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[Opening music]

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Voiceover (narrator David McColloch): 
Here in Berlin in 1933,

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the Nazi party came to power.

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[Train clattering and whistling]

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[Music]

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At once they began burning books

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and attacking writers
and artists,

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waging a full scale war
on the modern imagination.

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[Music]

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In 1937, the Nazis held up
for ridicule

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the works of art
they most despised

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in the most infamous art show
of all time.

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Robert Hughes: Three million people
went to it.

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It was the most successful
goddamn blockbuster

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in the history
of modern exhibition techniques

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and 95% of 'em just laughed
at it.

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(Peter Selz - Art Historian)

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- Here were outstanding artists
who were highly honored

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and then suddenly
they were criminals,

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and they were Jews,
and they were Bolsheviks,

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and they were all kinds
of things.

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Voiceover: In the end many artists
and writers would flee.

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Others remained to face ruined
careers, suicide, and death.

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The Nazis called the exhibition
Entartete Kunst--

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Degenerate Art.

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[Music]

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Narrator: The Altes Museum 
in Berlin, 1992.

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Painting and sculpture

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once part of the Nazi Degenerate
Art Exhibition

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has been gathered together
by an American museum

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and put on display
here in Germany.

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Today for most of us these works
of art are no longer threatening

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but there was a time when
they outraged most people,

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shocked and bewildered them.

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In the 1930s, the Nazis said
they were dangerous

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and were bent on their
destruction.

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[Music]

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[Drumming]

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[Trumpets, drumming and cheering]

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Nazi Germany was dominated
by a single man, Adolf Hitler.

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He called himself the Fuhrer
and promised a new Germany,

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peopled by a master race,

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cleansed of degenerates.

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[Music, crowd noise]

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Modern artists, Hitler said,
were degenerate

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and he vowed to eliminate them.

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[Music, crowd noise]

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The show he called
"Degenerate Art"

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was to be more than
an exhibition.

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It was to be their funeral.

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[Music]

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Josephine Knapp: I had heard nothing 
about this Degenerate Art Exhibition.

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I stumbled onto it.

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It wasn't on my itinerary
because--

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Voiceover: Josephine Knapp
was an American art student

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traveling through Germany
in 1937.

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Knapp: I was walking on the street

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and I saw the banner
over the door, went inside,

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rickety staircase. I went up

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and then I almost bumped my head
on the knee

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of the great wooden
Christ by Gies.

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They'd hung it on the landing
in such a way

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that you had to get around it

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when originally it had been hung
high in the Lubeck Cathedral.

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I'd turned off the landing and
saw pictures crowded together,

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some on burlap, some crooked,
badly lighted.

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Peter Gunter: It was a 
claustrophobic affair.

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The rooms were relatively small.

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Voiceover: Gunter witnessed
the Nazi sponsored exhibition

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as a 17-year-old.

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Gunter: The walls were not hung
in the normal way

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but were plastered with works
of art,

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some of the pictures without
the frames,

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some of the abstract pictures
upside down

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with graffiti written behind
them and above them

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and around them.

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Voiceover: The graffiti ridiculed
the works of art.

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"Nature is seen by sick minds,"
"An insult to German womanhood,"

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"Crazy at any price."

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Sander Gilderman, Cultural Historian:
The common person

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walked into the Degenerate Art Show

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in a sense as a horror show--
a side show.

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This stuff on the wall
was the work of madmen.

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This was the work of outsiders.

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This was the work of people

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who were out to destroy
German culture.

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Voiceover: Kurt Assis was a 16-year-old
high school student

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when the Degenerate Art Exhibit
opened.

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His teacher urged his entire
class to go and see it.

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Gilman: The Nazis took this art
seriously.

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It scared them
and they wanted to control it.

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It's very hard today
in the United States, at least,

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to imagine art
having that power.

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[Music]

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Voiceover: To understand why the Nazis

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attacked modern art you have to go back

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to the turn of the century and look at

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the work of a young
Austrian struggling to

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paint in the popular style of the day.

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His name was Adolf Hitler.

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He was rejected by the Academy
of Visual Arts in Vienna,

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and never did become
a recognized artist.

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But all his life he would insist
that the only true art

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was art that tried to imitate
the natural world.

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Gilman: He painted basically
postcards and

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you can't fault him for 
that; that's what sold.

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He wants to represent the world
the way it "really" is.

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Sometimes it's called academic
art

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but it looks kind of real.

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[Jarring instrumental music]

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Now what modernism does is
to say, "What we're going to

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do is paint the world

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underneath that external image.

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We're not going to paint the skin, we're

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going to paint the bones
and the sinews.

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[Discordant music]

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Voiceover: Hitler and Germany's 
modern artists were

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shaped by the same forces of history,

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but they were set
on a collision course.

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The smash up would come
when Hitler came

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to power.

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Bernard Schultze, today one of
Germany's important abstract painters, was

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an art student when he 
visited the exhibition.

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Voiceover: In the early 1900's

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a band of brash and confident
young artists

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were working at the same time
as Hitler.

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One of them was
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

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He was an early modernist hero
rallying young painters

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to forge a new way of looking
at the world

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that came to be called
Expressionism.

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Peter Selz (Art Historian)

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Selz: Kirchner started out
as the leader

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of the first expressionist group

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and these people really tried
to renew art.

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They wanted to go beyond
Impressionism

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that's why they were called
"Expressionists."

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They distorted the figure,
they used rather violent color.

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Voiceover: Oskar Kokoschka

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was another young controversial
Expressionist.

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Academic critics wrote that
his paintings

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were "repulsive plague sores and


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phantoms of a morbid youth."

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But his passionate distortions
were never

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meant to depict the natural world.

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He painted the inner world,
psychological landscapes.

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Olda Kokoschka (Kokoschka's widow)

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Viennese society
didn't understand at all.

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The reaction to his
works was very violent

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because I think the Viennese
expected something

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entirely different from artists.

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It was something which
was not normal to them

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It was mad.

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Selz: Nobody had ever painted
portraits like he had.

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So they called him the 'Mad Kokoschka'.

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He has unbelievable
psychological insight.

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When he was very, very young, coming out of

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nowhere, he painted these incredible portraits.

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There was a portrait of an old
man, and he

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was very angry when he saw
the painting.

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He said it didn't look like him and Kokoschka

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said, 'Well, 20 years from now it will'.

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And it did.

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Voiceover: The Expressionists were young

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and passionate idealists at the start

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of promising careers.

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Adolf Hitler was unknown, painting sentimental

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pictures and struggling just to survive.

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Gradually he would rise to power and cut off

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the great German
modernists in their prime.

