Degenerate art: the avant-garde in Nazi Germany

A thorough documentary on Hitler’s Germany from the point of view of the German art world that explores the impact of war and the Nazi regime on artists and the nature of art in Germany. The program is centred around a study of the artists and the works condemned in Hitler’s “Degenerate Art” exhibition following his rise to power after the Great Depression. This badly presented, propaganda style exhibition took 650 abstract and expressionist works from museums and private collections around Germany and toured Germany and Austria for four years as an example of the abstraction and inner awareness that was unacceptable to Hitler’s vision for the new conformist Germany. It was held up as a contrast to Hitler’s self curated exhibits of his vision for new German art at the House of German art opened in 1937. The documentary contains interviews with artists’ families, art critics, historians, and art students, curators and journalists of the time and a detailed analysis of the lives of the condemned artists and innovative art movements such as the Expressionist and Bauhaus school that they represented. These elements, combined with a broad based study of Hitler’s rise to power, and the social, cultural and political impact of the Nazi leadership on Germany, provides a striking perspective on the mass persuasion techniques, suppression, targeting of, and aggression towards, alternative views or unrecognised groups during Hitler’s dictatorship. It also considers the consequences of this history for the future of German art.