Similarly to Ortega y Gasset, Siegfried Kracauer, the versatile German left-wing writer, journalist, sociologist and film theoretician, recognized the danger that the “mass man” and “mass culture” meant for democracy and culture. In the books he published during the period of the Weimar Republic, Ornament der Masse [The Mass Ornament, 1927] and Die Angestellten [The Salaried Masses, 1930], he observed that modern technology, as a product of the Enlightenment, is not automatically coupled with reason. For Kracauer, the entertainment industry with its revues and films was a template that could be “filled with any content”—including dangerous ones such as nationalism. While Die Angestellten was received by the democratic public as a constructive contribution to the debate, there were wild anti-Semitic attacks on the part of extreme right-wing news outlets, and it became one of the books that were publicly burnt by the National Socialists on May 10, 1933.

After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, the Party declared war on everything that did not fit their concept of “German Art.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler had announced early on that, in view of the “pathological excesses of insane and depraved” artists, it must be the task of the National Socialist leadership to “prevent people from being driven into the arms of spiritual madness”. Nazi theorist and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg developed this theory even further. In his book Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts [The Myth of the 20th Century, 1930] Rosenberg described modern art as a problem of race: “Art is always the creation of a certain blood, and the form-bound nature of an art is only understood by creatures of the same blood.” He strictly rejected an “art in itself” that is at home all over the world. As leader of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur [Combat League for German Culture], founded in 1929, he agitated against abstract, experimental modernism and American cultural influences such as “nigger jazz”.

After coming to power by means of the so-called “Ermächtigungsgesetz” [Enabling Act], which gave him plenary powers, Hitler could finally declare on March 23, 1933 that: “Blood and race are once again the source of artistic intuition”. After the violent “removal” of Jewish, communist, liberal and other “undesirable” artists and thinkers from public offices in the first few months after the National Socialists came to power, it became clear that the diversity of art and culture of the Weimar Republic was irrevocably over. The avant-garde, metropolitan artistic and cultural scene was considered “alien” and “cultural Bolshevist”, and was rejected and persecuted. The Reichskulturkammer [Reich Chamber of Culture], founded on September 22, 1933, chaired by Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, was responsible for the reorganization of artistic production, monitoring the entirety of cultural life. Its central control encompassed the visual arts, architecture, film, theater, literature, music, press and radio. Anyone who was not of “Aryan” descent or was in conflict with the official NS cultural policy, was no longer allowed to practice his or her profession.

How did artists and intellectuals react to ideological influence, censorship, surveillance or even bans on work, publication and exhibitions during National Socialism? How did they try to maintain their artistic identity? Did they go into inner emigration, did they adapt, did they try to attract as little attention as possible? Or did they offer artistic resistance through “forbidden” art and literature? Did they only see the possibility of leaving the country or did they fight underground? The evaluation of the diverse answers from the German artists and intellectuals of the 1930s depends on the philosophical disposition, moral standpoint, temperament, and political conviction of today’s critics. Can we find works praising the Reich and its leader aesthetically relevant, independently of their political and cultural context? Or, the other way round: can we deem artworks criticizing and opposing the system “better,” solely on the basis of their political courage and merit? Can we separate the works from their creators? In most of the cases, we have to deal with completely individual careers, and judging them retrospectively is also a complex task. It is clear, however, that the contemporary Attila József sympathized with those who resisted the lure of mass ideology in one way or another. This sympathy is also evident in the poem he wrote on the occasion of Thomas Mann’s visit to Budapest in early 1937, when he greeted the exile author in his poem Thomas Mann üdvözlése [Welcome to Thomas Mann] as “a European mid people barbarous, white.”