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(Military Music)

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World War I was the turning
point for Hitler

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and the Expressionists.

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In 1914, fired by visions
of glory,

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they joined millions
of young Germans

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in an outburst
of patriotic fervor.

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In the Great War, Hitler
would discover his destiny

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and the Expressionists,

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the shock and squalor
of trench warfare.

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(Whistling and Gunfire) Robert Hughes (Art Critic)

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Hughes: The main effect of trench
warfare on

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these painters was to drive them crazy.

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If you spent the best part of a year

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sitting in this filthy mud hole

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with a couple of corpses
as your companions

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listening to high explosives
going off all the time

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and looking at the people
on the barbed wire

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slowly falling to pieces,

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you went crazy

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and the more sensitive you were
the crazier you went.

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-Voiceover: The war shattered Oskar
Kokoschka's mind and spirit.

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Even before it began
he sketched himself with a wound

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he predicted he would receive,

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a wound that eventually
he did suffer,

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and Kirchner, too, suffered
a profound nervous collapse

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from which he never fully
recovered.

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Hughes: Kirchner, for instance, paints
the famous portrait of himself

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as an inductee with that hand
lopped off.

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That startling piercing
image of castration really.

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There he is in his military
uniform rendered impotent,

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crippled already
although he never was.

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People think that pictures like
Dix's renderings of the trenches

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kind of distorted, exaggerated,

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but they are really, practically
photography.

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Voiceover: 23-year-old Otto Dix
had imagined war

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as a kind of poetic initiation

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until he manned a machine gun
in the trenches.

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But Adolf Hitler found in war
a satisfaction

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that redeemed the bitter years
of frustration and failure

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as an artist.

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He was a twice-decorated
dispatch runner

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recovering from a gas attack
when Germany surrendered.

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"Hatred grew in me,"
he later wrote,

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"hatred for those responsible
for this deed,

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"miserable and degenerate
criminals

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"in the days that followed
my own fate became known to me

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I resolved to go into politics."

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Voiceover: Hitler was a nobody, he was
nothing, he wasn't even a gofer.

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He was just one of the hundred
thousand soldiers without a war.

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Voiceover: The war left Germany in chaos.

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The fragile democracy reeled
with turmoil

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and a ruinous inflation.

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Hitler abandoned his dream
of becoming an artist

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and formed a new
political party,

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the National Socialist Party.

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He even sketched
the party symbols.

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He promised a rebirth
of the fatherland,

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peopled by a race
of pure Aryans.

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The vision appealed to one
of the Expressionist painters.

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Emil Nolde joined the Nazi Party
in 1920.

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Nolde was a loner bound only
to Germany and his art.

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(Discordant Music)

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Hughes: Nolde exalted the primitive.

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He loved the idea of that
which was peasant,

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that which was instinctive,

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that which was harnessed
to ancient rhythms

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in a way which predated
civilization.

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Selz: In a way, those religious paintings

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are the very essence of Expressionism,

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but he was not really
a churchgoing religious person.

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It went very much deeper,

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yet he had these mystical,
spiritual experiences

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which really shook
his whole being.

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I really think that
in the long run

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he painted the most powerful
religious painting

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of the century.

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What Nolde was dreaming of
was kind of a new Germany

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where his kind of paintings
would go into the churches

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00:18:01,999 --> 00:18:04,584
and exactly the opposite
happened.

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(Sombre Music)

250
00:18:12,834 --> 00:18:16,975
Voiceover: In 1924 Adolf Hitler
emerged from a Bavarian prison

251
00:18:16,999 --> 00:18:18,975
where he had been held for trying

252
00:18:18,999 --> 00:18:21,976
to overthrow the German democracy.

253
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:24,976
He was 35 years old.

254
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:28,975
At once he lashed out
at those who had lost the war,

255
00:18:28,999 --> 00:18:33,101
who had stabbed the fatherland
in the back.

256
00:18:33,125 --> 00:18:36,643
He called them Jews, Communists,
and Bolsheviks

257
00:18:36,667 --> 00:18:37,975
and borrowing an idea

258
00:18:37,999 --> 00:18:40,935
popularized by
19th century science,

259
00:18:40,959 --> 00:18:42,976
he called them degenerates.

260
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:45,810
Gilman: The idea of the degenerate
was ubiquitous.

261
00:18:45,834 --> 00:18:49,685
By the end of the 19th century
anybody could use the term

262
00:18:49,709 --> 00:18:51,560
and they did, degenerate,

263
00:18:51,584 --> 00:18:54,518
as a sort of general term
of opprobrium--

264
00:18:54,542 --> 00:18:56,935
"You degenerate, you."

265
00:18:56,959 --> 00:18:58,768
We can say that today
without any problem

266
00:18:58,792 --> 00:19:00,393
but what was understood under it

267
00:19:00,417 --> 00:19:06,894
was a very specific form
of deviance from the norm.

268
00:19:06,918 --> 00:19:09,310
In the 19th century
being degenerate

269
00:19:09,334 --> 00:19:11,226
and knowing who is a degenerate

270
00:19:11,250 --> 00:19:16,310
was a central aspect of medical
science, biological science,

271
00:19:16,334 --> 00:19:19,477
and anthropological science. If you were a

272
00:19:19,501 --> 00:19:21,975
physician you had
all sorts of signs and symptoms

273
00:19:21,999 --> 00:19:24,975
that you looked for;
the shape of their ears;

274
00:19:24,999 --> 00:19:26,560
size of their nose;

275
00:19:26,584 --> 00:19:30,101
whether they gazed at you
in a certain way.

276
00:19:30,125 --> 00:19:32,768
So it meant if you didn't look
the right way

277
00:19:32,792 --> 00:19:35,226
you're obviously a deviate
from the norm

278
00:19:35,250 --> 00:19:39,643
and therefore you're also
obviously mad, you're crazy.

279
00:19:39,667 --> 00:19:42,059
What also happened of course
at the same time

280
00:19:42,083 --> 00:19:46,975
was the Avant-Garde saw itself
as mad,

281
00:19:46,999 --> 00:19:53,059
saw itself as outside of
the norms of accepted action,

282
00:19:53,083 --> 00:19:56,250
statement, and belief.

283
00:20:05,125 --> 00:20:08,727
The Expressionists, for example,
without any problem

284
00:20:08,751 --> 00:20:11,101
thought of themselves
as the mentally ill

285
00:20:11,125 --> 00:20:13,727
of the world of art.

286
00:20:13,751 --> 00:20:14,975
They evoked that.

287
00:20:14,999 --> 00:20:19,768
They said we are artists who are
just like the mentally ill.

288
00:20:19,792 --> 00:20:21,518
We stand outside
of all institutions,

289
00:20:21,542 --> 00:20:24,351
we use our own language.

