2020 IB Extended Essays

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Expressionist Artworks Pieces of art from the early 20 th century art movement of expressionism were also heavily censored. Modern art was not welcome in Nazi Germany, Hitler had made it clear that traditional forms and styles of art were strictly the only pieces allowed. Hitler believed that modern art had been corrupted by Jewish influences, however, they could not corrupt the art of the past. In 1933, officials from the Reich Chamber of Culture began to ban modern artists from exhibiting their work and prohibiting them from creating any new pieces. In the first few decades of the 20 th century, unique new art styles created by artist groups such as the Der Blaue Reiter and the Die Brücke emerged in Germany. Art museums collected pieces by artists of the moments such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Maxx Beckmann and Paul Klee and gave their eccentric artworks more exposure to a larger international audience. In 1933, Hitler ordered Nazi agencies to take down these artworks and display them in an “Entartete Kunst” exhibition. “Entartete Kunst”, meaning “Degenerate Art”, was a derogatory term for works of art that were deemed to be an “insult to German feeling” by the Nazi Party. In 1937, Adolf Ziegler, Hitler’s favourite artist, organised an exhibition named after the term where 650 modern artworks that defied the ideology of the Nazi regime were displayed (Collins, 2020). More than 2 million German civilians visited across the two years it toured around Germany (Ginder, 2004).