The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union (the Deutsche Studentenschaft or DSt) to ceremonially burn books that were considered “Un-German” and “degrading German purity.” On April 8, 1933, the DSt proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” which culminated in public book burnings in May and June 1933 in major German cities. The Nazis burnt books written by Jewish, communist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, pacifist, religious, and sexologist authors like Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Magnus Hirschfeld, Erich Kästner, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Mann or Siegfried Kracauer. They also included works by foreign writers on the list of banned books, including works by Russian and Soviet (thus “Bolshevik”) authors: Dostoyevsky’s and Tolstoy’s books fell victims to this purge along with the writings of Lenin and Trotsky. The enthusiastic Nazi students also incinerated the volumes of many French, American and British writers such as Victor Hugo, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, James Joyce, and Oscar Wilde, whose works were deemed to be “hostile to the German Spirit.”

The burning of the books was also a symbol of the literal persecution of authors opposing Nazi ideology. They were banned from working and publication. Many of them were driven into exile (such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, or Thomas Mann); others were deprived of their citizenship (for example, Oskar Maria Graf and Kurt Tucholsky) or forced into a self-imposed exile from society (e.g. Erich Kästner and Hans Fallada). Many authors died in concentration camps or in prison, or were executed (like Carl von Ossietzky, Theodor Wolff, and Rudolf Hilferding). Many exiled authors despaired and committed suicide (for example, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Toller, and Stefan Zweig).

The “Twelve Theses” were issued in early April 1933 by the Press and Propaganda Section of the German Student Union (the Deutsche Studentenschaft or DSt) and called for German university students to “purge” German language and literature of Jewish influence and to restore those aspects of German culture to their “pure” folk traditions. The theses were posted on university campuses throughout Germany prior to the May 1933 book burnings.

“The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path… The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death—this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed—a deed which should document the following for the world to know. Here the intellectual foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise… No to decadence and moral corruption!… Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kästner!”

Collection of the lead articles of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, originally published in Der Angriff, the propaganda organ of the Nazi Party, founded by Goebbels himself in 1927. This book is an association copy, and was dedicated to Adolf Hitler by the author.

The poet Gottfried Benn’s relationship with National Socialism is often described all too schematically as two sharply separated phases of approval and subsequent rejection. In reality, neither his approval nor his rejection can be put in simple categories. Benn, like many Germans of his generation, was upset by the ongoing economic and political instability of the Weimar Republic, and was afraid of the danger Communism and Americanism represented for culture. And like many Germans, he sympathized – for a short period – with the Nazis as a revolutionary force. In his Antwort an die literarischen Emigranten [Answer to the Literary emigrants, 1933], he justified his decision to stay in Nazi Germany. Benn described a “new historical situation” with the “victory of new authoritarian states”. According to Benn, “the becoming law of the new century” is a “total state” in line with the “appearance of a new revolutionary movement” and a “new human type”. He hoped that National Socialism would exalt his aesthetics and that expressionism would become the official art of Germany, as Futurism had in Italy. He soon realized, however, that the modernity of form and content in his works was incompatible with the prevailing ideology. Appalled by the Night of the Long Knives, Benn turned away from the Nazis. He lived quietly, refraining from public criticism of the Nazi Party. He decided to perform “the aristocratic form of emigration” and joined the Wehrmacht in 1935 to be a military doctor, where he found many officers sympathetic to his disapproval of the regime. Even after he openly sided with the Nazis and accepted functions in the new regime, he also was publicly attacked in 1936 because of his expressionist and experimental poetry for being “degenerate”, Jewish, and homosexual. Heinrich Himmler, however, stepped in and defended Benn on the grounds of his good record since 1933. It wasn’t enough: In 1938 the Reichsschrifttumskammer [the National Socialist authors’ association] banned Benn from further writing. His poem Monolog [Monologue] from 1941 represented an unequivocal condemnation of Hitler (describing him as a clown) and of Nazi barbarism. Gottfried Benn was never a member of the NSDAP and turned away from National Socialism, with which he had first sympathized, because he finally assessed it as being as anti-cultural as Communism and Socialism. After the war, his work was banned by the Allies because of his initial support for Hitler. But he found a new, steadily growing audience in the young Federal Republic, and he was awarded the Büchner Prize in 1951.

