WEBVTT 00:00:02.730 --> 00:00:14.889 [Opening music] 00:00:14.889 --> 00:00:18.759 Voiceover (narrator David McColloch): Here in Berlin in 1933, 00:00:18.759 --> 00:00:21.679 the Nazi party came to power. 00:00:21.679 --> 00:00:25.499 [Train clattering and whistling] 00:00:25.499 --> 00:00:28.000 [Music] 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:30.685 At once they began burning books 00:00:30.709 --> 00:00:33.976 and attacking writers and artists, 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:38.789 waging a full scale war on the modern imagination. 00:00:38.789 --> 00:00:43.876 [Music] 00:00:43.876 --> 00:00:47.768 In 1937, the Nazis held up for ridicule 00:00:47.792 --> 00:00:51.101 the works of art they most despised 00:00:51.125 --> 00:00:54.505 in the most infamous art show of all time. 00:00:54.505 --> 00:00:56.501 Robert Hughes: Three million people went to it. 00:00:56.501 --> 00:00:58.518 It was the most successful goddamn blockbuster 00:00:58.542 --> 00:01:01.975 in the history of modern exhibition techniques 00:01:01.975 --> 00:01:05.459 and 95% of 'em just laughed at it. 00:01:08.194 --> 00:01:09.834 (Peter Selz - Art Historian) 00:01:09.834 --> 00:01:12.935 - Here were outstanding artists who were highly honored 00:01:12.959 --> 00:01:15.310 and then suddenly they were criminals, 00:01:15.334 --> 00:01:17.768 and they were Jews, and they were Bolsheviks, 00:01:17.792 --> 00:01:20.685 and they were all kinds of things. 00:01:20.709 --> 00:01:23.976 Voiceover: In the end many artists and writers would flee. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:30.143 Others remained to face ruined careers, suicide, and death. 00:01:30.167 --> 00:01:35.351 The Nazis called the exhibition Entartete Kunst-- 00:01:35.375 --> 00:01:38.292 Degenerate Art. 00:01:38.315 --> 00:01:58.495 [Music] 00:02:04.135 --> 00:02:11.083 Narrator: The Altes Museum in Berlin, 1992. 00:02:12.721 --> 00:02:14.584 Painting and sculpture 00:02:14.584 --> 00:02:17.625 once part of the Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibition 00:02:17.625 --> 00:02:20.894 has been gathered together by an American museum 00:02:20.918 --> 00:02:23.542 and put on display here in Germany. 00:02:29.083 --> 00:02:34.310 Today for most of us these works of art are no longer threatening 00:02:34.310 --> 00:02:37.435 but there was a time when they outraged most people, 00:02:37.435 --> 00:02:40.758 shocked and bewildered them. 00:02:40.758 --> 00:02:44.768 In the 1930s, the Nazis said they were dangerous 00:02:44.792 --> 00:02:48.289 and were bent on their destruction. 00:02:48.289 --> 00:02:56.457 [Music] 00:02:56.457 --> 00:02:58.327 [Drumming] 00:02:58.327 --> 00:03:08.156 [Trumpets, drumming and cheering] 00:03:09.209 --> 00:03:14.421 Nazi Germany was dominated by a single man, Adolf Hitler. 00:03:16.515 --> 00:03:21.098 He called himself the Fuhrer and promised a new Germany, 00:03:21.102 --> 00:03:24.460 peopled by a master race, 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:27.167 cleansed of degenerates. 00:03:27.167 --> 00:03:31.619 [Music, crowd noise] 00:03:31.619 --> 00:03:35.852 Modern artists, Hitler said, were degenerate 00:03:35.876 --> 00:03:37.715 and he vowed to eliminate them. 00:03:37.715 --> 00:03:39.595 [Music, crowd noise] 00:03:41.145 --> 00:03:43.497 The show he called "Degenerate Art" 00:03:43.497 --> 00:03:46.351 was to be more than an exhibition. 00:03:46.375 --> 00:03:49.250 It was to be their funeral. 00:03:49.257 --> 00:03:54.408 [Music] 00:03:54.408 --> 00:03:58.530 Josephine Knapp: I had heard nothing about this Degenerate Art Exhibition. 00:03:58.530 --> 00:04:00.226 I stumbled onto it. 00:04:00.250 --> 00:04:02.477 It wasn't on my itinerary because-- 00:04:02.477 --> 00:04:04.999 Voiceover: Josephine Knapp was an American art student 00:04:04.999 --> 00:04:08.810 traveling through Germany in 1937. 00:04:08.834 --> 00:04:10.518 Knapp: I was walking on the street 00:04:10.542 --> 00:04:15.310 and I saw the banner over the door, went inside, 00:04:15.334 --> 00:04:18.726 rickety staircase. I went up 00:04:18.750 --> 00:04:22.017 and then I almost bumped my head on the knee 00:04:22.041 --> 00:04:24.785 of the great wooden Christ by Gies. 00:04:24.785 --> 00:04:26.999 They'd hung it on the landing in such a way 00:04:26.999 --> 00:04:28.852 that you had to get around it 00:04:28.876 --> 00:04:33.463 when originally it had been hung high in the Lubeck Cathedral. 00:04:35.167 --> 00:04:40.560 I'd turned off the landing and saw pictures crowded together, 00:04:40.584 --> 00:04:45.577 some on burlap, some crooked, badly lighted. 00:04:47.417 --> 00:04:50.975 Peter Gunter: It was a claustrophobic affair. 00:04:50.999 --> 00:04:53.185 The rooms were relatively small. 00:04:53.209 --> 00:04:56.143 Voiceover: Gunter witnessed the Nazi sponsored exhibition 00:04:56.167 --> 00:04:58.773 as a 17-year-old. 00:04:58.773 --> 00:05:02.393 Gunter: The walls were not hung in the normal way 00:05:02.417 --> 00:05:05.268 but were plastered with works of art, 00:05:05.292 --> 00:05:07.975 some of the pictures without the frames, 00:05:07.999 --> 00:05:10.975 some of the abstract pictures upside down 00:05:10.999 --> 00:05:14.018 with graffiti written behind them and above them 00:05:14.042 --> 00:05:15.976 and around them. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:18.975 Voiceover: The graffiti ridiculed the works of art. 00:05:18.999 --> 00:05:23.810 "Nature is seen by sick minds," "An insult to German womanhood," 00:05:23.834 --> 00:05:26.194 "Crazy at any price." 00:05:26.795 --> 00:05:29.375 Sander Gilderman, Cultural Historian: The common person 00:05:29.375 --> 00:05:32.375 walked into the Degenerate Art Show 00:05:32.375 --> 00:05:36.396 in a sense as a horror show-- a side show. 00:05:37.050 --> 00:05:42.018 This stuff on the wall was the work of madmen. 00:05:42.042 --> 00:05:43.976 This was the work of outsiders. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:45.435 This was the work of people 00:05:45.459 --> 00:05:49.238 who were out to destroy German culture. 00:05:50.312 --> 00:05:53.682 Voiceover: Kurt Assis was a 16-year-old high school student 00:05:53.682 --> 00:05:56.560 when the Degenerate Art Exhibit opened. 00:05:56.584 --> 00:06:00.314 His teacher urged his entire class to go and see it. 00:06:33.792 --> 00:06:36.975 Gilman: The Nazis took this art seriously. 00:06:36.999 --> 00:06:42.393 It scared them and they wanted to control it. 00:06:42.417 --> 00:06:46.435 It's very hard today in the United States, at least, 00:06:46.459 --> 00:06:49.375 to imagine art having that power. 