Sculpture
The years of search and probing that marked the first years in power have been brushed aside. Strong, proud characters have taken over. The storm of spiritual revolution has won the day. Grandeur of form, which is an appropriate icon for our era, bestows on sculpture a new audacious language. The giant sculptures have become a symbol of the creative politics of the State together with our monuments of architecture, they proclaim the events of our time for generations to come. Painting still fights for an equal place next to sculpture and architecture. It represents the experiences of the soul and thus creates the equilibrium between individual and community, the harmony between daily happenings and festive ones, between clear political willpower and romantic longing. The giant sculptures created for the buildings of Party and State -- like those by Thorak and Breker -- on the other hand, grew out of a different feeling. Their ground is the manly character of National Socialism, the forces of order, courage, and heroic struggle. -- Walter Horn, Vorbild und Verpflichtung, Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, September, 1939, page 832. |
At the first Great German Art Exhibition, 200
sculptures were shown. As time wore on, the numbers grew; 440 works by 237
sculptors were shown in 1940. This increasing number of sculptures was caused by
the fact that sculpture seemed better able to express the National Socialist
obsession with race and biology. It offered a body language people could
identify with and on which they could model themselves. Sculpture was seen as an
enduring faith carved in stone. Another important factor was that art was
increasingly viewed as a complement to architecture. Frequently sculpture and
low reliefs were used on and in conjunction with buildings, enhancing the idea
of architecture as
art.
How much importance the National Socialists assigned to sculpture is further
emphasised by their desire to let foreign countries know about German
achievement in this art form. Angered by foreign reports that German art had
come to an end, artists felt prompted to show the art they had the most
confidence in. Much of the art displayed on the occasion of the Olympic Games
was aimed at foreign visitors. For the 1937 World's Fair in Paris the Germans
devised a large sculptural program, which included not only sculptures by the
leading artists on the exterior of the German Pavilion but also two exhibition
halls holding their work. Breker, the leading German sculptor, was asked in 1938
to organise an exhibition of German sculpture in Warsaw; it included 130 works
by 37
sculptors.
Destined to be exhibited in public spaces, sculpture is more susceptible to
political influence than painting, which is meant primarily for the intimacy of
the home. Nineteenth century sculpture also celebrated nationalistic,
traditional State approved values such as honour, heroism, and
loyalty.
The National Socialists were quick to recognise that the traditional role of
sculpture gave it power as political message carrier. But the role of sculpture
as the most visible expression of National Socialist ideology called for a new
kind of sculpture. The representation of humanistic values based on the
consensus of society was no longer enough. Sculpture now had to be the carrier
of specific National Socialist values. Added to the inherited codes of
warriors or
soldiers were
the war,
the Party,
comradeship.
Many themes expressed in painting also found their way into sculpture.
Motherhood, the fertile female body, the peasant. But it was most of all the
virile beauty of the male body that dominated sculptural output. Modelled on
antiquity, the sculptures displayed steely masculinity. Hitler stated that
the present is evolving a new type of human being ..... a new type
which we watched as it appeared in its shining, proud, physical strength and
beauty, in front of the whole world at last year's Olympic Games. This type is
the symbol for our new age. (Hitler at München, July 18th,
1937, cited in Folkish Observer, July 19th,
1937.)
Hitler believed that only the Germans were called upon to render sculpture in
its former
beauty.
The common roots with Greece, the eternal link with the past, impressed not only
the politicians; art historians too did not tire of proclaiming the message of
the eternal German art:
Our time is once more able to be
Greek, wrote a government spokesman, Wilfrid Bade, in a
preface to the book Deutsche Plastik unserer Zeit --
German Sculpture In Our Time.
At this moment, when Germany is overcoming foreign influences
of a thousand years and is returning to pure forms, works are created which are
in their maturest and noblest examples the equivalents of Greek art.
But the new German sculptures were meant to be not mere copies of antiquity, but
something equal to it: a Nordic equivalent of the Greek model. The National
Socialists left no doubt that these were German
bodies.
The image of the new man -- an idealised male nude -- became the absolute image
of the Fascist human being.
The subject is primarily the naked
body and the portrait. There is no baroque drapery, no theatricality which marks
monuments with literary themes. These bodies repose in themselves, they do not
lose themselves in insignificant unsculptural details. Their artistic level can
well stand up against anything done in the rest of Europe. (Werner,
Erster Gang durch die Kunstausstellung,
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung,
July 20th,
1937.)
