Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics

485 Pages·2009·15.47 MB·English

by  Frederic Spotts

H I T L E R
a n d
THE P O W E R O F
AESTHETICS
By the same author
The Churches and Politics in Germany
Italy: A Difficult Democracy (Co-Author)
Letters of Leonard Woolf
Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival
H I T L E R
a n d
T H E POWER. OF
AE S T HE T I C S
FR ED E R IC SPOTTS
With a new introduction by the author
THE OVERLOOK PRESS
W oodstock & New Y ork
The fellow is a catastrophe. But that is no
reason why we should not find him
interesting, as a character and as an event.
T hom as M an n , Brother Hitler
First published in paperback in the United States in 2009 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
Woodstock & New York
W oodstock:
One Overlook Drive
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.overlookpress.com
[for individual orders, bulk and special sales, contact our Woodstock office]
New York:
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
Copyright © 2002 by Frederic Spotts
Introduction copyright © 2009 by Frederic Spotts
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now
known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with
a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spotts, Frederic.
Hitler and the power of aesthetics / Frederic Spotts
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945—Biography. 2. National socialism and art.
3. Germany—Cultural policy. 4. Art and state—Germany—History—20th century.
5. Aesthetics, German—20th century. 6. Aesthetics, Austrian—20th century. I. Title.
DD247.H.5 S654 2002 943.086’092 B 21 2002066302
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-59020-178-7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0
C
o n t e n t s
INTRODUCTION vii
PREFACE xi
SOURCES xv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxi
THE RELUCTANT DICTATOR
1 The Bohemian Aesthete 3
2 A Philosophy of Culture 16
3 The Grand Paradox 28
THE ARTFUL LEADER
4 The Artist as Politician 43
5 The Politician as Artist 73
THE ARTIST OF DESTRUCTION
6 The New Germany and the New German 97
7 Purification by Death 113
THE FAILED PAINTER
8 The Struggling Watercolourist 123
9 Forgers and Collectors 138
THE ART DICTATOR
10 The Modernist Enemy 151
11 The Failure of National Socialist Realism 169
12 The Art Collector 187
THE PERFECT WAGNERITE
13 Hitler’s Wagner or Wagner’s Hitler? 223
14 ‘Fiihrer of the Bayreuth Republic’ 247
vi | C o n ten ts
THE MUSIC MASTER
15 The Rape of Euterpe 267
16 The Music Patron Til
17 Conductors and Composers 289
THE MASTER BUILDER
18 Immortality through Architecture 311
19 Political Architecture 330
20 Remodelling Germany 351
21 Aesthetics and Transport 386
AFTERWORD 399
SOURCE NOTES 402
BOOKS CITED IN TEXT 437
INDEX 444
I
n t r o d u c t io n
You can discuss Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot with calm reason. But it is almost
impossible to talk about Hitler rationally. When, in 2000, Time magazine was
considering whom to designate its “Man of the Century,” the rumor that
Hitler was a candidate caused a minor uproar. That Hitler had more of an
impact on the century than anyone else few historians would deny. But his­
torical fact had to give way to irrational emotion, and so Time timidly
selected Einstein. There was an irony in this. Einstein himself once belittled
his work by pointing out that his theories had always existed in nature and
were just waiting to be propounded by one physicist or another. But a
Beethoven, he said, was a unique phenomenon.
Hitler was also unique; he made history, history did not make him. His
singularity as someone who rose almost literally from the gutter to become
master of Europe is recognized. What is not accepted is that there is anything
more to be said of him. When CBS television announced plans for a film on
Hitler’s early life, a prominent Jewish leader protested. “We know who he
is, we know what he did, what are we going to learn?” That Hitler might
after all be found to be human, with normal, decent traits is indeed terrify­
ing. If he is a bit like us, then we may be a bit like him, validating Thomas
Mann’s assertion that “perhaps there is a little Hitler in us.” The point of
Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics is not so much to argue the humanness of the
man, however, as to explore the idea that Hitler was two persons—a man of
hatred, violence and destruction yet also a man of quite remarkable aesthetic
instincts who revered the arts above all else and wanted, after his wars and
racial genocide had cleansed Europe, to create a culture-state in which the
arts would reign supreme.
Yet although more books are said to have been written about Hitler than
any other figure in history, only Joachim Fest in his biography and Albert