00:06:49.375 --> 00:07:01.027 [Music] 00:07:01.027 --> 00:07:03.369 Voiceover: To understand why the Nazis 00:07:03.369 --> 00:07:05.226 attacked modern art you have to go back 00:07:05.250 --> 00:07:08.477 to the turn of the century and look at 00:07:08.501 --> 00:07:11.310 the work of a young Austrian struggling to 00:07:11.334 --> 00:07:13.868 paint in the popular style of the day. 00:07:16.332 --> 00:07:19.639 His name was Adolf Hitler. 00:07:20.041 --> 00:07:23.821 He was rejected by the Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna, 00:07:23.821 --> 00:07:27.028 and never did become a recognized artist. 00:07:27.028 --> 00:07:30.975 But all his life he would insist that the only true art 00:07:30.999 --> 00:07:34.346 was art that tried to imitate the natural world. 00:07:37.253 --> 00:07:39.976 Gilman: He painted basically postcards and 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:42.477 you can't fault him for that; that's what sold. 00:07:42.501 --> 00:07:46.535 He wants to represent the world the way it "really" is. 00:07:46.535 --> 00:07:48.687 Sometimes it's called academic art 00:07:48.687 --> 00:07:51.687 but it looks kind of real. 00:07:51.687 --> 00:08:05.891 [Jarring instrumental music] 00:08:05.891 --> 00:08:08.999 Now what modernism does is to say, "What we're going to 00:08:08.999 --> 00:08:11.349 do is paint the world 00:08:11.349 --> 00:08:15.091 underneath that external image. 00:08:15.091 --> 00:08:17.810 We're not going to paint the skin, we're 00:08:17.834 --> 00:08:20.430 going to paint the bones and the sinews. 00:08:20.430 --> 00:08:25.641 [Discordant music] 00:08:25.641 --> 00:08:28.681 Voiceover: Hitler and Germany's modern artists were 00:08:28.681 --> 00:08:31.505 shaped by the same forces of history, 00:08:31.505 --> 00:08:34.944 but they were set on a collision course. 00:08:35.238 --> 00:08:38.182 The smash up would come when Hitler came 00:08:38.182 --> 00:08:39.695 to power. 00:08:40.947 --> 00:08:45.675 Bernard Schultze, today one of Germany's important abstract painters, was 00:08:45.675 --> 00:08:48.977 an art student when he visited the exhibition. 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:46.768 Voiceover: In the early 1900's 00:09:46.792 --> 00:09:49.185 a band of brash and confident young artists 00:09:49.209 --> 00:09:52.083 were working at the same time as Hitler. 00:10:00.417 --> 00:10:05.685 One of them was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. 00:10:05.709 --> 00:10:09.727 He was an early modernist hero rallying young painters 00:10:09.751 --> 00:10:12.727 to forge a new way of looking at the world 00:10:12.751 --> 00:10:13.751 that came to be called Expressionism. 00:10:13.751 --> 00:10:16.250 Peter Selz (Art Historian) 00:10:16.250 --> 00:10:18.560 Selz: Kirchner started out as the leader 00:10:18.584 --> 00:10:22.477 of the first expressionist group 00:10:22.501 --> 00:10:24.810 and these people really tried to renew art. 00:10:24.834 --> 00:10:27.435 They wanted to go beyond Impressionism 00:10:27.459 --> 00:10:29.852 that's why they were called "Expressionists." 00:10:29.876 --> 00:10:34.000 They distorted the figure, they used rather violent color. 00:10:41.751 --> 00:10:43.477 Voiceover: Oskar Kokoschka 00:10:43.501 --> 00:10:47.975 was another young controversial Expressionist. 00:10:47.999 --> 00:10:49.975 Academic critics wrote that his paintings 00:10:49.999 --> 00:10:57.667 were "repulsive plague sores and 00:10:58.487 --> 00:11:01.487 phantoms of a morbid youth." 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:09.975 But his passionate distortions were never 00:11:09.999 --> 00:11:12.518 meant to depict the natural world. 00:11:12.542 --> 00:11:16.999 He painted the inner world, psychological landscapes. 00:11:17.300 --> 00:11:20.300 Olda Kokoschka (Kokoschka's widow) 00:11:21.167 --> 00:11:25.059 Viennese society didn't understand at all. 00:11:25.083 --> 00:11:29.435 The reaction to his works was very violent 00:11:29.459 --> 00:11:35.435 because I think the Viennese expected something 00:11:35.459 --> 00:11:37.976 entirely different from artists. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:41.059 It was something which was not normal to them 00:11:41.083 --> 00:11:43.852 It was mad. 00:11:43.876 --> 00:11:47.018 Selz: Nobody had ever painted portraits like he had. 00:11:47.042 --> 00:11:49.351 So they called him the 'Mad Kokoschka'. 00:11:49.375 --> 00:11:51.975 He has unbelievable psychological insight. 00:11:51.999 --> 00:11:53.685 When he was very, very young, coming out of 00:11:53.709 --> 00:11:56.975 nowhere, he painted these incredible portraits. 00:11:56.999 --> 00:12:00.852 There was a portrait of an old man, and he 00:12:00.876 --> 00:12:02.268 was very angry when he saw the painting. 00:12:02.292 --> 00:12:03.894 He said it didn't look like him and Kokoschka 00:12:03.918 --> 00:12:06.435 said, 'Well, 20 years from now it will'. 00:12:06.459 --> 00:12:08.000 And it did. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:11.000 Voiceover: The Expressionists were young 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:14.975 and passionate idealists at the start 00:12:14.999 --> 00:12:19.560 of promising careers. 00:12:19.584 --> 00:12:21.975 Adolf Hitler was unknown, painting sentimental 00:12:21.999 --> 00:12:27.059 pictures and struggling just to survive. 00:12:27.083 --> 00:12:29.560 Gradually he would rise to power and cut off 00:12:29.584 --> 00:12:34.334 the great German modernists in their prime. 00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:38.279 (Military Music) 00:12:39.959 --> 00:12:43.975 World War I was the turning point for Hitler 00:12:43.999 --> 00:12:47.477 and the Expressionists. 00:12:47.501 --> 00:12:50.768 In 1914, fired by visions of glory, 00:12:50.792 --> 00:12:52.975 they joined millions of young Germans 00:12:52.999 --> 00:12:55.975 in an outburst of patriotic fervor. 00:12:55.999 --> 00:13:02.143 In the Great War, Hitler would discover his destiny 00:13:02.167 --> 00:13:03.602 and the Expressionists, 00:13:03.626 --> 00:13:06.999 the shock and squalor of trench warfare. 00:13:06.999 --> 00:13:09.999 (Whistling and Gunfire) Robert Hughes (Art Critic) 00:13:10.459 --> 00:13:13.185 Hughes: The main effect of trench warfare on 00:13:13.209 --> 00:13:14.643 these painters was to drive them crazy. 00:13:14.667 --> 00:13:17.976 If you spent the best part of a year 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:19.894 sitting in this filthy mud hole 00:13:19.918 --> 00:13:22.059 with a couple of corpses as your companions 00:13:22.083 --> 00:13:24.852 listening to high explosives going off all the time 00:13:24.876 --> 00:13:28.143 and looking at the people on the barbed wire 00:13:28.167 --> 00:13:31.226 slowly falling to pieces, 00:13:31.250 --> 00:13:32.810 you went crazy 00:13:32.834 --> 00:13:38.059 and the more sensitive you were the crazier you went. 00:13:38.083 --> 00:13:43.143 -Voiceover: The war shattered Oskar Kokoschka's mind and spirit. 