The male nude was tall and broad shouldered, with narrow hips. He represented
the ideal of the Aryan race, embodying the virtues of the regime: comradeship,
discipline, obedience, steeliness, and courage. It was not just an ideal of
beauty that the National Socialists postulated but an ideal of being. These
powerful messengers dictated men's moral code.
By embracing the
beautiful and the harmonious, art lifts man above himself. Reality is
transformed into an ideal world; the experience of the individual becomes the
experience of the whole Folk. If you have seen these works of art, you are bound
to feel a nobler person.
To be naked also meant to be in control and to be classless, too. While at the
beginning bodies were still clad, with the passage of time all was revealed. The
new man knows no shame because his soul is noble.
We have
nothing to hide, we are the master race, strong and healthy,
these men were
saying.
They were godlike creatures above reality: timeless, eternal, absolute, and
universal. The ideal of Beauty of antiquity, will be eternal as
long as people of the same pure character and race exist ..... The race that
marks the whole life of a Folk will also look at the arts with special eyes
..... Each politically heroic epoch will immediately build a bridge to another
equally heroic past. Greeks and Romans will suddenly become near to the Germans,
because their roots lie in the race. (Hitler, Party Day
speech, Nürnberg, cited in
Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, September 2nd,
1933.)
For the National Socialists, the naked man repeated the classical ideal of the
heroic athlete in his naturalness. The Olympic spirit became identical with the
German character, the order of antiquity the best bastion against the chaos of
modern art. Exhibitions of Greek sculptures under the title
Sports Of The Hellenics or
Olympia
And The German Spirit, and the big international Olympic Art
Exhibition held in 1936 in Berlin, all promoted this idea, which Leni
Riefenstahl captured in her film
Olympia -- Feast Of
Nations by skilfully dissolving between naked sportsmen and
antique statues. In Breslau,
The Decathlon by
Georg Kolbe (1877-1947) stood next to a figure of a Greek youth.
Everywhere there were discus and javelin throwers, rowers, and runners. The link
between sports and art was further promoted by introducing special courses for
artists at the official Gymnastic Academy. Organised by the Reich Chamber For
The Visual Arts, these courses were designed to familiarise artists with the
bodies of the athletes who would be sketched by artists during their exercise.
In sports sculpture the presentation of the individual sportsman or sportswoman
was often lifted into the realm of universality. They represented the
spontaneity and joyfulness of physical activity. The many runners, discus
throwers, rowers, and jumpers transmit feelings of physical freedom. Each
muscle, each tendon, expresses strength and force. In their disciplined,
steellike bodies they were representatives of a disciplined, steely Nation. The
next step, the presentation of the warrior, was only a small one. It was always
the same basic principle: the celebration of conquest and victory. The discus
thrower became the symbol of the dynamic force of the whole Nation. If an
earlier presentation of sport still showed the athlete clad and with shoes, the
universality of the figures demanded now that these garments be shed. The only
attribute was the spear or the discus, and even those were often disregarded.
The statues of athletes which Kolbe, Karl Albiker (1878-1961), Arno Breker
(1900-1991), and Josef Thorak (1889-1952) created for the Olympic stadium were
entitled:
The Athlete;
The
Decathlon;
Young Wrestler.
Artists who create wrestlers do not want to show an example of
how to wrestle, but to express human strength and fighting nature. (Olympische Rundschau, April,
1939.)
Of course the nudity was chaste, and did not suggest voluptuous sexuality.
The new generation, steeled in exercise and sport, knows more about
the human body than the previous one. A healthy young boy does not think about
the steamy studio atmosphere of the previous century with its genre artist
and model when he looks at the work of Kolbe or Breker or Thorak's
interlaced couple. He knows that a profound knowledge of the body is necessary
to create such sculptures, wrote the art historian Kurt Lothar
Tank.
Specific personal values were elevated to universal ones. Nudity lifted these
figures into a classless and timeless realm. Their attributes too were timeless,
the sword rather than a pistol or gun, which could be historically
dated.
The public display of sculpture and the enormous publicity its creators received
explains why, even today, the names of the leading sculptors of the Third Reich
are more familiar to us than those of the leading
painters.
Sculptors in many periods have found their inspiration in Greece. At the turn of
the century many German sculptors had looked to antiquity The classical ideal as
preached by the sculptor Adolf Hildebrand in his book
The
Problem Of Form In The Visual Arts, which was published in
1893, had a wide ranging influence on German sculptors.
who all worked under the influence of Hildebrand, were
easily adopted by the National Socialist art scene. The enormous demand for
public sculpture prompted The Leader to commission many monuments from these
artists. Only those who were considered too modern, like Gerhard Marcks, were
rejected.