By the time of the book burnings, many of the ostracized authors—including the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, and Erich Maria Remarque—had already left Germany. Poet, writer and journalist Erich Kästner, however, stood in awe of the onlookers in front of the flickering fire and had to listen to the names—including his own—whose works were considered “disfavored, corrosive and un-German.” And while a student was delivering Kästner's poems and the novel Fabian to the flames, the arsonist shouted: “Against decadence and moral decline!”. Ironically, Kästner’s works, par excellence examples of the “Gebrauchslyrik” [lyrics for everyday use] of Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity] in the Weimar Republic, were previously criticized by leftist critics, too, for being nothing else but the “aesthetics of the assembly line,” or, to put it more simple: mass-literature. One of his harshest critics was German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, whose books were also banned and burnt in front of the Staatsoper. In his essay Linke Melancholie [Left-Wing Melancholy] from 1931, Benjamin claimed that Kästner’s “petit bourgeois” poems would do nothing more than “like baking powder help to raise the kneaded dough of private opinion.” After the book burnings, Kästner stayed in Germany until shortly before the end of the war, published his popular children’s books abroad, and was a prolific author under a pseudonym. This also resulted in scripts for the entertainment industry of the National Socialists, among other things (e.g. for the film Münchausen, 1938, directed by Hungarian emigrant Josef von Báky). Kästner stuck to the popular genres even after the war, and was deemed one of the most prominent figures of the “Innere Emigration” [inner emigration]. Benjamin, on the other hand, who already left Germany in 1932, committed suicide while fleeing from occupied France, expecting repatriation to Nazi hands.

Writer Oskar Maria Graf has already left his beloved Bavaria for Austria in February of 1933, where he found out via the local newspapers what had happened at the Opernplatz in Berlin on May 10, 1933. Graf felt particularly affected: his name was not on the black list, the Nazis seemed to regard his well-selling works as harmless. On May 12, 1933, the social democratic Arbeiter-Zeitung printed Graf’s indignant contradiction. He complained that his books were not burned. “In vain I wonder how I earned this disgrace,” writes Graf, adding his demand: “After my whole life I have the right to demand that my books are handed over to the purifying flames of the pyre. BURN ME!” But the Nazis initially did not grant him his wish. In November 1933 he was even offered the opportunity to work on a book about the ancient Teutons—an order from Goebbels’ ministry. In the same month Graf complained to the Reichsstelle zur Förderung des Deutschen Schrifttums [Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature] that not all of his books were on the index. He was only redeemed in the following year: the Nazis expatriated him. He finally settled in New York in 1938, where he was appointed president of the German American Writers Association.

As editor of the magazine Die Weltbühne, Carl von Ossietzky was a convinced pacifist and democrat. As such, he had already run into trouble with the government even before Hitler came to power. In the internationally sensational “Weltbühne trial” he was convicted of espionage in 1931 because his magazine had drawn attention to the illegal armament of the Reichswehr. Shortly after his release, the Nazis came to power, and Ossietzky was arrested by the Gestapo on a pretext in connection with the Reichstag fire, tortured, and sent to the Sonnenburg concentration camp. The Weltbühne was banned that same year, and Ossietzky’s books were also banned and burned. In 1934, he was transferred to the Esterwegen concentration camp in Emsland, where this picture of the weakened and emaciated author was taken. As one of the most prominent political prisoners Ossietzky received the Nobel Peace Prize in an international aid campaign in 1936. In the same year, seriously ill from the torture, he was transferred to a Berlin hospital under police surveillance. He died there under guard two years later.

On September 1, 1933, at the first Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg after his rise to power, Adolf Hitler announced that the time had come for “a new artistic renaissance of the Aryan human being”, rejecting Jewish and Bolshevik forms of painting and sculpture, such as abstract art, cubism, Dadaism and surrealism. According to him, the “ugly art” belonged in “medical custody”, in a “suitable institution”, since it represented a danger to the healthy mind of the people.