290
00:20:24,375 --> 00:20:27,417
They meant it, of course,
metaphorically.

291
00:20:29,738 --> 00:20:32,738
(Shouts and sinister music)

292
00:20:34,834 --> 00:20:38,101
Voiceover: But in the 1920's
the Expressionists had no reason

293
00:20:38,125 --> 00:20:39,935
to fear the Nazis,

294
00:20:39,959 --> 00:20:44,185
a tiny faction of misfits
marginal at best.

295
00:20:44,209 --> 00:20:48,876
There were fewer than 27,000
Nazis in all of Germany.

296
00:20:49,709 --> 00:20:52,709
(1920's Jazz Music)

297
00:20:52,709 --> 00:21:00,643
In Berlin, modern artists
flourished

298
00:21:00,667 --> 00:21:03,975
and their work sold.

299
00:21:03,999 --> 00:21:07,477
A new freedom stirred the air.

300
00:21:07,501 --> 00:21:14,727
Few people cared about Hitler
and his fanatic ideas.

301
00:21:14,751 --> 00:21:18,999
Berlin became the capital
of the international art world.

302
00:21:27,542 --> 00:21:30,976
Museum directors spent public
funds on contemporary art

303
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:37,975
proclaiming, we cannot have
museums that sit and wait.

304
00:21:37,999 --> 00:21:40,393
Perhaps the most celebrated
of all the artists

305
00:21:40,417 --> 00:21:42,975
was Max Beckmann.

306
00:21:42,999 --> 00:21:47,643
Beckmann had known success early
before the Great War.

307
00:21:47,667 --> 00:21:49,975
At 29 years old
he was already praised

308
00:21:49,999 --> 00:21:54,975
as a genuine and noble artist,
a true German.

309
00:21:54,999 --> 00:21:59,351
Then his work had little in
common with the Expressionists

310
00:21:59,375 --> 00:22:02,976
but he was transformed
by the war.

311
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:05,975
He had volunteered
for the ambulance service,

312
00:22:05,999 --> 00:22:09,852
after months in the thick of
the fighting he was discharged,

313
00:22:09,876 --> 00:22:12,459
mentally exhausted.

314
00:22:17,501 --> 00:22:21,975
His self-portrait in 1917
"Twisted and Defiant,"

315
00:22:21,999 --> 00:22:25,268
bears witness to his experience.

316
00:22:25,292 --> 00:22:29,501
"My pictures reproach God
for his errors," he wrote.

317
00:22:34,959 --> 00:22:39,143
Now in the 1920s Beckmann,
at the height of his career,

318
00:22:39,167 --> 00:22:42,976
continued to be haunted
by the war.

319
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:46,975
"We have to lay our hearts
bare to the cries of people

320
00:22:46,999 --> 00:22:50,167
who have been lied to."

321
00:23:13,250 --> 00:23:18,393
In 1929 Hitler got the chance
he was waiting for.

322
00:23:18,417 --> 00:23:22,435
The Great Depression broke
the German democracy's back.

323
00:23:22,459 --> 00:23:28,059
Over five million people
were out of work.

324
00:23:28,083 --> 00:23:30,727
Hitler rejoiced,

325
00:23:30,751 --> 00:23:33,810
"Never in my life have I been
so well disposed

326
00:23:33,834 --> 00:23:37,435
and inwardly contented
as in these days."

327
00:23:37,459 --> 00:23:40,727
Hughes: People just felt the bottom
had dropped out of their world.

328
00:23:40,751 --> 00:23:43,602
The impotent rage
that was generated by this,

329
00:23:43,626 --> 00:23:45,975
the feeling that you had been
betrayed,

330
00:23:45,999 --> 00:23:49,018
all this was extremely ripe
ground for the direction

331
00:23:49,042 --> 00:23:52,852
of indignation against
certain targets.

332
00:23:52,876 --> 00:23:54,268
Gilman: They were the Jews,

333
00:23:54,292 --> 00:23:57,143
they were the politicals
who were not acceptable,

334
00:23:57,167 --> 00:24:00,143
they were the ones who were
infecting the bloodstream

335
00:24:00,167 --> 00:24:02,976
of the pure race.

336
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:04,935
But he also sees the idea

337
00:24:04,959 --> 00:24:12,685
of culture being infected
by degenerates.

338
00:24:12,709 --> 00:24:16,143
Modernism in art was a symptom.

339
00:24:16,167 --> 00:24:19,852
There is a sign of what's going
wrong with this society,

340
00:24:19,876 --> 00:24:21,477
that's why you don't have a job,

341
00:24:21,501 --> 00:24:22,975
that's why you're standing
in a bread line,

342
00:24:22,999 --> 00:24:24,643
that's why you're paying
a million marks

343
00:24:24,667 --> 00:24:25,975
for a loaf of bread.

344
00:24:25,999 --> 00:24:29,143
It's because of that kind
of sickness within the society

345
00:24:29,167 --> 00:24:31,975
which is symbolized
by this kind of art.

346
00:24:31,999 --> 00:24:37,101
That became a very powerful
argument.

347
00:24:37,125 --> 00:24:40,143
Voiceover: Casting themselves as
defenders of the middle classes,

348
00:24:40,167 --> 00:24:43,975
the Nazis exploited
public anxiety and fear

349
00:24:43,999 --> 00:24:47,560
and harvested the protest vote.

350
00:24:47,584 --> 00:24:49,976
They had no real program.

351
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:52,018
A Hitler lieutenant declared,

352
00:24:52,042 --> 00:24:56,975
"National Socialism is the
opposite of what we have now."

353
00:24:56,999 --> 00:25:01,560
With the elections of 1930
and 1932, the Nazis emerged

354
00:25:01,584 --> 00:25:06,292
as the country's largest
political party.

355
00:25:08,467 --> 00:25:11,467
(Patriotic Songs)

356
00:25:12,209 --> 00:25:18,351
January 1933,
German parliament deadlocks,

357
00:25:18,375 --> 00:25:20,810
Hitler is appointed chancellor

358
00:25:20,834 --> 00:25:26,768
of the very republic
he had promised to crush.

359
00:25:26,792 --> 00:25:30,459
The German democracy
was near death.

360
00:25:30,884 --> 00:25:33,884
(Cheers and patriotic singing)

361
00:25:35,876 --> 00:25:37,976
The fires of the Nazi torchlight
parades

362
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:42,999
would soon become the fires
of the Berlin book burnings.

