yet sows the painter Ketz - the self-knitted, according to legend, even from no later than 1940, Dissident - doubt: Frankly sad instead of victory or sure of themselves, these Adolescents look; much too modern and unsettling, uneasy, the Background is more primed for painted. Especially the girl down, holding the limp right Hand hanging primroses, three withered.

no one Say that such messages through the flower would get from "normal" viewers don't understand - in other totalitarian System of Germany, the sad on the table in front of the "Excellent" Wolfgang Mattheuers past three tulips caused a huge scandal in a workers - and-peasants ' state had to give it just a happy free-running workers; the long faces and hanging a reward, flowers were considered counter-revolutionary

this is the subtitle of Berthold Hinz' 1974 published Dissertation, "The art of painting in the German fascism – the art and counter-revolution", which has remained unmatched to this day and forms the basis of the Stuttgart exhibition. The Transitions are fluent.

Date Of Update: 12 August 2020, 11:20