The so-called Reichsparteitag [Reich Party Convention], the annual rallies of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers’ Party) were large propaganda events, especially after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. The first congress of the NSDAP was held in 1923 in Munich. The main party event relocated to Nuremberg the same year (where a rally was held with the title “Der Deutsche Tag” – [German Day]). These events were held at the Reichsparteitagsgelände [Reich Party rally grounds) in Nuremberg from 1933 to 1938. The 5th Party Congress was the first after the seizure of power, so it was called the Reichsparteitag des Sieges [Rally of Victory], and it was the first of the three rallies to be filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. The 1939 rally was given the name Reichsparteitag des Friedens [Rally of Peace]. It was meant to reiterate the German desire for peace, but it was cancelled at short notice, as one day before the planned date, on September 1, Germany began its offensive against Poland.

Official films of the rallies began in 1927, with the establishment of the NSDAP film office. The first film was made at the 3rd Party Congress, or the Tag des Erwachens [The Day of Awakening] and was entitled Eine Symphonie des Kampfwillens [A Symphony of the Will to Fight], dirceted by Julius Lippert. The most famous films were made by Leni Riefenstahl of the rallies between 1933 and 1935. Der Sieg des Glaubens [The Victory of Faith] was Riefenstahl’s first documentary and the first part of her party congress trilogy, the other parts of which are Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the Will, 1934] and Tag der Freiheit! Unsere Wehrmacht [Day of Freedom! Our armed forces, 1935]. As a result of the Röhm putsch, the film was withdrawn from circulation after a short time, as Ernst Röhm could still be seen here alongside Adolf Hitler on close and intimate terms. Röhm was shot during the Night of the Long Knives on July 1, 1934, and since he was to be erased from German history, Hitler required all known copies of the film to be destroyed. It was considered lost until a copy turned up in the 1980s in East Germany.

Leni Riefenstahl was a German film director, producer and actress as well as screenwriter, editor, photographer and dancer. She is considered one of the most controversial personalities in film history. On the one hand, she is viewed by many filmmakers and critics as an “innovative filmmaker and creative esthete”, and on the other, she is criticized for her works in the service of propaganda during the Nazi era. She was never an official member of the Nazi party but she was instrumental in shaping the imagery of the Nazi regime through her Party rally trilogy, as well as her two-part film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Olympia – Fest der Völker [Festival of Nations], Fest Der Körper [Festival of Beauty] 1938), among many other works. Yet, she often contradicted the wishes of her employers, preserving some kind of artistic autonomy. For instance, when she refused to modify the film Triumph des Willens at the request of Hitler and several generals of the Wehrmacht, who protested over the minimal army presence in the film. Instead, she agreed to film the next rally, focusing on the army (Tag der Freiheit! Unsere Wehrmacht [Day of Freedom! Our armed forces, 1935]). After the war she was arrested and after long hearings and “denazification” proceedings, she was declared a “fellow traveler” of the Nazi regime and was not charged with war crimes—throughout her life, she denied having known about the Holocaust. This classification entailed no sanctions other than the loss of the right to stand as a candidate. Although she was not banned from working, Riefenstahl was not able to realize any other film project after 1945. She turned to photography, yet her later photographic work—the albums about the Nuba tribes in Sudan—also lead to controversies. While some critics condemned the photos as evidence of Riefenstahl’s continued adherence to “fascist aesthetics,” others celebrated the photos for “bringing us the physical beauty of the people;” moreover, Riefenstahl was granted Sudanese citizenship for her services to the country.

The 7th Party Congress was held in Nuremberg, September 10–16, 1935, the year of the birth of József Attila’s poem, “A Breath of Air!.” It was called the “Rally of Freedom” (Reichsparteitag der Freiheit). “Freedom” referred to the reintroduction of compulsory military service and thus the German “liberation” from the Treaty of Versailles. Leni Riefenstahl made the film Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht [Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces] at this rally. It was also at the 7th Party Congress that the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or related blood.” Ancillary ordinances to the laws disenfranchised Jews and deprived them of most political rights.