363
00:26:04,751 --> 00:26:06,975
Voiceover: In power less than five months,

364
00:26:06,999 --> 00:26:09,435
the Nazis fueled a bonfire
in Berlin

365
00:26:09,459 --> 00:26:11,727
with books by some of
the greatest modern authors

366
00:26:11,751 --> 00:26:13,894
and thinkers.

367
00:26:13,918 --> 00:26:19,727
Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht,
Karl Marx, Albert Einstein,

368
00:26:19,751 --> 00:26:22,226
Sigmund Freud.

369
00:26:22,250 --> 00:26:26,209
The war on the modern
imagination had begun.

370
00:26:30,030 --> 00:26:33,030
(Ominous Music)

371
00:26:37,292 --> 00:26:40,810
One of the painter's exhibited
in the Degenerate Art show

372
00:26:40,834 --> 00:26:44,501
was Titus Felixmuller's father,
Conrad.

373
00:28:16,334 --> 00:28:20,975
Voiceover: The Nazis swept through
German museums firing directors.

374
00:28:20,999 --> 00:28:23,643
The official term
was vacationing,

375
00:28:23,667 --> 00:28:25,852
confiscating works of art,

376
00:28:25,876 --> 00:28:29,435
shutting down the modern wing
of the Berlin National Gallery

377
00:28:29,459 --> 00:28:30,643
and the Bauhaus,

378
00:28:30,667 --> 00:28:33,975
famed symbol of modernisms
commitment to social change,

379
00:28:33,999 --> 00:28:37,042
was summarily closed forever.

380
00:28:42,876 --> 00:28:46,894
Through it all Emil Nolde
remained a loyal party member

381
00:28:46,918 --> 00:28:50,975
attacking other artists calling
them half-breeds, bastards,

382
00:28:50,999 --> 00:28:52,477
and mulattos,

383
00:28:52,501 --> 00:28:57,768
and extolling the natural
superiority of Nordic peoples.

384
00:28:57,792 --> 00:28:59,435
Hughes: There's no contradiction
between

385
00:28:59,459 --> 00:29:01,975
being a fascist and being an artist.

386
00:29:01,999 --> 00:29:03,560
I'm sorry but there isn't.

387
00:29:03,584 --> 00:29:08,810
It happens that not very many
good artists have been Nazis.

388
00:29:08,834 --> 00:29:10,310
It's not surprising, actually,

389
00:29:10,334 --> 00:29:13,268
that Nolde was such an early
party member

390
00:29:13,292 --> 00:29:16,976
because the Nazis, too, believed
in blood and race and soil

391
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:18,935
and the primitive and the truth
of the peasants

392
00:29:18,959 --> 00:29:20,226
and all the rest of it.

393
00:29:20,250 --> 00:29:22,852
What is slightly more surprising

394
00:29:22,876 --> 00:29:28,417
is the vehemence with which
the party later turned on him.

395
00:29:33,876 --> 00:29:37,268
Voiceover: Joseph Goebbels was Hitler's
cultural deputy.

396
00:29:37,292 --> 00:29:41,250
He headed the Nazi Ministry of
Enlightenment and Propaganda.

397
00:29:52,709 --> 00:29:55,976
Goebbels gained total power
over public exhibitions,

398
00:29:56,000 --> 00:30:00,101
films, radio, theater, music,
literature, artists,

399
00:30:00,125 --> 00:30:03,976
and the press.

400
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:06,393
Karla Eckert was working
as a reporter

401
00:30:06,417 --> 00:30:08,143
for a Nazi party newspaper

402
00:30:08,167 --> 00:30:12,042
when she was sent to cover
the Degenerate Art Exhibit.

403
00:31:43,167 --> 00:31:45,059
Voiceover: All the arts were affected.

404
00:31:45,083 --> 00:31:52,975
Films like this one by
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy were banned.

405
00:31:52,999 --> 00:31:55,999
Abstraction was strictly
forbidden.

406
00:32:00,959 --> 00:32:03,351
In music atonality, dissonance,

407
00:32:03,375 --> 00:32:08,768
any deviation from classical
tradition was not permitted.

408
00:32:08,792 --> 00:32:13,935
Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, and
this piece by Arnold Schoenberg

409
00:32:13,959 --> 00:32:16,751
were labeled degenerate.

410
00:32:21,667 --> 00:32:25,250
All forms of modern music
were ridiculed.

411
00:32:25,250 --> 00:32:28,250
(Jazz Music)

412
00:32:28,999 --> 00:32:31,768
Jazz was attacked
and viciously parodied

413
00:32:31,792 --> 00:32:34,584
in so-called degenerate music
exhibitions.

414
00:32:38,626 --> 00:32:40,643
One former jazz musician
remembers

415
00:32:40,667 --> 00:32:43,435
that the Nazis prohibited
all mutes

416
00:32:43,459 --> 00:32:46,685
which turned the noble sound
of wind and brass instruments

417
00:32:46,709 --> 00:32:50,876
into a Jewish-free masonic howl.

418
00:32:58,083 --> 00:33:02,268
Hitler resolved to create
a new culture for the new Reich.

419
00:33:02,292 --> 00:33:06,059
There was no place for the
sensitive or troubled soul.

420
00:33:06,083 --> 00:33:11,975
A steady stream of propaganda
infiltrated daily life.

421
00:33:11,999 --> 00:33:14,810
The very first Nazi public
building project

422
00:33:14,834 --> 00:33:17,975
was to be a museum in Munich.

423
00:33:17,999 --> 00:33:20,975
Hitler called it
the House of German Art

424
00:33:20,999 --> 00:33:23,975
and spent hours poring
over the most minute details

425
00:33:23,999 --> 00:33:29,975
of its design.

426
00:33:29,999 --> 00:33:33,518
To honor its completion in 1937,

427
00:33:33,542 --> 00:33:36,185
thousands of marchers celebrated
in a pageant

428
00:33:36,209 --> 00:33:42,975
called "2,000 Years
of German Culture."

429
00:33:42,999 --> 00:33:46,685
It was a vision of history based
on a link with an archaic past

430
00:33:46,709 --> 00:33:49,584
that had never existed.

431
00:34:02,792 --> 00:34:07,975
On July 18, 1937, the House
of German Art opened its doors

432
00:34:07,999 --> 00:34:13,185
with an exhibition selected
by the Fuhrer himself.

433
00:34:13,208 --> 00:34:16,935
Here was Hitler's pantheon
honoring what he called

434
00:34:16,958 --> 00:34:19,958
a new and genuine German art

435
00:34:22,250 --> 00:34:24,851
and it was all for sale.

436
00:34:24,876 --> 00:34:26,975
People gathered especially
around those paintings

437
00:34:26,998 --> 00:34:30,185
and sculptures that Hitler
had bought himself.