Speer in his memoirs and secret diaries delved beneath the surface of his char­
acter and suggested that he was more than a ruthless politician. That Hitler
gave National Socialism an aesthetic character was recognized at least from
viii | H itler and the Pow er of A esthetics
the time of Walter Benjamin. But in half a century Hitler’s personal artistry
and the way he used his aesthetic talents to come to power and then to hyp­
notize Germany and much of Europe was never examined and
described—or even understood.
And so Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics was the first book to be devoted
to uncovering this neglected side of Hitler. And it was received as such—“a
radical new interpretation,” “a fundamental reassessment,” “offering novel
insights hitherto missing in straightforward political and biographical studies”
were a few of the responses. Contemporary Review, speaking for many others,
commented, “From now on we shall have to rethink our understanding of
Hitler.”
Novel and heterodox though the book was, causing controversy was not
its intent and, rather surprisingly, was not the result. Reviewers and readers
described themselves variously as surprised, intrigued, fascinated, troubled
and amazed by the man. The book itself was described as revelatory, scintil­
lating, grimly fascinating, unsettling, invaluable, filled with surprises and
ironies, novel in its insights and provocatively fresh. One reviewer even
found it in some ways facetious. Above all, readers found this more compli­
cated Hitler “disturbing.” Jewish publications fell into the general pattern.
Even Stormfront White Nationalist Community found the book “a riveting
and highly original work” in showing that Hitler’s interest in the arts was as
intense as his racism. Writers in Christian publications highlighted the moral
contradictions inherent in Hitler’s aesthetics, and one of the most thoughtful
discussions of the book appeared in Christianity Today.
A writer for The Independent praised Hitler as one of the best books of
2002. A freelance critic listed it as his 51st favorite book—but considering
that Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities was number 56 and Orwell’s 1984 was
number 59, this turned out to be high praise. A writer for the national Jewish
student magazine was so impressed by one of Hitler’s watercolors reproduced
in the book that he conducted an experiment to compare other reactions to
his own. “I showed the painting to Yeshiva University students standing on
Amsterdam Avenue at 185th Street in Manhattan’s Washington Heights
neighbourhood. They praised the sunnyness of the piece, the happy mood,
and the ‘pretty colours.’ I then showed them the by-line: Adolf Hitler.
Dispositions changed from pleasure to shock, horror, and embarrassment.”
There was surprisingly little negative criticism. In a generally favorable
but glum review, the New York Times critic found the book “a depressing
P reface | ix
read” but one that would “rightly find its place among the central studies of
Nazism”. It was “a despiriting slog”, however, with a “numbing amount of
detail”. This was an understandable misunderstanding of the book’s intent.
So much nonsense has been written about Hitler and the arts that the book
deliberately included everything that could reliably be said on the subject.
Such encyclopaedic, at times taxonomic, coverage may well have made for
tedium.
The book was included in course reading lists in universities and sum­
mer seminars in a variety of countries. It was taken for publication in
translation in the Czech Republic, Spain and Brazil. No German publisher
was willing to bring it out, however. Contradictory reasons were given—the
subject was taboo, the subject was already subject of too many books.
Hitler was the subject of discussion in a number of later books. One of
these was John Carey’s controversial What Good are the Arts? Carey ques­
tioned the moral and social value of culture and cited Hitler as Exhibit A in
proving that there is no link between love of the arts and a feeling for human­
ity, that high culture does not necessarily have an ennobling effect on its
practitioners. So probably Britain and America are no worse off being gov­
erned by cultural cretins. Apart from Lincoln, who took an unfortunate
pleasure in the theatre, our presidents and prime ministers have demonstra­
tively shunned the arts.
And in all, then, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics offered readers a new
and fuller understanding of Hitler, revealing previously unexplored depths of
character in one of the most universally despised men in history. That they
responded with interest and praise is the highest aspiration a book of non-fic-
tion can have.