Editing Degenerate art (section)

==Theories of degeneracy==
[[File:Barlach Magdeburger Ehrenmal.jpg|thumb|upright|{{lang|de|Das Magdeburger Ehrenmal}} (the Magdeburg cenotaph), by [[Ernst Barlach]] was declared to be degenerate art due to the "deformity" and emaciation of the figures—corresponding to [[Max Nordau|Nordau]]'s theorized connection between "mental and physical degeneration".|left]]
The term {{lang|de|Entartung}} (or [[Degeneration theory|"degeneracy"]]) had gained currency in Germany by the late 19th century when the critic and author [[Max Nordau]] devised the [[theory]] presented in his 1892 book ''[[Degeneration (Max Nordau)|Degeneration]]''.<ref>Barron 1991, p. 26.</ref> Nordau drew upon the writings of the [[criminology|criminologist]] [[Cesare Lombroso]], whose ''The Criminal Man'', published in 1876, attempted to prove that there were "born criminals" whose [[atavism|atavistic]] personality traits could be detected by scientifically measuring abnormal physical characteristics. Nordau developed from this premise a critique of [[modern art]], explained as the work of those so corrupted and enfeebled by modern life that they have lost the self-control needed to produce coherent works. He attacked [[Aestheticism]] in [[English literature]] and described the [[mysticism]] of the German composer [[Richard Wagner]] and the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist movement]] in [[French literature]] as a product of mental pathology. Explaining the [[painterliness]] of [[Impressionism]] as the sign of a diseased visual cortex, he decried modern degeneracy while praising traditional German culture. Despite the fact that Nordau was Jewish and a key figure in the [[Zionist]] movement (Lombroso was also Jewish), his theory of artistic degeneracy would be seized upon by German [[Nazism|Nazis]] during the [[Weimar Republic]] as a rallying point for their antisemitic and racist demand for [[Aryan race|Aryan]] purity in art.

Belief in a Germanic spirit—defined as mystical, rural, moral, bearing ancient wisdom, and noble in the face of a tragic destiny—existed long before the rise of the Nazis; Richard Wagner explored such ideas in his writings.<ref>Adam 1992, pp. 23–24.</ref><ref>Newman, Ernest, and Richard Wagner (1899). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VeUsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA272 A Study of Wagner]''. London: Dobell. pp. 272–275. {{OCLC|253374235}}.</ref> Beginning before World War I, the well-known German architect and painter [[Paul Schultze-Naumburg]]'s influential writings, which invoked racial theories in condemning modern art and [[modern architecture|architecture]], supplied much of the basis for Adolf Hitler's belief that classical [[Greece]] and the [[Middle Ages]] were the true sources of Aryan art.<ref>Adam 1992, pp. 29–32.</ref> Schultze-Naumburg subsequently wrote such books as ''{{lang|de|Die Kunst der Deutschen. Ihr Wesen und ihre Werke}}'' (''The art of the Germans. Its nature and its works'') and ''{{lang|de|Kunst und Rasse}}'' (''Art and Race''), the latter published in 1928, in which he argued that only racially pure artists could produce a healthy art which upheld timeless [[Platonic idealism|ideals]] of [[classical beauty]], while racially mixed modern artists produced disordered artworks and monstrous depictions of the human form. By reproducing examples of modern art next to photographs of people with deformities and diseases, he graphically reinforced the idea of modernism as a sickness.<ref>Grosshans 1983, p. 9. Grosshans calls Schultze-Naumburg "[u]ndoubtedly the most important" of the era's German critics of modernism.</ref> [[Alfred Rosenberg]] developed this theory in ''{{lang|de|[[The Myth of the Twentieth Century|Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts]]}}'' (''Myth of the Twentieth Century''), published in 1933, which became a best-seller in Germany and made Rosenberg the Party's leading ideological spokesman.<ref>Adam 1992, p. 33.</ref>