“A new epoch is molded not by literary men but by warriors” – said Adolf Hitler during his speech at the opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst [House of German Art, today Haus der Kunst – House of Arts] in 1937. Designed by Paul Ludwig Troost, the monumental neoclassicist building was built between 1933 and 1937 with the personal participation of Hitler. However, Troost was not the original architect of the building. After the Glaspalast exhibition hall burned down in 1931, the local artist associations commissioned the Munich professor of architecture Adolf Abel with a new building at the same location. After Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, Abel abandoned the project immediately before construction began in the spring of 1933. Hitler then personally commissioned Paul Ludwig Troost, the architect who redesigned the NSDAP headquarters. Hitler laid the foundation stone for the new House of German Art on October 15, 1933. After Troost died in 1934, the construction was continued by his colleague Leonhard Gall with the participation of the widow Gerdy Troost. For the financing, the NSDAP organized a donation campaign among Bavarian and German industrialists. They were able to present the first commitments to Hitler on his birthday on April 20, 1933—with donations from magnates like e.g. Robert Bosch (Boschwerke), Wilhelm von Opel (Adam Opel AG), or Karl Friedrich von Siemens (Siemens AG). In the Nazi cultural policy, the building was intended to be the main exhibition building for the German Reich. This was also intended to restore Munich’s role as Germany’s leading art city, which was reflected in Munich’s honorary title of “Capital of German Art.”

Shortly after taking power, the Nazis began their fight against modern art and its representatives with the numerous dismissals from art academies and museums as well as the establishment of the so-called “Schandeausstellungen” [exhibitions of disgrace]. However, these events did not come unannounced. Rather, what was carried out here was what the massive attacks by radical groups and traditional artists against the avant-garde and the progressive purchasing policy of the museum directors had ideologically prepared for years. The dismissed officials in museums and universities were replaced by functionaries and like-minded members of the NSDAP, most of whom had close ties to the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur [Combat League for German Culture], led by Alfred Rosenberg. In many cities (e.g. Dessau, Mannheim, Munich, and Dresden) the new museum directors—some of whom were artists themselves—began their work with the establishment of “Schreckenskammern” [chambers of horrors for art], which the contemporary press also called “Horrorkabinette” [horror cabinets]. These Horrorkabinette were special exhibitions in which the existing stock of modern art, regardless of style, was displayed in a defamatory manner. The exhibitions pursued a purely political goal: the works of art were presented to the public as degenerative phenomena of the Weimar Republic in order to discredit it and ultimately to celebrate Hitler’s victory as a “revolutionary new beginning.” Despite this common ideological basis and objectives, the Horrorkabinette emerged as local individual actions independently of one another. The Schandeausstellungen sometimes contrasted “degenerate art” with the works of the new institution-leaders. Here fundamental mechanisms emerged that were sharply criticized even by Nazi functionaries such as Himmler and Goebbels: the activity of local, secondary figures, who out of mere envy of more successful colleagues contrasted the works with overly simplified propagandist labeling. This is a significant difference to the state-ordered and centrally prepared exhibition Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art], which opened in Munich in 1937 and was touring all over Germany between 1938 and 1941. Here the contrast between “degenerate” (Jewish-Bolshevik) and “arteigen” (German) art was not based on petty personal agendas, and the degradation of the avant-garde works happened on “proper” ideological grounds.

Prior to his artistic collaboration with the Nazi regime, Arno Breker was an accomplished and celebrated sculptor. After his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and his first successes in Germany, he settled in Paris in 1927, where he made numerous contacts—including lifelong friendships—with artists and intellectuals such as Aristide Maillol, Alexander Calder, Robert Delaunay, Constantin Brâncuși, and Man Ray. However, his links with his own country remained, and in 1934 he returned to Germany. At first, Breker was considered decadent and too France-oriented by the National Socialists, but in 1935 he received his first public commissions. It was not until 1936 that he began his rapid rise to become the most prominent sculptor of the Third Reich. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP, and became the favorite sculptor of the Führer. Breker worked closely with Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect, and was commissioned to play a key role in implementing Hitler’s vision to transform Berlin into Germania, a city of monumental architecture befitting a world capital on a par with ancient Babylon and Rome. Breker’s distinctive style shaped the aesthetics of the Nazi system: his monumental works depicted the ideal Aryan leading humanity into a future characterized by purity. In 1944 Hitler put his name on a list of “gottbegnadete Künstler” [“god-gifted artists”]. Despite the great importance of his work and his person for the Nazi regime, Breker was classified as a “fellow traveler” in 1948. Highly controversial for a lifetime, he was particularly accused of a lack of remorse. Though regarded as one of this country’s most important 20th-century artists, Breker dwelt in the shadows in postwar Germany, never able to wash away the taint of his association with the Third Reich.