438
00:34:30,208 --> 00:34:33,101
Hitler knew what he liked.

439
00:34:33,125 --> 00:34:36,351
It was a celebration
of Aryan ideals

440
00:34:36,375 --> 00:34:39,975
of racially pure women and men.

441
00:34:39,998 --> 00:34:45,226
Hughes: The art must be elevated,
it must be classical.

442
00:34:45,250 --> 00:34:47,726
I suppose you could say, yeah,
it's bulls and Greeks

443
00:34:47,751 --> 00:34:49,810
and naked woman.

444
00:34:49,833 --> 00:34:54,059
It's the vocabulary of classism.

445
00:34:54,083 --> 00:34:59,310
It has to have this character
of permanence and nobility.

446
00:34:59,334 --> 00:35:00,975
Now what they got out of it
of course

447
00:35:00,999 --> 00:35:05,185
was the most extraordinary kind
of art deco kitsch.

448
00:35:05,209 --> 00:35:08,975
Anybody can understand
a whacking great surfer

449
00:35:08,999 --> 00:35:12,501
with giant pecs
holding up a sword.

450
00:35:13,654 --> 00:35:16,654
Peter Guenther (Witness/Art Historian):

451
00:35:18,417 --> 00:35:21,310
Guenther: The Haus der Deutschen Kunst
is a very large building,

452
00:35:21,334 --> 00:35:26,975
high ceilings, wide halls,
and marble floors

453
00:35:26,999 --> 00:35:28,643
and those enormous spaces

454
00:35:28,667 --> 00:35:31,643
these muscle-bound huge,
big figures,

455
00:35:31,667 --> 00:35:34,643
they're relatively few people
in there.

456
00:35:34,667 --> 00:35:38,685
It was really kind of
a frightening affair

457
00:35:38,709 --> 00:35:40,975
and then the other thing
which also disturbed me

458
00:35:40,999 --> 00:35:43,975
and, I hope you don't mind,
but was the 17-year-old one

459
00:35:43,999 --> 00:35:46,894
were the enormous numbers
of nudes.

460
00:35:46,918 --> 00:35:48,975
Not only male nudes muscle
packed

461
00:35:48,999 --> 00:35:53,477
but also pink females
in large numbers.

462
00:35:53,501 --> 00:35:55,975
They were like manikins
with no movement

463
00:35:55,999 --> 00:35:59,101
and no expression
and no character.

464
00:35:59,125 --> 00:36:03,975
Basically to me that was
by far closer to pornography

465
00:36:03,999 --> 00:36:06,518
than anything which
the Expressionists did.

466
00:36:06,542 --> 00:36:09,477
The Expressionists' figures
were all moving,

467
00:36:09,501 --> 00:36:12,185
they were dancing or swimming
or jumping or running

468
00:36:12,209 --> 00:36:16,643
or doing something because
they were out in nature.

469
00:36:16,667 --> 00:36:19,310
They had just taken off
this bourgeois clothing

470
00:36:19,334 --> 00:36:22,685
and here they were full of joy
of life.

471
00:36:22,709 --> 00:36:24,435
As far as women were concerned

472
00:36:24,459 --> 00:36:27,768
if you look at the Nazi
depiction

473
00:36:27,792 --> 00:36:30,268
they were really were
only two roles,

474
00:36:30,292 --> 00:36:34,560
either they were nude
or they were mothers.

475
00:36:34,584 --> 00:36:36,975
And then the other thing
if you really want to look

476
00:36:36,999 --> 00:36:40,226
at the two sides of the coin
of what is war

477
00:36:40,250 --> 00:36:42,685
look at the Nazis
and look at the Expressionist

478
00:36:42,709 --> 00:36:46,143
and you'll find out who is who.

479
00:36:46,167 --> 00:36:49,935
The German Expressionists
were all against the war.

480
00:36:49,959 --> 00:36:53,976
There was not an Expressionist
who was not against the war.

481
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:55,894
Now the Nazis considered war

482
00:36:55,918 --> 00:36:58,852
as the greatest accomplishment
of mankind.

483
00:36:58,876 --> 00:37:01,602
The honored victory
and the all circumstance

484
00:37:01,626 --> 00:37:03,975
and even if you died
you died in victory

485
00:37:03,999 --> 00:37:08,268
and therefore you were a martyr.

486
00:37:08,292 --> 00:37:10,560
Hughes: It is perfect hypocritical art.

487
00:37:10,584 --> 00:37:11,935
It's hypocritical about the body,

488
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:15,560
about politics, every
damn thing you can imagine.

489
00:37:15,584 --> 00:37:16,935
What it has on its side is

490
00:37:16,959 --> 00:37:18,810
a certain kind
of technical virtuosity,

491
00:37:18,834 --> 00:37:20,975
which is undeniably there

492
00:37:20,999 --> 00:37:24,101
and which people
certainly found attractive

493
00:37:24,125 --> 00:37:27,268
and you know I dare say
people still do.

494
00:37:27,292 --> 00:37:29,894
One of the things that made
the propaganda work

495
00:37:29,918 --> 00:37:31,894
was the spectacle of the other.

496
00:37:31,918 --> 00:37:37,975
It was the ability to hold up
a painting of a distorted head

497
00:37:37,999 --> 00:37:41,059
with its mouth going like that

498
00:37:41,083 --> 00:37:44,643
and it's eyes goggling at you
all in weird colors

499
00:37:44,667 --> 00:37:46,975
and say if you don't believe
in our kind of culture

500
00:37:46,999 --> 00:37:49,918
this is what you're going
to get.

501
00:37:55,876 --> 00:37:57,685
Voiceover: Just across the park

502
00:37:57,709 --> 00:38:01,351
the very day after the opening
of the House of German Art,

503
00:38:01,375 --> 00:38:06,477
the Nazi war against modernism
came to a climax.

504
00:38:06,501 --> 00:38:08,975
16,000 works of art
had been snatched

505
00:38:08,999 --> 00:38:13,560
from the great public museums
of Germany.

506
00:38:13,584 --> 00:38:20,018
Now 650 were put on exhibition
in the Degenerate Art Show.

507
00:38:20,042 --> 00:38:21,935
Along with German artists,

508
00:38:21,959 --> 00:38:26,059
modern masters like Wassily
Kandisnsky, Piet Mondrian,

509
00:38:26,083 --> 00:38:29,351
and Paul Klee were put up
for ridicule.

510
00:38:29,375 --> 00:38:31,976
Hughes; It had the character
of a show trial.