At the beginning of this century there were very few modern sculptors. Since
abstraction developed much later in sculpture than in painting, relatively few
sculptures of the earlier period had to be declared to be degenerate. The
National Socialists also banned the work of Rudolf Belling (1886-1972), Ernst
Barlach (1870-1938), Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919), and a few others. Their
elongated forms or rough surfaces were considered un German. In this context the
work of Rodin was out, while Maillol's sculptures won much praise.
and Josef Thorak were popular in the twenties. Although
at the beginning of the regime Kolbe was attacked because he had done poorly
considered monuments to the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine and the Jewish statesman
Walther Rathenau, Scheibe shared the same fate because of his idiotic monument
to the Socialist Friedrich Ebert for the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. But both
sculptors were soon allowed into the
fold.
The works of Kolbe, Klimsch, and Scheibe were seen as the best examples of the
realist school; they worked in the tradition of Maillol, which was widespread in
Germany. The National Socialists embraced their work because, as a leading art
historian well put it:
We know that we owe to these three
masters the salvation of a strong German form in the midst of decadence.
Like the painters, most of the honoured sculptors belonged to the older
generation. Klimsch was already sixty three years old when Hitler came to power,
Kolbe fifty six, and Richard Scheibe fifty four. After 1933 their work showed a
heroic and monumental tendency, but on the whole it remained lyrical and
expressive. Sometimes the impressionistic modelling of the surface did not blend
easily with the smoothness of the architecture that was the ultimate setting of
these sculptures. Nevertheless, the sculptors continued to work, and the
National Socialist State became one of their great
sponsors.
Kolbe's role during this period is ambivalent. His work fitted very neatly into
the National Socialists' conceptions, but he did little monumental work,
preferring to remained on the human scale. Unlike Breker and Thorak, Kolbe could
never become an official artist of the Third Reich; his work was too private.
However, Klimsch's work was easily absorbed into the official program. He was a
favorite of Hitler. Klimsch's nudes stood in almost every town, and in 1942 a
large exhibition of his work was sent to the Venice
Biennale.
Another case of absorption was that of the southern German Josef Wackerle
(1880-1959). He became one of the most popular sculptors of the regime. His work
decorated the National Socialist Leadership's compound in Obersalzberg, and many
facades of official buildings in München.
Originally Wackerle was not a monumentalist. From 1906 to 1909 he directed the
Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory. Although he worked in the tradition of the
München school with its baroque elements, he too fitted easily into the new
cultural programs. His first monumental sculptures -- two horsemen -- were
created for the Olympic Stadium in Berlin in 1935. An interesting sculpture for
the regime can be seen in his Neptune Fountain in München. The horse and the
triton are carved in the Baroque tradition, but the figure of Neptune is brought
up to date: a young heroic man, the idol of the new
era.
In sculpture, as in the other arts, the year 1936 meant a consolidation of the
National Socialist aesthetic. Any impressionistic rendering or lively surface
was shunned in order to harden the style. With increasing monumentalism the
traditional materials of wood and stone gave way to the smoother and more
precious bronze.
The visual arts have returned to simplicity
and to naturalness, and therefore have returned to truth and beauty, wrote Albert Speer in a preface to the book
Deutsche Plastik unserer Zeit.
The appetite for sculpture as the perfect propaganda tool was voracious. More
and more sculptors eagerly dedicated themselves and their talents to the noble
National Socialist cause. Bernhard Bleeker (1881-1968) had created many
monuments in München, ranging from a figure group,
Sleeping
Soldiers, to fountains, from oversize lions to naked youths.
During the National Socialist period he also created many portraits of Party
Leaders.
Karl Albiker, whose sculpture was influenced by Maillol, worked in Dresden.
Beginning with small sculptures, he more and more opted for the monumental scale
as he came under the sway of the National Socialists. For the Berlin Olympic
Stadium he created the
Discus Throwers and
the Relay Runners.
A student of Scheibe, Anton Grauel also moved from small works to monumental
sculpture, portraying mothers and children and
soldiers.
Ferdinand Liebermann, after studying in Paris and Rome, made portraits of Hitler
and
Rosenberg.
Arnold Waldschmidt (1873-1958) was a military Officer who came late to
sculpture. The National Socialists were quick to commission him to make
monuments to the German soldier.