00:13:43.167 --> 00:13:46.518 Even before it began he sketched himself with a wound 00:13:46.542 --> 00:13:49.268 he predicted he would receive, 00:13:49.292 --> 00:13:54.975 a wound that eventually he did suffer, 00:13:54.999 --> 00:13:58.727 and Kirchner, too, suffered a profound nervous collapse 00:13:58.751 --> 00:14:02.852 from which he never fully recovered. 00:14:02.876 --> 00:14:05.976 Hughes: Kirchner, for instance, paints the famous portrait of himself 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:09.226 as an inductee with that hand lopped off. 00:14:09.250 --> 00:14:14.727 That startling piercing image of castration really. 00:14:14.751 --> 00:14:17.852 There he is in his military uniform rendered impotent, 00:14:17.876 --> 00:14:21.626 crippled already although he never was. 00:14:32.167 --> 00:14:37.975 People think that pictures like Dix's renderings of the trenches 00:14:37.999 --> 00:14:41.310 kind of distorted, exaggerated, 00:14:41.334 --> 00:14:44.918 but they are really, practically photography. 00:14:54.083 --> 00:14:56.894 Voiceover: 23-year-old Otto Dix had imagined war 00:14:56.918 --> 00:15:02.143 as a kind of poetic initiation 00:15:02.167 --> 00:15:05.250 until he manned a machine gun in the trenches. 00:15:12.918 --> 00:15:15.810 But Adolf Hitler found in war a satisfaction 00:15:15.834 --> 00:15:18.768 that redeemed the bitter years of frustration and failure 00:15:18.792 --> 00:15:21.975 as an artist. 00:15:21.999 --> 00:15:24.602 He was a twice-decorated dispatch runner 00:15:24.626 --> 00:15:29.101 recovering from a gas attack when Germany surrendered. 00:15:29.125 --> 00:15:31.975 "Hatred grew in me," he later wrote, 00:15:31.999 --> 00:15:34.975 "hatred for those responsible for this deed, 00:15:34.999 --> 00:15:38.268 "miserable and degenerate criminals 00:15:38.292 --> 00:15:41.975 "in the days that followed my own fate became known to me 00:15:41.999 --> 00:15:45.768 I resolved to go into politics." 00:15:45.792 --> 00:15:49.477 Voiceover: Hitler was a nobody, he was nothing, he wasn't even a gofer. 00:15:49.501 --> 00:15:55.999 He was just one of the hundred thousand soldiers without a war. 00:16:00.417 --> 00:16:03.643 Voiceover: The war left Germany in chaos. 00:16:03.667 --> 00:16:06.518 The fragile democracy reeled with turmoil 00:16:06.542 --> 00:16:12.975 and a ruinous inflation. 00:16:12.999 --> 00:16:15.351 Hitler abandoned his dream of becoming an artist 00:16:15.375 --> 00:16:18.185 and formed a new political party, 00:16:18.209 --> 00:16:22.560 the National Socialist Party. 00:16:22.584 --> 00:16:26.435 He even sketched the party symbols. 00:16:26.459 --> 00:16:28.976 He promised a rebirth of the fatherland, 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:32.685 peopled by a race of pure Aryans. 00:16:32.709 --> 00:16:36.685 The vision appealed to one of the Expressionist painters. 00:16:36.709 --> 00:16:44.643 Emil Nolde joined the Nazi Party in 1920. 00:16:44.667 --> 00:16:50.959 Nolde was a loner bound only to Germany and his art. 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:59.320 (Discordant Music) 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:10.974 Hughes: Nolde exalted the primitive. 00:17:10.999 --> 00:17:13.976 He loved the idea of that which was peasant, 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:15.560 that which was instinctive, 00:17:15.584 --> 00:17:19.185 that which was harnessed to ancient rhythms 00:17:19.209 --> 00:17:21.791 in a way which predated civilization. 00:17:27.334 --> 00:17:29.975 Selz: In a way, those religious paintings 00:17:29.999 --> 00:17:31.976 are the very essence of Expressionism, 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:34.560 but he was not really a churchgoing religious person. 00:17:34.584 --> 00:17:36.477 It went very much deeper, 00:17:36.501 --> 00:17:39.810 yet he had these mystical, spiritual experiences 00:17:39.834 --> 00:17:41.999 which really shook his whole being. 00:17:47.999 --> 00:17:49.975 I really think that in the long run 00:17:49.999 --> 00:17:52.101 he painted the most powerful religious painting 00:17:52.125 --> 00:17:54.975 of the century. 00:17:54.999 --> 00:17:58.351 What Nolde was dreaming of was kind of a new Germany 00:17:58.375 --> 00:18:01.975 where his kind of paintings would go into the churches 00:18:01.999 --> 00:18:04.584 and exactly the opposite happened. 00:18:07.987 --> 00:18:10.987 (Sombre Music) 00:18:12.834 --> 00:18:16.975 Voiceover: In 1924 Adolf Hitler emerged from a Bavarian prison 00:18:16.999 --> 00:18:18.975 where he had been held for trying 00:18:18.999 --> 00:18:21.976 to overthrow the German democracy. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.976 He was 35 years old. 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:28.975 At once he lashed out at those who had lost the war, 00:18:28.999 --> 00:18:33.101 who had stabbed the fatherland in the back. 00:18:33.125 --> 00:18:36.643 He called them Jews, Communists, and Bolsheviks 00:18:36.667 --> 00:18:37.975 and borrowing an idea 00:18:37.999 --> 00:18:40.935 popularized by 19th century science, 00:18:40.959 --> 00:18:42.976 he called them degenerates. 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:45.810 Gilman: The idea of the degenerate was ubiquitous. 00:18:45.834 --> 00:18:49.685 By the end of the 19th century anybody could use the term 00:18:49.709 --> 00:18:51.560 and they did, degenerate, 00:18:51.584 --> 00:18:54.518 as a sort of general term of opprobrium-- 00:18:54.542 --> 00:18:56.935 "You degenerate, you." 00:18:56.959 --> 00:18:58.768 We can say that today without any problem 00:18:58.792 --> 00:19:00.393 but what was understood under it 00:19:00.417 --> 00:19:06.894 was a very specific form of deviance from the norm. 00:19:06.918 --> 00:19:09.310 In the 19th century being degenerate 00:19:09.334 --> 00:19:11.226 and knowing who is a degenerate 00:19:11.250 --> 00:19:16.310 was a central aspect of medical science, biological science, 00:19:16.334 --> 00:19:19.477 and anthropological science. If you were a 00:19:19.501 --> 00:19:21.975 physician you had all sorts of signs and symptoms 00:19:21.999 --> 00:19:24.975 that you looked for; the shape of their ears; 00:19:24.999 --> 00:19:26.560 size of their nose; 00:19:26.584 --> 00:19:30.101 whether they gazed at you in a certain way. 00:19:30.125 --> 00:19:32.768 So it meant if you didn't look the right way 00:19:32.792 --> 00:19:35.226 you're obviously a deviate from the norm 00:19:35.250 --> 00:19:39.643 and therefore you're also obviously mad, you're crazy. 