With the disparagement and the loss of employment, clients and exhibition opportunities, the question of commitment, adaptation, “inner emigration” or exile became more and more urgent. The representatives of the so-called right wing of the “Neue Sachlichkeit” [New Objectivity] represented a special group of artists, who were willing to take the place of dismissed academy professors. For instance, Franz Radziwill, who previously described himself as a “proletarian of art”, felt drawn to the ideas of National Socialism and sympathized with the “left” wing of the NSDAP. He was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where artists like Paul Klee had previously been dismissed after the Nazi takeover of power. While Radziwill was involved in art politics in the interests of NS, in his case, too, his early expressionist work was taken against him. Although he had already turned away from his early work and had been a party member since 1933, he was unable to avoid dismissal as a professor or the confiscation of his works. His dismissal happened also because the “left” wing of the NSDAP was discredited after the so-called Röhmputsch in 1934. It was also around 1934 that Radziwill began the controversial painting Revolution, which he overpainted many times, and gave the title Dämonen [Demons]. In the original version of the painting there was only the slain SA man lying on the street. The hanged men, the ghosts, and the inscription on the facade “In the light of the state ideas, or the one kills the other” were added later. In contrast to his early commitment to National Socialism Radziwill grew increasingly distant from the Nazi ideology. From the mid-1930s, he experienced a rollercoaster of recognition and defamation. Ostracized in Munich and Berlin, he still enjoyed success in the northwest. In February 1938 Radziwill could still open his solo exhibition at the Kusnthalle Bremerhaven, while he was denounced as a “degenerate” artist, and many of his works were displayed in the framework of the traveling exhibition Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art]. From 1938, the ban on solo exhibitions was in effect until the end of the Nazi era. After the war, he too, was declared a “fellow traveler.” While his life and work have been debated controversially to the present day, he has remained an acknowledged painter.

In addition to official art, there was a second, unofficial art market that was stocked with the works of those artists who were otherwise banned and deemed “degenerate.” Even collectors close to the Nazi regime were eager to buy either their new works, or earlier pieces that had been confiscated from museums. One of the artists whose works were still circulating in Germany despite of their official status was Max Beckmann. The celebrated expressionist painter was one of the artists that the National Socialist most fervently hated, even before 1933. He was attacked by Italian fascists in connection with his painting Der Strand – am Lido [The Beach – at Lido, 1927] exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1930, which also attracted the attention of the National Socialists, resulting in a public campaign against Beckmann. After the Nazi takeover, he was soon dismissed from his teaching position at the Frankfurter Städelschule, and some of his works were burnt in Frankfrurt’s main square, the Römenberg in 1933. He moved to Berlin, withdrew from society and was considering how to succeed in the new state. He still had a massive circle of collectors and supporters—many of them National Socialists. However, he kept his distance and finally went into exile after hearing Hitler’s speech on the radio at the opening of the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung [Great German Art Exhibition] in Munich in 1937. Nevertheless, he maintained links with his homeland, and his pictures were brought to Germany where he could sell them, at a time when his other works were touring the country with the infamous Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art] exhibition. During the war, Beckman had to stay in the Netherlands, where he kept in touch with German resistance groups, including Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht and Wolfgang Frommel in Amsterdam. He finally obtained his visa in 1947 and moved to New York where he died in 1950.

