Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations of Nazi Cultural History
- 1 The “Germanic” Origins of Western Culture
- 2 Vox Volkish
- 3 The Western Tradition as Political and Patriotic
- 4 The Western Tradition as anti-Semitic
- 5 The Archenemy Incarnate
- Part II Blind to the Light
- Part III Modern Dilemmas
- Part IV “Holy” War and Weimar “Crisis”
- Part V Nazi “Solutions”
- Notes
- Index
3 - The Western Tradition as Political and Patriotic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations of Nazi Cultural History
- 1 The “Germanic” Origins of Western Culture
- 2 Vox Volkish
- 3 The Western Tradition as Political and Patriotic
- 4 The Western Tradition as anti-Semitic
- 5 The Archenemy Incarnate
- Part II Blind to the Light
- Part III Modern Dilemmas
- Part IV “Holy” War and Weimar “Crisis”
- Part V Nazi “Solutions”
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Walter Benjamin wrote, “the logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticizing of political life.” But as seen in the strategies of Nazi ideologues, it can be argued that the opposite was also true: that fascism as practiced also worked to politicize artistic culture. Thus, in addition to attesting that favorite figures of Western cultural history were of Germanic and definitely not of Jewish descent, and volkish rather than urbane, Nazi propagandists also countered notions of art for art’s sake by promoting the view that the primary creative impulse was as much political – especially patriotic and nationalistic – as artistic. Hitler contributed to the politicization of art history on numerous occasions. While acceding that “art has at all times been the expression of an ideological and religious experience,” he insisted that it is “at the same time the expression of a political will.” For him, “all great art is national . . . Great musicians, such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, created German music that was deeply rooted in the very core of the German spirit and the German mind . . . That is equally true of German sculptors, painters, architects.” At the opening of the Reich Culture Chamber in 1933, Joseph Goebbels expanded on this view of the true artist as engaged in the politics of his day:
Revolutions are never limited to the purely political. They reach into every area of human interaction. Science and art do not remain unaffected. We understand politics in a higher sense . . . Even the creator – especially he – is drawn into the vortex of revolutionary events. He only rises to his time and its tasks if he does not remain content with passively letting the revolution unfold, but when he actively intervenes in it, consciously affirms it, takes on its rhythm, and makes its goals his own. In short: if he marches not in the rearguard, but at its head.
So, another central dictum of Nazified cultural history promoted in the Völkischer Beobachter was that the great works of the Western tradition were politically inspired, especially in the spirit of patriotism and nationalism, as these concepts might have been relevant for any particular historical context.
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- Information
- InhumanitiesNazi Interpretations of Western Culture, pp. 50 - 83Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012