Sculptures of workers were relatively rare, however. Sometimes half clad,
undressed as opposed to the nudity of the godlike hero, they usually carried the
insignia of their trade. The absence of industrial workers was the logical
result of the National Socialists' idea that the worker should be seen as an
artisan, linked with medieval craftsmanship, thus saving him from the image of
the urban
proletariat.
The demands for monumental sculpture increased; the new stadiums and public
squares required more and more giant works. Besides Breker:
were called on to create monumental works. Wamper
created many of the monumental figures in front of Party buildings:
Icarus, in front of the Aviation House in Berlin;
The Genius Of Technology,
Hercules With Hydra, and the giant figures like
Agriculture And Industry or
The Genius Of Victory for exhibition halls in
Berlin. Willy Meller created the large eagles, the carrier of the flame for the
Ordensburg Vogelsang --
School For Leadership Training In Vogelsang, and
the
Goddess Of Victory for the Olympic
Stadium in Berlin. Schmid-Ehmen, a pupil of Bleeker, was commissioned to sculpt
the war memorial for the
Feldherrnhalle --
Memorial Hall after a project by Troost. The
work, nearly 4 metres high, was officially unveiled in 1933. Schmid-Ehmen's
official career was assured. He never stopped making eagles: for the Party
buildings in München, the new Chancellery in Berlin, the House Of German Art in
München, the Party Congress Grounds in Nürnberg, and for the crest of Speer's
German Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris:
For the Zeppelin Field in Nürnberg he made the figures
Faith,
Fight, Sacrifice, and Victory, spelling out the four aspects
of the National Socialist
mission.
Female sculptures were also created in abundance, although they were mostly on a
less monumental scale than their masculine counterparts. If the statues of men
broadcast vitality and strength, those of women were always full of erotic
promises. As in painting, the women were always blossoming, flowering, and
young, and appeared in a lying, sleeping, or walking position. The iconography
was often the same: the representation of woman made by and for man, determined
by her biological function. She was the fulfilment of man's
desire.
Antiquity and mythology furnished the themes. There were
Venus, Olympia,
Diana,
Flora,
Daphne,
Leda,
Europa --
Goddesses of fertility or the female erotic -- as well as the lovely
Galatea, just as the men were often Gods of titanic
strength and ecstasy -- Zeus, Prometheus, Apollo, Mercury, and Dionysus, a
Fascist Olympus forming a link between the Third Reich and the Gods. All this
greatly ennobled the art of the Third Reich and endowed it with a continuity by
giving it an eternal validity. It also sometimes conveyed a picture of man that
had nothing to do with reality: the presentation of a naked body was sometimes
not enough; it had to be lifted into universal truth, into the symbol. While
painting at least attempted to give a feeling of reality by depicting everyday
happenings, sculpture freed its human beings from any Earthbound link. Of
course, the frequent use of allegorical figures also allowed artists to paint
nudes in fairly erotic situations. In using a well established pictorial
tradition, they did not offend the much touted decency of the German
woman.
Small sculptures in porcelain, plaster, or bronze also were popular. They were
considered part of the tasteful middle class
apartment.
Portraits too found many buyers. Besides the numerous Hitler busts, there were
those of the leading personalities of the great Movement. The idealised head was
also shown in young girls and women and in determined, fighting
men.
Animal sculpture flourished, from the quaint domestic representations of the
deer and the cat to the fighting eagle and the untamed horse. The taming of
Nature was symbolised by numerous statues of men dominating wild horses. Many
National Socialist sculptors took up this old motif of the horse tamer of
antiquity -- Wackerle for the Olympic Stadium and Thorak for his giant 20 metre
high statues for the Olympic
Stadium.
The most famous of all National Socialist sculptors were Arno Breker and Josef
Thorak. They became the Official State Artists, the exponents and inventors of
the official National Socialist style. Both were offered many public honours,
and the number of commissions they received for public buildings was phenomenal.
Their prestige and their rank put them far above any other sculptors of this
period, outdoing Wackerle in their size and
popularity.
Josef Thorak had learned pottery in Wien. After decorating the King's Castle, he
began to make a name for himself as a sculptor. Before 1933 he lived in Berlin
and unwittingly had some Jewish patrons. The distinguished art historian Wilhelm
von Bode, Director Of The Berlin Museums, wrote a famous monograph about him,
and the Municipal Collection Of Berlin purchased a work of his in 1928,
The Pious. It was Alfred Rosenberg who made Thorak
one of the attractions of National Socialist art theory by giving him an
exhibition in 1935 in Berlin, in which monuments Thorak had created for Turkey
were shown. The critics remarked on the change that had come over Thorak's work.
