Editing Degenerate art (section)

==''Entartete Kunst'' exhibit==
{{main|Degenerate Art exhibition}}
[[File:Entartete Kunst poster, Berlin, 1938.jpg|thumb|Entartete Kunst poster, Berlin, 1938|left]]
[[File:Entartete-kunst nolde.png|thumb|300px|Letter to [[Emil Nolde]] in 1941 from [[Adolf Ziegler]], who declares that Nolde's art is degenerate art, and forbids him to paint]] 
By 1937, the concept of degeneracy was firmly entrenched in Nazi policy. On 30 June of that year Goebbels put [[Adolf Ziegler]], the head of {{lang|de|Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste}} (Reich Chamber of Visual Art), in charge of a six-man commission authorized to confiscate from museums and art collections throughout the Reich, any remaining art deemed modern, degenerate, or subversive. These works were then to be presented to the public in an exhibit intended to incite further revulsion against the "perverse Jewish spirit" penetrating German culture.<ref>Adam 1992, p. 123, quoting Goebbels, 26 November 1937, in ''Von der Grossmacht zur Weltmacht''.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=We're asking about profit, morality, money and rescue |date=9 December 2022 |url=https://www.juedisches-museum.ch/en/were-asking-about-profit-morality-money-and-rescue/}}</ref>

Over 5000 works were seized, including 1052 by Nolde, 759 by Heckel, 639 by [[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner]] and 508 by [[Max Beckmann]], as well as smaller numbers of works by such artists as [[Alexander Archipenko]], [[Marc Chagall]], [[James Ensor]], [[Albert Gleizes]], [[Henri Matisse]], [[Jean Metzinger]], [[Pablo Picasso]], and [[Vincent van Gogh]].<ref>Adam 1992, pp. 121–122.</ref> The {{lang|de|Entartete Kunst}} exhibit, featuring over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of 32 German museums, premiered in [[Munich]] on 19 July 1937, and remained on view until 30 November, before traveling to 11 other cities in Germany and Austria.

The exhibit was held on the second floor of a building formerly occupied by the Institute of [[Archaeology]]. Viewers had to reach the exhibit by means of a narrow staircase. The first sculpture was an oversized, theatrical portrait of Jesus, which purposely intimidated viewers as they literally bumped into it in order to enter. The rooms were made of temporary partitions and deliberately chaotic and overfilled. Pictures were crowded together, sometimes unframed, usually hung by cord.

The first three rooms were grouped thematically. The first room contained works considered demeaning of religion; the second featured works by Jewish artists in particular; the third contained works deemed insulting to the women, soldiers and farmers of Germany. The rest of the exhibit had no particular theme.

There were slogans painted on the walls. For example:
* Insolent mockery of the Divine under Centrist rule
* Revelation of the Jewish racial soul
* An insult to German womanhood
* The ideal—cretin and whore
* Deliberate sabotage of national defense
* German farmers—a Yiddish view
* The Jewish longing for the wilderness reveals itself—in Germany the [[Negro]] becomes the racial ideal of a degenerate art
* Madness becomes method
* Nature as seen by sick minds
* Even museum bigwigs called this the "art of the German people"<ref>Barron 1991, p. 46.</ref>

Speeches of Nazi party leaders contrasted with artist [[manifesto]]s from various art movements, such as [[Dada]] and [[Surrealism]]. Next to many paintings were labels indicating how much money a museum spent to acquire the artwork. In the case of paintings acquired during the post-war [[Weimar Republic|Weimar]] [[Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic|hyperinflation]] of the early 1920s, when the cost of a kilogram loaf of bread reached 233&nbsp;[[1000000000 (number)|billion]] [[German Papiermark|German marks]],<ref>Evans 2004, p. 106.</ref> the prices of the paintings were of course greatly exaggerated. The exhibit was designed to promote the idea that modernism was a [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy]] by people who hated German decency, frequently identified as Jewish-Bolshevist, although only 6 of the 112 artists included in the exhibition were in fact Jewish.<ref>Barron 1991, p. 9.</ref>

The exhibition program contained photographs of modern artworks accompanied by defamatory text.<ref name="LACMA">Barron, Stephanie, Guenther and Peter W., [https://archive.org/stream/degenerateartfa00barr#page/n0/mode/2up ''"Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany''], LACMA, 1991, {{ISBN|0810936534}}.</ref> The cover featured the exhibition title—with the word {{lang|de|"Kunst"}}, meaning art, in [[scare quotes]]—superimposed on an image of [[Otto Freundlich]]'s sculpture {{lang|de|[[Der Neue Mensch]]}}.

A few weeks after the opening of the exhibition, Goebbels ordered a second and more thorough scouring of German art collections; inventory lists indicate that the artworks seized in this second round, combined with those gathered prior to the exhibition, amounted to 16,558 works.<ref>Barron 1991, pp. 47–48.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/e/entartete-kunst/ |title=Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), complete inventory of artworks confiscated by the Nazi regime from public institutions in Germany, 1937–1938, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. Victoria and Albert Museum |publisher=Vam.ac.uk |date=30 June 1939 |access-date=14 August 2014}}</ref>

Coinciding with the {{lang|de|Entartete Kunst}} exhibition, the ''[[Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung]]'' (Great German art exhibition) made its premiere amid much pageantry. This exhibition, held at the palatial {{lang|de|[[Haus der Kunst|Haus der deutschen Kunst]]}} (House of German Art), displayed the work of officially approved artists such as [[Arno Breker]] and [[Adolf Wissel]]. At the end of four months {{lang|de|Entartete Kunst}} had attracted over two million visitors, nearly three and a half times the number that visited the nearby ''Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung''.<ref>Adam 1992, pp. 124–125.</ref>