00:19:39.667 --> 00:19:42.059 What also happened of course at the same time 00:19:42.083 --> 00:19:46.975 was the Avant-Garde saw itself as mad, 00:19:46.999 --> 00:19:53.059 saw itself as outside of the norms of accepted action, 00:19:53.083 --> 00:19:56.250 statement, and belief. 00:20:05.125 --> 00:20:08.727 The Expressionists, for example, without any problem 00:20:08.751 --> 00:20:11.101 thought of themselves as the mentally ill 00:20:11.125 --> 00:20:13.727 of the world of art. 00:20:13.751 --> 00:20:14.975 They evoked that. 00:20:14.999 --> 00:20:19.768 They said we are artists who are just like the mentally ill. 00:20:19.792 --> 00:20:21.518 We stand outside of all institutions, 00:20:21.542 --> 00:20:24.351 we use our own language. 00:20:24.375 --> 00:20:27.417 They meant it, of course, metaphorically. 00:20:29.738 --> 00:20:32.738 (Shouts and sinister music) 00:20:34.834 --> 00:20:38.101 Voiceover: But in the 1920's the Expressionists had no reason 00:20:38.125 --> 00:20:39.935 to fear the Nazis, 00:20:39.959 --> 00:20:44.185 a tiny faction of misfits marginal at best. 00:20:44.209 --> 00:20:48.876 There were fewer than 27,000 Nazis in all of Germany. 00:20:49.709 --> 00:20:52.709 (1920's Jazz Music) 00:20:52.709 --> 00:21:00.643 In Berlin, modern artists flourished 00:21:00.667 --> 00:21:03.975 and their work sold. 00:21:03.999 --> 00:21:07.477 A new freedom stirred the air. 00:21:07.501 --> 00:21:14.727 Few people cared about Hitler and his fanatic ideas. 00:21:14.751 --> 00:21:18.999 Berlin became the capital of the international art world. 00:21:27.542 --> 00:21:30.976 Museum directors spent public funds on contemporary art 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:37.975 proclaiming, we cannot have museums that sit and wait. 00:21:37.999 --> 00:21:40.393 Perhaps the most celebrated of all the artists 00:21:40.417 --> 00:21:42.975 was Max Beckmann. 00:21:42.999 --> 00:21:47.643 Beckmann had known success early before the Great War. 00:21:47.667 --> 00:21:49.975 At 29 years old he was already praised 00:21:49.999 --> 00:21:54.975 as a genuine and noble artist, a true German. 00:21:54.999 --> 00:21:59.351 Then his work had little in common with the Expressionists 00:21:59.375 --> 00:22:02.976 but he was transformed by the war. 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:05.975 He had volunteered for the ambulance service, 00:22:05.999 --> 00:22:09.852 after months in the thick of the fighting he was discharged, 00:22:09.876 --> 00:22:12.459 mentally exhausted. 00:22:17.501 --> 00:22:21.975 His self-portrait in 1917 "Twisted and Defiant," 00:22:21.999 --> 00:22:25.268 bears witness to his experience. 00:22:25.292 --> 00:22:29.501 "My pictures reproach God for his errors," he wrote. 00:22:34.959 --> 00:22:39.143 Now in the 1920s Beckmann, at the height of his career, 00:22:39.167 --> 00:22:42.976 continued to be haunted by the war. 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:46.975 "We have to lay our hearts bare to the cries of people 00:22:46.999 --> 00:22:50.167 who have been lied to." 00:23:13.250 --> 00:23:18.393 In 1929 Hitler got the chance he was waiting for. 00:23:18.417 --> 00:23:22.435 The Great Depression broke the German democracy's back. 00:23:22.459 --> 00:23:28.059 Over five million people were out of work. 00:23:28.083 --> 00:23:30.727 Hitler rejoiced, 00:23:30.751 --> 00:23:33.810 "Never in my life have I been so well disposed 00:23:33.834 --> 00:23:37.435 and inwardly contented as in these days." 00:23:37.459 --> 00:23:40.727 Hughes: People just felt the bottom had dropped out of their world. 00:23:40.751 --> 00:23:43.602 The impotent rage that was generated by this, 00:23:43.626 --> 00:23:45.975 the feeling that you had been betrayed, 00:23:45.999 --> 00:23:49.018 all this was extremely ripe ground for the direction 00:23:49.042 --> 00:23:52.852 of indignation against certain targets. 00:23:52.876 --> 00:23:54.268 Gilman: They were the Jews, 00:23:54.292 --> 00:23:57.143 they were the politicals who were not acceptable, 00:23:57.167 --> 00:24:00.143 they were the ones who were infecting the bloodstream 00:24:00.167 --> 00:24:02.976 of the pure race. 00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:04.935 But he also sees the idea 00:24:04.959 --> 00:24:12.685 of culture being infected by degenerates. 00:24:12.709 --> 00:24:16.143 Modernism in art was a symptom. 00:24:16.167 --> 00:24:19.852 There is a sign of what's going wrong with this society, 00:24:19.876 --> 00:24:21.477 that's why you don't have a job, 00:24:21.501 --> 00:24:22.975 that's why you're standing in a bread line, 00:24:22.999 --> 00:24:24.643 that's why you're paying a million marks 00:24:24.667 --> 00:24:25.975 for a loaf of bread. 00:24:25.999 --> 00:24:29.143 It's because of that kind of sickness within the society 00:24:29.167 --> 00:24:31.975 which is symbolized by this kind of art. 00:24:31.999 --> 00:24:37.101 That became a very powerful argument. 00:24:37.125 --> 00:24:40.143 Voiceover: Casting themselves as defenders of the middle classes, 00:24:40.167 --> 00:24:43.975 the Nazis exploited public anxiety and fear 00:24:43.999 --> 00:24:47.560 and harvested the protest vote. 00:24:47.584 --> 00:24:49.976 They had no real program. 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:52.018 A Hitler lieutenant declared, 00:24:52.042 --> 00:24:56.975 "National Socialism is the opposite of what we have now." 00:24:56.999 --> 00:25:01.560 With the elections of 1930 and 1932, the Nazis emerged 00:25:01.584 --> 00:25:06.292 as the country's largest political party. 00:25:08.467 --> 00:25:11.467 (Patriotic Songs) 00:25:12.209 --> 00:25:18.351 January 1933, German parliament deadlocks, 00:25:18.375 --> 00:25:20.810 Hitler is appointed chancellor 00:25:20.834 --> 00:25:26.768 of the very republic he had promised to crush. 00:25:26.792 --> 00:25:30.459 The German democracy was near death. 00:25:30.884 --> 00:25:33.884 (Cheers and patriotic singing) 00:25:35.876 --> 00:25:37.976 The fires of the Nazi torchlight parades 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:42.999 would soon become the fires of the Berlin book burnings. 00:26:04.751 --> 00:26:06.975 Voiceover: In power less than five months, 00:26:06.999 --> 00:26:09.435 the Nazis fueled a bonfire in Berlin 00:26:09.459 --> 00:26:11.727 with books by some of the greatest modern authors 00:26:11.751 --> 00:26:13.894 and thinkers. 00:26:13.918 --> 00:26:19.727 Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, 00:26:19.751 --> 00:26:22.226 Sigmund Freud. 00:26:22.250 --> 00:26:26.209 The war on the modern imagination had begun. 