511
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:33,310
Very different matter
just to say,

512
00:38:33,334 --> 00:38:35,643
well, this is just a bunch of
rubbish done by Jews and gypsies

513
00:38:35,667 --> 00:38:38,643
and it's culturally hideous
and let's get rid of it,

514
00:38:38,667 --> 00:38:41,894
the important thing is that
people should agree with you,

515
00:38:41,918 --> 00:38:44,185
that they should see it for
themselves with their own eyes

516
00:38:44,209 --> 00:38:47,000
and then conclude
that it's rubbish.

517
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:58,101
German Expressionism was an art
which above all celebrated--

518
00:38:58,125 --> 00:39:01,268
Ein Fuhrer,

519
00:39:01,292 --> 00:39:05,834
and that which was inward
must be outlawed.

520
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:11,059
This is the essence
of totalitarianism

521
00:39:11,083 --> 00:39:12,975
so therefore the project

522
00:39:12,999 --> 00:39:17,268
was to sweep all these little
inward thoughts

523
00:39:17,292 --> 00:39:19,059
out of their secret chambers

524
00:39:19,083 --> 00:39:21,976
and expose them to the light
of ridicule, you know,

525
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,834
like spraying Raid
on a bunch of cockroaches.

526
00:39:28,999 --> 00:39:32,059
Knapp: I was asking
at each picture, "Why?"

527
00:39:32,083 --> 00:39:35,975
because some it seemed difficult
to understand

528
00:39:35,999 --> 00:39:38,976
why a particular picture
had been taken

529
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,310
and they had an answer
for everyone,

530
00:39:42,334 --> 00:39:47,560
either it was a sick mind,
it was Bolshevik, it was Jewish.

531
00:39:47,584 --> 00:39:50,768
There were about 10 reasons.

532
00:39:50,792 --> 00:39:55,602
The cows I couldn't understand
that one.

533
00:39:55,626 --> 00:39:59,393
Guenther: Franz Marc had once painted
a happy cow.

534
00:39:59,417 --> 00:40:01,393
Now that was unacceptable

535
00:40:01,417 --> 00:40:04,143
and shows the Nazis very
typically said

536
00:40:04,167 --> 00:40:08,643
bring any farmer up
and let him look at that

537
00:40:08,667 --> 00:40:12,975
and he will say
that's not a cow.

538
00:40:12,999 --> 00:40:14,935
Hughes: It was a very
naively-arranged show.

539
00:40:14,959 --> 00:40:16,185
It wasn't a very
systematic show,

540
00:40:16,209 --> 00:40:18,018
I mean, they didn't go around
picking artists

541
00:40:18,042 --> 00:40:19,935
specifically through theme.

542
00:40:19,959 --> 00:40:21,435
They didn't go around picking
them specifically

543
00:40:21,459 --> 00:40:22,560
because they were Jewish.

544
00:40:22,584 --> 00:40:25,268
They just said, hey, look here's
this whole bunch of rubbish

545
00:40:25,292 --> 00:40:27,560
and now let's stick
in front of the German public

546
00:40:27,584 --> 00:40:31,059
and let them vote
with their eyes.

547
00:40:31,083 --> 00:40:34,602
Guenther: The number of Jewish painters
was relatively small.

548
00:40:34,626 --> 00:40:36,560
Now, Chagall was exhibited

549
00:40:36,584 --> 00:40:38,976
although he was A, Russian
and B, a Frenchman

550
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,477
but nevertheless he was "a Jew."

551
00:40:42,501 --> 00:40:46,560
Voiceover: 112 artists had been singled
out as degenerate,

552
00:40:46,584 --> 00:40:49,351
only six in the show
were Jewish.

553
00:40:49,375 --> 00:40:52,975
Gilman: The interesting thing is that
Jewish, degenerate,

554
00:40:52,999 --> 00:40:57,975
Bolshevik, insane, become
interchangeable categories.

555
00:40:57,999 --> 00:41:00,518
Therefore everybody who paints
paintings

556
00:41:00,542 --> 00:41:03,852
that are hung in the Degenerate
Art Exhibit are Jewish,

557
00:41:03,876 --> 00:41:06,059
they're also insane,
and they're also Bolshevik

558
00:41:06,083 --> 00:41:09,059
no matter what their religious

559
00:41:09,083 --> 00:41:12,999
or political identification
really was.

560
00:41:15,209 --> 00:41:18,560
Voiceover: Not even Nazi party membership
was protection.

561
00:41:18,584 --> 00:41:24,143
Emil Nolde had now been
a Nazi party member for 16 years

562
00:41:24,167 --> 00:41:27,852
but Nazi critics charged
that his fascination

563
00:41:27,876 --> 00:41:31,226
with the life of people of a
simpler nature and darker color

564
00:41:31,250 --> 00:41:36,975
was an indication
of degeneration.

565
00:41:36,999 --> 00:41:40,976
27 of his paintings were hung
in the Degenerate Art Show,

566
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:44,477
more than any other painter.

567
00:41:44,501 --> 00:41:47,018
The great altarpiece,
"The Life of Christ,"

568
00:41:47,042 --> 00:41:49,602
was flanked by commentary
that read

569
00:41:49,626 --> 00:41:52,975
"Insolent mockery
of the Divine."

570
00:41:52,999 --> 00:41:57,250
[ singing in German ]

571
00:42:05,459 --> 00:42:07,894
- At the opening
of The House of German Art,

572
00:42:07,918 --> 00:42:10,935
Hitler told
an enormous gathering,

573
00:42:10,959 --> 00:42:14,185
"We are going to wage
a merciless war of destruction

574
00:42:14,209 --> 00:42:15,975
"against the last
remaining elements

575
00:42:15,999 --> 00:42:18,975
"of cultural disintegration.

576
00:42:18,999 --> 00:42:22,226
"All those cliques of
chatterers, dilettantes,

577
00:42:22,250 --> 00:42:26,751
and art forgers will be picked
up and liquidated."

578
00:42:29,250 --> 00:42:33,143
Max Beckmann heard Hitler's
speech on the radio.

579
00:42:33,167 --> 00:42:36,975
He had been perhaps the most
honored painter in Germany.

580
00:42:36,999 --> 00:42:39,810
Now he and his wife quickly
packed a few things

581
00:42:39,834 --> 00:42:42,018
and left Berlin

582
00:42:42,042 --> 00:42:45,975
never to return.

583
00:42:45,999 --> 00:42:48,975
In Amsterdam, he painted
a self-portrait.

584
00:42:48,999 --> 00:42:52,584
He called it
"The Liberated Man."

585
00:42:56,667 --> 00:43:01,518
Oscar Kokoschka had fled
to Czechoslovakia.

