A Study On Nazi Germany Art Policies

In1933, the Nazi party under Hitler controlled the Germany regime and it started to take the Gleichschaltung trying to construct the’National community’that the Nazi advocated. Therefore, all fields including political, economical, cultural, religious filed even the ordinary people’s everyday life and so on fail to escape the fate of being controlled by Nazi authorities. And, even the Art which appears to have nothing with politic also had been controlled by the Nazi government. The Nazi authority took a serious of measures trying to make use of the art for politics and the value that’the art is supposed to serve for politic’is also the artistic value and principle of Nazi. Nazi was committed to establish a Millennium Empire which consists of single race. And for this political purpose, the Art is also utilized by National socialists to construct this Millennium Empire. Nazi authorities strongly advocated Anti-Semitism in the art world, and the Anti-Semitism also became a red line through the Nazi artistic value. In addition, due to the hate for Weimar democracy and Bolshevism, Nazi connected modernist art with democratic system, Jews and Bolshevism and wantonly persecuted modernist art and artists. So, during the Nazi period, the Art in Germany all the time played the tone of Anti-Modemism.For those purposes above, Nazi simultaneously implemented tolerant and strict measures. It threatened and enticed those artists in Germany, at the same time, relyed on the National power even violence to control the Art world or used the economical measure to make those artists surrendered. In the history of Germany, there is no government like Nazi utilizing the executive power to intervene the art world in such a degree. But, do the Nazi art policies really effectively carry out? The answer is no. So, what is the reason of the failure of the Nazi art policies? Under the art policies having essential characteristics of dictatorship, how did those artists in this country react? How do we use moral balance to judge them? What is the relationship between one kind of social system and humanity? This article try to answer questions above through researching the Nazi art policies.