00:26:30.030 --> 00:26:33.030 (Ominous Music) 00:26:37.292 --> 00:26:40.810 One of the painter's exhibited in the Degenerate Art show 00:26:40.834 --> 00:26:44.501 was Titus Felixmuller's father, Conrad. 00:28:16.334 --> 00:28:20.975 Voiceover: The Nazis swept through German museums firing directors. 00:28:20.999 --> 00:28:23.643 The official term was vacationing, 00:28:23.667 --> 00:28:25.852 confiscating works of art, 00:28:25.876 --> 00:28:29.435 shutting down the modern wing of the Berlin National Gallery 00:28:29.459 --> 00:28:30.643 and the Bauhaus, 00:28:30.667 --> 00:28:33.975 famed symbol of modernisms commitment to social change, 00:28:33.999 --> 00:28:37.042 was summarily closed forever. 00:28:42.876 --> 00:28:46.894 Through it all Emil Nolde remained a loyal party member 00:28:46.918 --> 00:28:50.975 attacking other artists calling them half-breeds, bastards, 00:28:50.999 --> 00:28:52.477 and mulattos, 00:28:52.501 --> 00:28:57.768 and extolling the natural superiority of Nordic peoples. 00:28:57.792 --> 00:28:59.435 Hughes: There's no contradiction between 00:28:59.459 --> 00:29:01.975 being a fascist and being an artist. 00:29:01.999 --> 00:29:03.560 I'm sorry but there isn't. 00:29:03.584 --> 00:29:08.810 It happens that not very many good artists have been Nazis. 00:29:08.834 --> 00:29:10.310 It's not surprising, actually, 00:29:10.334 --> 00:29:13.268 that Nolde was such an early party member 00:29:13.292 --> 00:29:16.976 because the Nazis, too, believed in blood and race and soil 00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:18.935 and the primitive and the truth of the peasants 00:29:18.959 --> 00:29:20.226 and all the rest of it. 00:29:20.250 --> 00:29:22.852 What is slightly more surprising 00:29:22.876 --> 00:29:28.417 is the vehemence with which the party later turned on him. 00:29:33.876 --> 00:29:37.268 Voiceover: Joseph Goebbels was Hitler's cultural deputy. 00:29:37.292 --> 00:29:41.250 He headed the Nazi Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda. 00:29:52.709 --> 00:29:55.976 Goebbels gained total power over public exhibitions, 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:00.101 films, radio, theater, music, literature, artists, 00:30:00.125 --> 00:30:03.976 and the press. 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:06.393 Karla Eckert was working as a reporter 00:30:06.417 --> 00:30:08.143 for a Nazi party newspaper 00:30:08.167 --> 00:30:12.042 when she was sent to cover the Degenerate Art Exhibit. 00:31:43.167 --> 00:31:45.059 Voiceover: All the arts were affected. 00:31:45.083 --> 00:31:52.975 Films like this one by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy were banned. 00:31:52.999 --> 00:31:55.999 Abstraction was strictly forbidden. 00:32:00.959 --> 00:32:03.351 In music atonality, dissonance, 00:32:03.375 --> 00:32:08.768 any deviation from classical tradition was not permitted. 00:32:08.792 --> 00:32:13.935 Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, and this piece by Arnold Schoenberg 00:32:13.959 --> 00:32:16.751 were labeled degenerate. 00:32:21.667 --> 00:32:25.250 All forms of modern music were ridiculed. 00:32:25.250 --> 00:32:28.250 (Jazz Music) 00:32:28.999 --> 00:32:31.768 Jazz was attacked and viciously parodied 00:32:31.792 --> 00:32:34.584 in so-called degenerate music exhibitions. 00:32:38.626 --> 00:32:40.643 One former jazz musician remembers 00:32:40.667 --> 00:32:43.435 that the Nazis prohibited all mutes 00:32:43.459 --> 00:32:46.685 which turned the noble sound of wind and brass instruments 00:32:46.709 --> 00:32:50.876 into a Jewish-free masonic howl. 00:32:58.083 --> 00:33:02.268 Hitler resolved to create a new culture for the new Reich. 00:33:02.292 --> 00:33:06.059 There was no place for the sensitive or troubled soul. 00:33:06.083 --> 00:33:11.975 A steady stream of propaganda infiltrated daily life. 00:33:11.999 --> 00:33:14.810 The very first Nazi public building project 00:33:14.834 --> 00:33:17.975 was to be a museum in Munich. 00:33:17.999 --> 00:33:20.975 Hitler called it the House of German Art 00:33:20.999 --> 00:33:23.975 and spent hours poring over the most minute details 00:33:23.999 --> 00:33:29.975 of its design. 00:33:29.999 --> 00:33:33.518 To honor its completion in 1937, 00:33:33.542 --> 00:33:36.185 thousands of marchers celebrated in a pageant 00:33:36.209 --> 00:33:42.975 called "2,000 Years of German Culture." 00:33:42.999 --> 00:33:46.685 It was a vision of history based on a link with an archaic past 00:33:46.709 --> 00:33:49.584 that had never existed. 00:34:02.792 --> 00:34:07.975 On July 18, 1937, the House of German Art opened its doors 00:34:07.999 --> 00:34:13.185 with an exhibition selected by the Fuhrer himself. 00:34:13.208 --> 00:34:16.935 Here was Hitler's pantheon honoring what he called 00:34:16.958 --> 00:34:19.958 a new and genuine German art 00:34:22.250 --> 00:34:24.851 and it was all for sale. 00:34:24.876 --> 00:34:26.975 People gathered especially around those paintings 00:34:26.998 --> 00:34:30.185 and sculptures that Hitler had bought himself. 00:34:30.208 --> 00:34:33.101 Hitler knew what he liked. 00:34:33.125 --> 00:34:36.351 It was a celebration of Aryan ideals 00:34:36.375 --> 00:34:39.975 of racially pure women and men. 00:34:39.998 --> 00:34:45.226 Hughes: The art must be elevated, it must be classical. 00:34:45.250 --> 00:34:47.726 I suppose you could say, yeah, it's bulls and Greeks 00:34:47.751 --> 00:34:49.810 and naked woman. 00:34:49.833 --> 00:34:54.059 It's the vocabulary of classism. 00:34:54.083 --> 00:34:59.310 It has to have this character of permanence and nobility. 00:34:59.334 --> 00:35:00.975 Now what they got out of it of course 00:35:00.999 --> 00:35:05.185 was the most extraordinary kind of art deco kitsch. 00:35:05.209 --> 00:35:08.975 Anybody can understand a whacking great surfer 00:35:08.999 --> 00:35:12.501 with giant pecs holding up a sword. 00:35:13.654 --> 00:35:16.654 Peter Guenther (Witness/Art Historian): 00:35:18.417 --> 00:35:21.310 Guenther: The Haus der Deutschen Kunst is a very large building, 00:35:21.334 --> 00:35:26.975 high ceilings, wide halls, and marble floors 00:35:26.999 --> 00:35:28.643 and those enormous spaces 00:35:28.667 --> 00:35:31.643 these muscle-bound huge, big figures, 00:35:31.667 --> 00:35:34.643 they're relatively few people in there. 00:35:34.667 --> 00:35:38.685 It was really kind of a frightening affair 00:35:38.709 --> 00:35:40.975 and then the other thing which also disturbed me 00:35:40.999 --> 00:35:43.975 and, I hope you don't mind, but was the 17-year-old one 00:35:43.999 --> 00:35:46.894 were the enormous numbers of nudes. 00:35:46.918 --> 00:35:48.975 Not only male nudes muscle packed 00:35:48.999 --> 00:35:53.477 but also pink females in large numbers. 