586
00:43:01,542 --> 00:43:03,351
Olda: Because he suddenly saw
himself

587
00:43:03,375 --> 00:43:05,143
in front of nothing whatsoever

588
00:43:05,167 --> 00:43:09,351
when everything that
he has worked for and done

589
00:43:09,375 --> 00:43:11,810
and developed and was proud of

590
00:43:11,834 --> 00:43:14,810
was suddenly delivered
through destruction.

591
00:43:14,834 --> 00:43:19,226
It's a shocking thing
to absorb somehow.

592
00:43:19,250 --> 00:43:21,894
What happened was that
he got ill.

593
00:43:21,918 --> 00:43:24,143
He had a sort
of nervous breakdown

594
00:43:24,167 --> 00:43:29,768
which suddenly produced
a physical weakness

595
00:43:29,792 --> 00:43:33,518
and then he decided that
painting was the one thing

596
00:43:33,542 --> 00:43:36,975
which he really had to--
had to do.

597
00:43:36,999 --> 00:43:39,975
At that time he was working
on a self-portrait.

598
00:43:39,999 --> 00:43:42,310
He suddenly pulled himself
together

599
00:43:42,334 --> 00:43:46,059
and it became one of the most
important of his works

600
00:43:46,083 --> 00:43:50,643
and it's called "The Portrait
of the Degenerate Artist"

601
00:43:50,667 --> 00:43:55,834
that really was an absolutely
immediate rejection of pride.

602
00:44:07,584 --> 00:44:09,685
Voiceover: Many artists emigrated

603
00:44:09,709 --> 00:44:12,975
but Otto Dix chose to stay
in Germany.

604
00:44:12,999 --> 00:44:16,268
His son Ursus remembers why.

605
00:44:16,292 --> 00:44:18,975
Ursus: He said he could not paint
outside Germany

606
00:44:18,999 --> 00:44:23,643
and then he said, "What can I do
with two studios full of paintings here?

607
00:44:23,667 --> 00:44:24,894
"I can't just leave that, the

608
00:44:24,918 --> 00:44:27,477
Nazis will come in
and confiscate it all."

609
00:44:27,501 --> 00:44:31,059
He felt that his theme
was people.

610
00:44:31,083 --> 00:44:34,143
And there he was, dismissed
from his job in Berlin,

611
00:44:34,167 --> 00:44:39,435
he had to retire likely to
the... furthest most corner

612
00:44:39,459 --> 00:44:41,768
of Germany, to Lake Constance

613
00:44:41,792 --> 00:44:45,518
where he could only paint
landscapes.

614
00:44:45,542 --> 00:44:48,059
Voiceover: "I painted landscapes,"
Dix said,

615
00:44:48,083 --> 00:44:52,959
"that was tantamount
to emigration."

616
00:44:57,113 --> 00:45:00,113
(Discordant Music)

617
00:45:05,417 --> 00:45:09,143
The exhibition called Degenerate
Art toured Germany and Austria

618
00:45:09,167 --> 00:45:13,768
for more than four years.

619
00:45:13,792 --> 00:45:16,185
It became the most popular
exhibition of art

620
00:45:16,209 --> 00:45:18,435
ever assembled.

621
00:45:18,459 --> 00:45:22,185
More than three million people
came to see it.

622
00:45:22,209 --> 00:45:24,975
Knapp: Here was the death--the
absolute death

623
00:45:24,999 --> 00:45:27,477
of art in Germany.

624
00:45:27,501 --> 00:45:30,477
The wonderful things that had
been taking place there,

625
00:45:30,501 --> 00:45:32,975
the great artists, the Bauhaus,

626
00:45:32,999 --> 00:45:38,018
all of these things
were being killed.

627
00:45:38,042 --> 00:45:41,560
Voiceover; The Nazis had hung Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner's self-portrait

628
00:45:41,584 --> 00:45:43,810
in the Degenerate Art Exhibit.

629
00:45:43,834 --> 00:45:47,477
They renamed it
"Soldier with Whore."

630
00:45:47,501 --> 00:45:49,059
Kirchner had been
a popular leader

631
00:45:49,083 --> 00:45:51,143
of the Expressionist movement.

632
00:45:51,167 --> 00:45:53,975
Now his work was outlawed.

633
00:45:53,999 --> 00:45:56,976
Deeply agitated, he began
to destroy the pieces

634
00:45:57,000 --> 00:45:58,852
he himself owned.

635
00:45:58,876 --> 00:46:02,975
He shattered his woodblocks
and burned his paintings.

636
00:46:02,999 --> 00:46:07,751
On June 11, 1938,
he committed suicide.

637
00:46:11,292 --> 00:46:17,894
Voiceover: For Emil Nolde, the Nazis seemed
to harbor a special vengeance.

638
00:46:17,918 --> 00:46:20,935
Selz: The Nazis really tried
to eradicate this man.

639
00:46:20,959 --> 00:46:23,185
They first prohibited him
of exhibiting,

640
00:46:23,209 --> 00:46:25,101
then actually put a cop
around him

641
00:46:25,125 --> 00:46:26,894
to prohibit him from painting

642
00:46:26,918 --> 00:46:29,351
and he kept pleading
with the Nazis.

643
00:46:29,375 --> 00:46:32,268
He said, "Look, but I joined
the Nazi party early."

644
00:46:32,292 --> 00:46:34,018
They didn't want to hear
any of this.

645
00:46:34,042 --> 00:46:35,975
During that period he couldn't
paint oils anymore

646
00:46:35,999 --> 00:46:38,975
because people could smell the
turpentine around his studio

647
00:46:38,999 --> 00:46:41,477
so he painted what he called
unpainted pictures

648
00:46:41,501 --> 00:46:45,310
which are wonderful small
watercolors very tiny

649
00:46:45,334 --> 00:46:47,975
and this was some of his most
extraordinary paintings,

650
00:46:47,999 --> 00:46:50,459
of big mystery.

651
00:46:53,292 --> 00:46:57,727
Voiceover: "Only to you my little
pictures," Nolde wrote,

652
00:46:57,751 --> 00:47:02,059
"do I sometimes confide
my grief, my torment,

653
00:47:02,083 --> 00:47:04,999
my contempt."

654
00:47:20,999 --> 00:47:24,768
Voiceover: In 1938, the Nazis decided
to turn the most valuable

655
00:47:24,792 --> 00:47:27,518
of their plundered art
into hard currency

656
00:47:27,542 --> 00:47:31,685
and put them up for auction.

657
00:47:31,709 --> 00:47:34,435
Gert Verneberg was responsible
for cataloguing

658
00:47:34,459 --> 00:47:35,975
the plundered art

659
00:47:35,999 --> 00:47:39,751
when one day Emil Nolde
came asking for help.