The painters Fritz Schulze and his wife Eva Schulze-Knabe were founding members of the Assoziation revolutionärer bildender Künstler [ASSO – Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists], an association of artists close to the Communist Party (KDP), which they joined in 1930 and 1931. Together with other artists they undertook some spectacular actions with leaflets and banners in Dresden. After the NSDAP came to power and the KDP was banned, they continued to work underground. After the SA (Sturmabteilung) had besieged their studio, the couple fled to Leipzig in 1933, but they were arrested a few months later. They were sent to the Hohnstein concentration camp near Pirna, from which they were released in 1934 after being acquitted. From 1936 Schulze set up a resistance group with his friends that collected money and distributed materials for comrades in need. The Gestapo tracked down the group with its extensive network and identified Schulze as a communist resistance fighter. He and his wife were arrested in 1941. After more than a year in custody, the Volksgerichtshof [People’s Court] Schulze was sentenced to death in March 1942 in a joint trial for high treason. Eva Schulze-Knabe was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released from Waldheim prison in 1945. She returned to Dresden and became a celebrated painter in the new East-Germany.

The colorful complexity of cultural life of the Weimar Republic was irretrievably gone in 1933. The people in Berlin, Hamburg and other major German cities still celebrated wild nights afterwards, but lively lightness, pure joie de vivre and artistic freedom fell by the wayside.

In July 1936, shortly before the opening of the Berlin Olympics, the “Weltkongress für Freizeitgestaltung” [World Congress for Leisure Time and Recreation] took place in Hamburg. It was the second congress with this name: the first one was organized in Los Angeles four years before, also in connection to the Summer Olympics. In Hamburg, approximately 3000 participants from 61 countries took part in discussions on the organization of leisure and recreation under the motto “Joy and Peace!”. The congress provided the stage from which the successes of the National Socialist recreational organization Kraft durch Freude [KdF – Strength through Joy] was broadcast to the world.

The KdF movement was established in 1933 as part of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), the national labor organization set up by the Nazis once they had liquidated all the trade unions. KdF was originally called “Nach der Arbeit” [After Work] and was modeled on the Italian fascist Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro [National Recreational Club]. KdF combined mass tourism, factory sports events, concerts and dances, which had existed since the turn of the century, when paternalistic factory owners wanted their workers to identify with the company and not with trade unions. Alongside tourism and cruises, its most ambitious project was the KdF-Wagen, later known as the Volkswagen Beetle.

Joseph Goebbels recognized the propaganda potential of the then-new means of communication and therefore considered it of the utmost importance to spread radio receivers as widely as possible. Between 1932 and 1939, the number of radio owners tripled, especially due to the massive sale of the inexpensive “Volksempfänger.” These radio receivers were developed by German engineer Otto Griessing on the instructions of Goebbels. Volksempfänger-type radios were designed to receive only local radio stations, that is, German radio stations controlled primarily by the Nazis, while other foreign radio stations (such as the BBC World Service) were out of range. In order to avoid the danger of listeners turning away from the weariness of the propaganda, the radio programs mainly offered light music and dance hits. Swing and jazz were also tolerated if their origins were denied as “strange nigger music” and they ran “in German packaging” as “strongly rhythmic music”.

In Goebbels’ view, film was “one of the most modern and far-reaching means of influencing the masses”. In the 1934/35 season, around 250 million people went to the cinema. Political propaganda films were clearly in the minority. The film-loving audience could choose between around 100 comedies, romance or adventure films per year. The Nazi authorities encouraged a state-owned film industry in imitation of Hollywood as well as Hollywood-style stars and film techniques; indeed, only the war put an end to Nazi approval for showing Hollywood films themselves. But as Siegfried Kracauer pointed out in Die Angestellten [The Salaried Masses, 1930], mass media indeed proved to be a very effective tool for spreading propaganda. From 1934 onwards, cinema owners were required to show at least one so-called “Kulturfilm” [cultural film] and the newsreel in the preliminary program. The “cultural films” were short non-fiction and documentary films that presented themselves as objective and factual to the outside world and often propagated topics such as race theory or “blood and soil”. The newsreel, on the other hand, was given the task of presenting and honoring the achievements of the Nazi regime in detail.