00:35:53.501 --> 00:35:55.975 They were like manikins with no movement 00:35:55.999 --> 00:35:59.101 and no expression and no character. 00:35:59.125 --> 00:36:03.975 Basically to me that was by far closer to pornography 00:36:03.999 --> 00:36:06.518 than anything which the Expressionists did. 00:36:06.542 --> 00:36:09.477 The Expressionists' figures were all moving, 00:36:09.501 --> 00:36:12.185 they were dancing or swimming or jumping or running 00:36:12.209 --> 00:36:16.643 or doing something because they were out in nature. 00:36:16.667 --> 00:36:19.310 They had just taken off this bourgeois clothing 00:36:19.334 --> 00:36:22.685 and here they were full of joy of life. 00:36:22.709 --> 00:36:24.435 As far as women were concerned 00:36:24.459 --> 00:36:27.768 if you look at the Nazi depiction 00:36:27.792 --> 00:36:30.268 they were really were only two roles, 00:36:30.292 --> 00:36:34.560 either they were nude or they were mothers. 00:36:34.584 --> 00:36:36.975 And then the other thing if you really want to look 00:36:36.999 --> 00:36:40.226 at the two sides of the coin of what is war 00:36:40.250 --> 00:36:42.685 look at the Nazis and look at the Expressionist 00:36:42.709 --> 00:36:46.143 and you'll find out who is who. 00:36:46.167 --> 00:36:49.935 The German Expressionists were all against the war. 00:36:49.959 --> 00:36:53.976 There was not an Expressionist who was not against the war. 00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:55.894 Now the Nazis considered war 00:36:55.918 --> 00:36:58.852 as the greatest accomplishment of mankind. 00:36:58.876 --> 00:37:01.602 The honored victory and the all circumstance 00:37:01.626 --> 00:37:03.975 and even if you died you died in victory 00:37:03.999 --> 00:37:08.268 and therefore you were a martyr. 00:37:08.292 --> 00:37:10.560 Hughes: It is perfect hypocritical art. 00:37:10.584 --> 00:37:11.935 It's hypocritical about the body, 00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:15.560 about politics, every damn thing you can imagine. 00:37:15.584 --> 00:37:16.935 What it has on its side is 00:37:16.959 --> 00:37:18.810 a certain kind of technical virtuosity, 00:37:18.834 --> 00:37:20.975 which is undeniably there 00:37:20.999 --> 00:37:24.101 and which people certainly found attractive 00:37:24.125 --> 00:37:27.268 and you know I dare say people still do. 00:37:27.292 --> 00:37:29.894 One of the things that made the propaganda work 00:37:29.918 --> 00:37:31.894 was the spectacle of the other. 00:37:31.918 --> 00:37:37.975 It was the ability to hold up a painting of a distorted head 00:37:37.999 --> 00:37:41.059 with its mouth going like that 00:37:41.083 --> 00:37:44.643 and it's eyes goggling at you all in weird colors 00:37:44.667 --> 00:37:46.975 and say if you don't believe in our kind of culture 00:37:46.999 --> 00:37:49.918 this is what you're going to get. 00:37:55.876 --> 00:37:57.685 Voiceover: Just across the park 00:37:57.709 --> 00:38:01.351 the very day after the opening of the House of German Art, 00:38:01.375 --> 00:38:06.477 the Nazi war against modernism came to a climax. 00:38:06.501 --> 00:38:08.975 16,000 works of art had been snatched 00:38:08.999 --> 00:38:13.560 from the great public museums of Germany. 00:38:13.584 --> 00:38:20.018 Now 650 were put on exhibition in the Degenerate Art Show. 00:38:20.042 --> 00:38:21.935 Along with German artists, 00:38:21.959 --> 00:38:26.059 modern masters like Wassily Kandisnsky, Piet Mondrian, 00:38:26.083 --> 00:38:29.351 and Paul Klee were put up for ridicule. 00:38:29.375 --> 00:38:31.976 Hughes; It had the character of a show trial. 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:33.310 Very different matter just to say, 00:38:33.334 --> 00:38:35.643 well, this is just a bunch of rubbish done by Jews and gypsies 00:38:35.667 --> 00:38:38.643 and it's culturally hideous and let's get rid of it, 00:38:38.667 --> 00:38:41.894 the important thing is that people should agree with you, 00:38:41.918 --> 00:38:44.185 that they should see it for themselves with their own eyes 00:38:44.209 --> 00:38:47.000 and then conclude that it's rubbish. 00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:58.101 German Expressionism was an art which above all celebrated-- 00:38:58.125 --> 00:39:01.268 Ein Fuhrer, 00:39:01.292 --> 00:39:05.834 and that which was inward must be outlawed. 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:11.059 This is the essence of totalitarianism 00:39:11.083 --> 00:39:12.975 so therefore the project 00:39:12.999 --> 00:39:17.268 was to sweep all these little inward thoughts 00:39:17.292 --> 00:39:19.059 out of their secret chambers 00:39:19.083 --> 00:39:21.976 and expose them to the light of ridicule, you know, 00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:25.834 like spraying Raid on a bunch of cockroaches. 00:39:28.999 --> 00:39:32.059 Knapp: I was asking at each picture, "Why?" 00:39:32.083 --> 00:39:35.975 because some it seemed difficult to understand 00:39:35.999 --> 00:39:38.976 why a particular picture had been taken 00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:42.310 and they had an answer for everyone, 00:39:42.334 --> 00:39:47.560 either it was a sick mind, it was Bolshevik, it was Jewish. 00:39:47.584 --> 00:39:50.768 There were about 10 reasons. 00:39:50.792 --> 00:39:55.602 The cows I couldn't understand that one. 00:39:55.626 --> 00:39:59.393 Guenther: Franz Marc had once painted a happy cow. 00:39:59.417 --> 00:40:01.393 Now that was unacceptable 00:40:01.417 --> 00:40:04.143 and shows the Nazis very typically said 00:40:04.167 --> 00:40:08.643 bring any farmer up and let him look at that 00:40:08.667 --> 00:40:12.975 and he will say that's not a cow. 00:40:12.999 --> 00:40:14.935 Hughes: It was a very naively-arranged show. 00:40:14.959 --> 00:40:16.185 It wasn't a very systematic show, 00:40:16.209 --> 00:40:18.018 I mean, they didn't go around picking artists 00:40:18.042 --> 00:40:19.935 specifically through theme. 00:40:19.959 --> 00:40:21.435 They didn't go around picking them specifically 00:40:21.459 --> 00:40:22.560 because they were Jewish. 00:40:22.584 --> 00:40:25.268 They just said, hey, look here's this whole bunch of rubbish 00:40:25.292 --> 00:40:27.560 and now let's stick in front of the German public 00:40:27.584 --> 00:40:31.059 and let them vote with their eyes. 00:40:31.083 --> 00:40:34.602 Guenther: The number of Jewish painters was relatively small. 