In 1934, one year after the Nazis came to power, the German city of Düsseldorf took the initiative in organizing a grandiose exhibition thematizing the “new era in the new Reich,” which would open its doors in 1937. The idea was to promote the collaboration between artists, manufacturers and artisans in order to ensure the competitiveness of German products on the international market. The exhibition would combine a model housing settlement and a garden display with an arts and crafts exhibition. Although traditional crafts were in clear decline, each region had to provide its own “typical” artisanal workshop.

This Nazi exhibition is a particularly clear example of how an idealized rural world could be made to function as a model for contemporary society: settlements in which peasants and artisans constituted a community rooted in the soil of the homeland where class struggle did not exist. What was most surprising was that a small-scale economy, where artisanal labour dominated and each family had a barn and vegetable garden, was considered a realistic solution in times of economic crisis. This idealization of the rural world and its artisanal traditions as the essence of the nation was not particular to the Nazis but could also be found in other countries and under a great diversity of political regimes.