660
00:48:25,375 --> 00:48:29,975
Voiceover: The auction was held
in Switzerland in June 1939,

661
00:48:29,999 --> 00:48:33,975
Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso,
Gauguin,

662
00:48:33,999 --> 00:48:39,560
along with the German artists
were all put on the block.

663
00:48:39,584 --> 00:48:44,935
Profits went directly
into Nazi party coffers

664
00:48:44,959 --> 00:48:50,185
but the loss to Germany
was irreparable.

665
00:48:50,209 --> 00:48:56,999
The Nazis were selling off the
cultural heritage of the nation.

666
00:49:16,634 --> 00:49:19,634
(Rousing Instrumental Music)

667
00:49:43,626 --> 00:49:46,059
Voiceover: Every year Hitler mounted
a new exhibition

668
00:49:46,083 --> 00:49:51,727
at The Museum of German Art

669
00:49:51,751 --> 00:49:58,894
and every year Hitler himself
was the largest buyer.

670
00:49:58,918 --> 00:50:05,560
He bought 264 works of art
in July 1939.

671
00:50:05,584 --> 00:50:09,477
Six weeks later German armies
invaded Poland.

672
00:50:09,501 --> 00:50:13,000
[ bombs exploding ] (Dramatic music)

673
00:50:36,167 --> 00:50:42,185
The war would leave Germany
in ruins, millions dead,

674
00:50:42,209 --> 00:50:46,975
millions more murdered
in the concentration camps.

675
00:50:46,999 --> 00:50:51,560
Years before, the writer
Heinrich Heine had warned,

676
00:50:51,584 --> 00:50:55,643
"Where books are burned,
people will be burned."

677
00:50:55,667 --> 00:50:57,975
Hughes: One of the most
grotesque kind

678
00:50:57,999 --> 00:51:00,727
of unintended results of this-

679
00:51:00,751 --> 00:51:02,185
I remember when I was a kid

680
00:51:02,209 --> 00:51:06,975
seeing the newsreels of
the liberation of the camps.

681
00:51:06,999 --> 00:51:10,518
I never forgot that shot
of the bulldozer

682
00:51:10,542 --> 00:51:15,059
rolling the mass of starved
corpses, the typhoid dead,

683
00:51:15,083 --> 00:51:18,976
the murdered, into this enormous
mass grave

684
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,185
and it always comes back to me
strangely enough

685
00:51:21,209 --> 00:51:25,852
when I look at the distortion
and elongation

686
00:51:25,876 --> 00:51:29,643
in certain German
Expressionists' pictures

687
00:51:29,667 --> 00:51:38,018
as though the aesthetic
distortions of Expressionism

688
00:51:38,042 --> 00:51:41,435
had been made real and concrete
and absolute

689
00:51:41,459 --> 00:51:44,975
on the real suffering human body
by the Nazis.

690
00:51:44,999 --> 00:51:48,975
As though this was some kind
of climactic work of art

691
00:51:48,999 --> 00:51:52,975
which ended up mimicking what
they had attempted to repress.

692
00:51:52,999 --> 00:51:55,351
This is a very superficial way
of looking at it, I know,

693
00:51:55,375 --> 00:51:56,975
because it leaves out
the actually content

694
00:51:56,999 --> 00:51:57,975
of the suffering,

695
00:51:57,999 --> 00:52:01,975
but for a gentile boy seeing
that in Australia

696
00:52:01,999 --> 00:52:06,602
40-some years ago
on a grainy movie....

697
00:52:06,626 --> 00:52:10,999
I compare the two images
and I can't help thinking of it.

698
00:52:20,209 --> 00:52:22,602
Voiceover: The Degenerate Art Exhibit
evokes an era

699
00:52:22,626 --> 00:52:25,042
that continues to haunt us.

700
00:52:32,167 --> 00:52:36,143
Look carefully
at these paintings.

701
00:52:36,167 --> 00:52:41,185
In their story lies the best and
the worst of the human spirit.

702
00:52:41,209 --> 00:52:45,351
Guenther: I think in order to continue
any kind of free expression,

703
00:52:45,375 --> 00:52:46,852
you have to know what happens

704
00:52:46,876 --> 00:52:48,975
when free expression
gets stifled,

705
00:52:48,999 --> 00:52:53,393
and that great art
can be vilified like this.

706
00:52:53,417 --> 00:52:56,768
It makes you think--it makes you
question authority.

707
00:52:56,792 --> 00:53:01,435
I think that is where
art is dangerous.

708
00:53:01,459 --> 00:53:05,685
Gilman: It's terribly frightening
to look into a work of art

709
00:53:05,709 --> 00:53:09,894
and see those secret parts
of yourself

710
00:53:09,918 --> 00:53:13,310
those parts that you don't ever
want to talk about or see

711
00:53:13,334 --> 00:53:15,101
revealed to the world

712
00:53:15,125 --> 00:53:18,975
and I think that's what scared
the Nazis.

713
00:53:18,999 --> 00:53:22,975
Hughes: The avant-garde had always
hoped to be dangerous

714
00:53:22,999 --> 00:53:24,685
that is the thing the guys
with the armbands

715
00:53:24,709 --> 00:53:26,602
were paying a kind of supreme
compliment

716
00:53:26,626 --> 00:53:27,975
even in the act
of repressing it.

717
00:53:27,999 --> 00:53:29,975
They were saying
this really matters,

718
00:53:29,999 --> 00:53:33,310
this really counts in the way
that people react to one another

719
00:53:33,334 --> 00:53:34,976
in the way in which states
are formed.

720
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:42,477
This is language
and it affects daily life.

721
00:53:42,501 --> 00:53:46,768
Voiceover: In 1933, the great German
novelist Thomas Mann

722
00:53:46,792 --> 00:53:49,975
fled Hitler's Germany.

723
00:53:49,999 --> 00:53:53,351
12 years later,
the war at an end,

724
00:53:53,375 --> 00:53:56,975
he spoke at
the Library of Congress.

725
00:53:56,999 --> 00:54:02,727
Mann: "This story should convince us
of one thing--

726
00:54:02,751 --> 00:54:06,477
"that there are not
two Germanys,

727
00:54:06,501 --> 00:54:09,477
"a good one and a bad one,

728
00:54:09,501 --> 00:54:11,518
"but only one.

729
00:54:11,542 --> 00:54:14,643
"It is quite impossible
for one born there

730
00:54:14,667 --> 00:54:18,975
"simply to renounce
the wicked, guilty Germany

731
00:54:18,999 --> 00:54:25,143
"and to declare 'I am the good,
the noble, the just Germany.'

732
00:54:25,167 --> 00:54:27,685
"It is always in me.

733
00:54:27,709 --> 00:54:31,417
I have been through it all."