00:40:34.626 --> 00:40:36.560 Now, Chagall was exhibited 00:40:36.584 --> 00:40:38.976 although he was A, Russian and B, a Frenchman 00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:42.477 but nevertheless he was "a Jew." 00:40:42.501 --> 00:40:46.560 Voiceover: 112 artists had been singled out as degenerate, 00:40:46.584 --> 00:40:49.351 only six in the show were Jewish. 00:40:49.375 --> 00:40:52.975 Gilman: The interesting thing is that Jewish, degenerate, 00:40:52.999 --> 00:40:57.975 Bolshevik, insane, become interchangeable categories. 00:40:57.999 --> 00:41:00.518 Therefore everybody who paints paintings 00:41:00.542 --> 00:41:03.852 that are hung in the Degenerate Art Exhibit are Jewish, 00:41:03.876 --> 00:41:06.059 they're also insane, and they're also Bolshevik 00:41:06.083 --> 00:41:09.059 no matter what their religious 00:41:09.083 --> 00:41:12.999 or political identification really was. 00:41:15.209 --> 00:41:18.560 Voiceover: Not even Nazi party membership was protection. 00:41:18.584 --> 00:41:24.143 Emil Nolde had now been a Nazi party member for 16 years 00:41:24.167 --> 00:41:27.852 but Nazi critics charged that his fascination 00:41:27.876 --> 00:41:31.226 with the life of people of a simpler nature and darker color 00:41:31.250 --> 00:41:36.975 was an indication of degeneration. 00:41:36.999 --> 00:41:40.976 27 of his paintings were hung in the Degenerate Art Show, 00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:44.477 more than any other painter. 00:41:44.501 --> 00:41:47.018 The great altarpiece, "The Life of Christ," 00:41:47.042 --> 00:41:49.602 was flanked by commentary that read 00:41:49.626 --> 00:41:52.975 "Insolent mockery of the Divine." 00:41:52.999 --> 00:41:57.250 [ singing in German ] 00:42:05.459 --> 00:42:07.894 - At the opening of The House of German Art, 00:42:07.918 --> 00:42:10.935 Hitler told an enormous gathering, 00:42:10.959 --> 00:42:14.185 "We are going to wage a merciless war of destruction 00:42:14.209 --> 00:42:15.975 "against the last remaining elements 00:42:15.999 --> 00:42:18.975 "of cultural disintegration. 00:42:18.999 --> 00:42:22.226 "All those cliques of chatterers, dilettantes, 00:42:22.250 --> 00:42:26.751 and art forgers will be picked up and liquidated." 00:42:29.250 --> 00:42:33.143 Max Beckmann heard Hitler's speech on the radio. 00:42:33.167 --> 00:42:36.975 He had been perhaps the most honored painter in Germany. 00:42:36.999 --> 00:42:39.810 Now he and his wife quickly packed a few things 00:42:39.834 --> 00:42:42.018 and left Berlin 00:42:42.042 --> 00:42:45.975 never to return. 00:42:45.999 --> 00:42:48.975 In Amsterdam, he painted a self-portrait. 00:42:48.999 --> 00:42:52.584 He called it "The Liberated Man." 00:42:56.667 --> 00:43:01.518 Oscar Kokoschka had fled to Czechoslovakia. 00:43:01.542 --> 00:43:03.351 Olda: Because he suddenly saw himself 00:43:03.375 --> 00:43:05.143 in front of nothing whatsoever 00:43:05.167 --> 00:43:09.351 when everything that he has worked for and done 00:43:09.375 --> 00:43:11.810 and developed and was proud of 00:43:11.834 --> 00:43:14.810 was suddenly delivered through destruction. 00:43:14.834 --> 00:43:19.226 It's a shocking thing to absorb somehow. 00:43:19.250 --> 00:43:21.894 What happened was that he got ill. 00:43:21.918 --> 00:43:24.143 He had a sort of nervous breakdown 00:43:24.167 --> 00:43:29.768 which suddenly produced a physical weakness 00:43:29.792 --> 00:43:33.518 and then he decided that painting was the one thing 00:43:33.542 --> 00:43:36.975 which he really had to-- had to do. 00:43:36.999 --> 00:43:39.975 At that time he was working on a self-portrait. 00:43:39.999 --> 00:43:42.310 He suddenly pulled himself together 00:43:42.334 --> 00:43:46.059 and it became one of the most important of his works 00:43:46.083 --> 00:43:50.643 and it's called "The Portrait of the Degenerate Artist" 00:43:50.667 --> 00:43:55.834 that really was an absolutely immediate rejection of pride. 00:44:07.584 --> 00:44:09.685 Voiceover: Many artists emigrated 00:44:09.709 --> 00:44:12.975 but Otto Dix chose to stay in Germany. 00:44:12.999 --> 00:44:16.268 His son Ursus remembers why. 00:44:16.292 --> 00:44:18.975 Ursus: He said he could not paint outside Germany 00:44:18.999 --> 00:44:23.643 and then he said, "What can I do with two studios full of paintings here? 00:44:23.667 --> 00:44:24.894 "I can't just leave that, the 00:44:24.918 --> 00:44:27.477 Nazis will come in and confiscate it all." 00:44:27.501 --> 00:44:31.059 He felt that his theme was people. 00:44:31.083 --> 00:44:34.143 And there he was, dismissed from his job in Berlin, 00:44:34.167 --> 00:44:39.435 he had to retire likely to the... furthest most corner 00:44:39.459 --> 00:44:41.768 of Germany, to Lake Constance 00:44:41.792 --> 00:44:45.518 where he could only paint landscapes. 00:44:45.542 --> 00:44:48.059 Voiceover: "I painted landscapes," Dix said, 00:44:48.083 --> 00:44:52.959 "that was tantamount to emigration." 00:44:57.113 --> 00:45:00.113 (Discordant Music) 00:45:05.417 --> 00:45:09.143 The exhibition called Degenerate Art toured Germany and Austria 00:45:09.167 --> 00:45:13.768 for more than four years. 00:45:13.792 --> 00:45:16.185 It became the most popular exhibition of art 00:45:16.209 --> 00:45:18.435 ever assembled. 00:45:18.459 --> 00:45:22.185 More than three million people came to see it. 00:45:22.209 --> 00:45:24.975 Knapp: Here was the death--the absolute death 00:45:24.999 --> 00:45:27.477 of art in Germany. 00:45:27.501 --> 00:45:30.477 The wonderful things that had been taking place there, 00:45:30.501 --> 00:45:32.975 the great artists, the Bauhaus, 00:45:32.999 --> 00:45:38.018 all of these things were being killed. 00:45:38.042 --> 00:45:41.560 Voiceover; The Nazis had hung Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's self-portrait 00:45:41.584 --> 00:45:43.810 in the Degenerate Art Exhibit. 00:45:43.834 --> 00:45:47.477 They renamed it "Soldier with Whore." 00:45:47.501 --> 00:45:49.059 Kirchner had been a popular leader 00:45:49.083 --> 00:45:51.143 of the Expressionist movement. 00:45:51.167 --> 00:45:53.975 Now his work was outlawed. 00:45:53.999 --> 00:45:56.976 Deeply agitated, he began to destroy the pieces 00:45:57.000 --> 00:45:58.852 he himself owned. 00:45:58.876 --> 00:46:02.975 He shattered his woodblocks and burned his paintings. 00:46:02.999 --> 00:46:07.751 On June 11, 1938, he committed suicide. 00:46:11.292 --> 00:46:17.894 Voiceover: For Emil Nolde, the Nazis seemed to harbor a special vengeance. 00:46:17.918 --> 00:46:20.935 Selz: The Nazis really tried to eradicate this man. 00:46:20.959 --> 00:46:23.185 They first prohibited him of exhibiting, 00:46:23.209 --> 00:46:25.101 then actually put a cop around him 00:46:25.125 --> 00:46:26.894 to prohibit him from painting 00:46:26.918 --> 00:46:29.351 and he kept pleading with the Nazis. 00:46:29.375 --> 00:46:32.268 He said, "Look, but I joined the Nazi party early." 00:46:32.292 --> 00:46:34.018 They didn't want to hear any of this. 00:46:34.042 --> 00:46:35.975 During that period he couldn't paint oils anymore 00:46:35.999 --> 00:46:38.975 because people could smell the turpentine around his studio 00:46:38.999 --> 00:46:41.477 so he painted what he called unpainted pictures 00:46:41.501 --> 00:46:45.310 which are wonderful small watercolors very tiny 00:46:45.334 --> 00:46:47.975 and this was some of his most extraordinary paintings, 00:46:47.999 --> 00:46:50.459 of big mystery. 00:46:53.292 --> 00:46:57.727 Voiceover: "Only to you my little pictures," Nolde wrote, 00:46:57.751 --> 00:47:02.059 "do I sometimes confide my grief, my torment, 00:47:02.083 --> 00:47:04.999 my contempt." 00:47:20.999 --> 00:47:24.768 Voiceover: In 1938, the Nazis decided to turn the most valuable 00:47:24.792 --> 00:47:27.518 of their plundered art into hard currency 00:47:27.542 --> 00:47:31.685 and put them up for auction. 00:47:31.709 --> 00:47:34.435 Gert Verneberg was responsible for cataloguing 00:47:34.459 --> 00:47:35.975 the plundered art 00:47:35.999 --> 00:47:39.751 when one day Emil Nolde came asking for help. 00:48:25.375 --> 00:48:29.975 Voiceover: The auction was held in Switzerland in June 1939, 00:48:29.999 --> 00:48:33.975 Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, 00:48:33.999 --> 00:48:39.560 along with the German artists were all put on the block. 00:48:39.584 --> 00:48:44.935 Profits went directly into Nazi party coffers 00:48:44.959 --> 00:48:50.185 but the loss to Germany was irreparable. 00:48:50.209 --> 00:48:56.999 The Nazis were selling off the cultural heritage of the nation. 00:49:16.634 --> 00:49:19.634 (Rousing Instrumental Music) 00:49:43.626 --> 00:49:46.059 Voiceover: Every year Hitler mounted a new exhibition 00:49:46.083 --> 00:49:51.727 at The Museum of German Art 00:49:51.751 --> 00:49:58.894 and every year Hitler himself was the largest buyer. 00:49:58.918 --> 00:50:05.560 He bought 264 works of art in July 1939. 00:50:05.584 --> 00:50:09.477 Six weeks later German armies invaded Poland. 00:50:09.501 --> 00:50:13.000 [ bombs exploding ] (Dramatic music) 00:50:36.167 --> 00:50:42.185 The war would leave Germany in ruins, millions dead, 00:50:42.209 --> 00:50:46.975 millions more murdered in the concentration camps. 00:50:46.999 --> 00:50:51.560 Years before, the writer Heinrich Heine had warned, 00:50:51.584 --> 00:50:55.643 "Where books are burned, people will be burned." 00:50:55.667 --> 00:50:57.975 Hughes: One of the most grotesque kind 00:50:57.999 --> 00:51:00.727 of unintended results of this- 00:51:00.751 --> 00:51:02.185 I remember when I was a kid 00:51:02.209 --> 00:51:06.975 seeing the newsreels of the liberation of the camps. 00:51:06.999 --> 00:51:10.518 I never forgot that shot of the bulldozer 00:51:10.542 --> 00:51:15.059 rolling the mass of starved corpses, the typhoid dead, 00:51:15.083 --> 00:51:18.976 the murdered, into this enormous mass grave 00:51:19.000 --> 00:51:21.185 and it always comes back to me strangely enough 00:51:21.209 --> 00:51:25.852 when I look at the distortion and elongation 00:51:25.876 --> 00:51:29.643 in certain German Expressionists' pictures 00:51:29.667 --> 00:51:38.018 as though the aesthetic distortions of Expressionism 00:51:38.042 --> 00:51:41.435 had been made real and concrete and absolute 00:51:41.459 --> 00:51:44.975 on the real suffering human body by the Nazis. 00:51:44.999 --> 00:51:48.975 As though this was some kind of climactic work of art 00:51:48.999 --> 00:51:52.975 which ended up mimicking what they had attempted to repress. 00:51:52.999 --> 00:51:55.351 This is a very superficial way of looking at it, I know, 00:51:55.375 --> 00:51:56.975 because it leaves out the actually content 00:51:56.999 --> 00:51:57.975 of the suffering, 00:51:57.999 --> 00:52:01.975 but for a gentile boy seeing that in Australia 00:52:01.999 --> 00:52:06.602 40-some years ago on a grainy movie.... 00:52:06.626 --> 00:52:10.999 I compare the two images and I can't help thinking of it. 00:52:20.209 --> 00:52:22.602 Voiceover: The Degenerate Art Exhibit evokes an era 00:52:22.626 --> 00:52:25.042 that continues to haunt us. 00:52:32.167 --> 00:52:36.143 Look carefully at these paintings. 00:52:36.167 --> 00:52:41.185 In their story lies the best and the worst of the human spirit. 00:52:41.209 --> 00:52:45.351 Guenther: I think in order to continue any kind of free expression, 00:52:45.375 --> 00:52:46.852 you have to know what happens 00:52:46.876 --> 00:52:48.975 when free expression gets stifled, 00:52:48.999 --> 00:52:53.393 and that great art can be vilified like this. 00:52:53.417 --> 00:52:56.768 It makes you think--it makes you question authority. 00:52:56.792 --> 00:53:01.435 I think that is where art is dangerous. 00:53:01.459 --> 00:53:05.685 Gilman: It's terribly frightening to look into a work of art 00:53:05.709 --> 00:53:09.894 and see those secret parts of yourself 00:53:09.918 --> 00:53:13.310 those parts that you don't ever want to talk about or see 00:53:13.334 --> 00:53:15.101 revealed to the world 00:53:15.125 --> 00:53:18.975 and I think that's what scared the Nazis. 00:53:18.999 --> 00:53:22.975 Hughes: The avant-garde had always hoped to be dangerous 00:53:22.999 --> 00:53:24.685 that is the thing the guys with the armbands 00:53:24.709 --> 00:53:26.602 were paying a kind of supreme compliment 00:53:26.626 --> 00:53:27.975 even in the act of repressing it. 00:53:27.999 --> 00:53:29.975 They were saying this really matters, 00:53:29.999 --> 00:53:33.310 this really counts in the way that people react to one another 00:53:33.334 --> 00:53:34.976 in the way in which states are formed. 00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:42.477 This is language and it affects daily life. 00:53:42.501 --> 00:53:46.768 Voiceover: In 1933, the great German novelist Thomas Mann 00:53:46.792 --> 00:53:49.975 fled Hitler's Germany. 00:53:49.999 --> 00:53:53.351 12 years later, the war at an end, 00:53:53.375 --> 00:53:56.975 he spoke at the Library of Congress. 00:53:56.999 --> 00:54:02.727 Mann: "This story should convince us of one thing-- 00:54:02.751 --> 00:54:06.477 "that there are not two Germanys, 00:54:06.501 --> 00:54:09.477 "a good one and a bad one, 00:54:09.501 --> 00:54:11.518 "but only one. 00:54:11.542 --> 00:54:14.643 "It is quite impossible for one born there 00:54:14.667 --> 00:54:18.975 "simply to renounce the wicked, guilty Germany 00:54:18.999 --> 00:54:25.143 "and to declare 'I am the good, the noble, the just Germany.' 00:54:25.167 --> 00:54:27.685 "It is always in me. 00:54:27.709 --> 00:54:31.417 I have been through it all."