His personal and impressionistic style had given way to sculptures in which
the powerful and strong is expressed, and the
widening of his subject matter had
led to a monumentalism. (Die Kunst im Dritten Reich,
April,
1941.)
In 1938 the State gave Thorak a huge studio in Baldham, near München, designed
by Albert Speer. In it he worked on 20 metre high models for his giant
sculptures, destined for the Nürnberg Stadium:
A widely shown documentary film depicts the master at work, using a live horse,
which easily fitted into his studio. We see Thorak,
the master
of the largest studio in the world, dwarfed by his plaster
models, like the
Horse Jumping -- creations
that reached 20 metres in height.
Colossus after colossus
awaits its final version in stone, pronounced the film
commentary, abetted by heavy music. Most of the giant sculptures were first
modelled in clay and then enlarged in plaster. In most cases the war prevented
casting of the final version, which was supposed to have been in bronze.
Josef Thorak:
Couple -- Heightened and sensitive creativity. The highest and
best spiritualisation expressed
in a moving and shy gesture and pose -- Werner Rittich
The title indicated the universality
of its message: it was the ideal Fascist couple, not lascivious, but tender,
ready for action. Love should not be allowed to distract the man from his task
of fighting for the Nation. The art historian Kurt Lothar Tank had this to say
in Deutsche Plastik unserer Zeit: If Rodin's figures overflow with sensuality, Thorak's figures
expressed something else ..... here is no sensual desire. The figures are, so to
speak, chaste, yet there is happiness, the fulfilment of our life. It pervades
the whole sculpture. Thorak's The Judgment Of Paris, made for
a fountain, expressed all the demands for an ideal beauty and a readiness to
conceive
offspring.
Thorak also designed the huge
Monument To Work to be erected on the Reich Automobile Highway:
The universality and
symbolic nature of the project was underlined by Tank:
The
essence of the Germans is work. Here we see five people pushing a huge stone,
but they are not five individual people, five insignificant slaves. They are
five human beings, united through work. They are doing this work for the whole
Folk. Once again art shows that only by becoming a mass can
individuals best gain
significance.
Hitler had a very high regard for Arno Breker. Breker, who was born in
Wuppertal, had learned his craft in the studio of his father, a stonemason and
sculptor. He then studied at the Düsseldorf Academy under the Sculptor Hubert
Netzer and the Architect Wilhelm Kreis. Breker also went to Rome, where,
together with Ernst Steinmann, the Director Of The Bibliotheca Hertziana, he
worked on the restoration of Michelangelo's
Rondanini
Pietà, which the artist himself had partially destroyed. In
Rome, Breker met Joseph Goebbels for the first time. From 1927 to 1933 he lived
in Paris. At that time the influence of Maillol and Rodin became evident in his
work, which included sensitive drawings and some fine sculptures. But as time
went by individual traits and anatomical details were abandoned, and Breker
opted for a smoother
surface.
A flowery and very telling commentary to the change in Breker's style from the
more impressionistic rendering of his early work was given in a widely
distributed documentary film. Making much use of music, the camera tracks
through Breker's studio, passing his early portraits, lingering on the casts for
the statues for the Reich Chancellery, and ending with a close up of his
portrait of Hitler. The early heads are marked by an
uncompromising penetration into every detail of the face. Every thought is
revealed, every individual trait has been captured with unfailing determination.
Only a change in the philosophy of the artist could alter his passionate search
for the subjective. A change that would lead to a form which showed what is
generally valid rather than what is individual. Force has replaced sensitivity,
hardness the fluidity shimmering in the light. And while the
camera brings up the stern profiles of his warriors and heroes, the commentary
continues: Everything that moves and deeply concerns our entire
Folk is expressed in these heads. This head ..... does not tell the story of an
individual; it says: I am the concentrated strength of Man! I am anger
against cowardice! I hate the enemy of my Folk. YOU SHOULD BE LIKE
ME! And finally ending on the Hitler bust, with the
music reaching a crescendo, the voice reaches its final pathos:
The images have changed, the face of the moment has become THE
MONUMENT. Times are hard and the sword decides the vital questions of the Folk.
The work of the artist has become a political confession. Here
is everything that marked the art theory of the National Socialists, the reason
of being of their art, its political aim and context, and the constant
invitation to the onlooker to identify with the images paraded before
him.
Breker's monumental reliefs
Comradeship and The Avenger were exhibited in two consecutive
years, 1940 and 1941, in the House Of German Art. Numerous reproductions were
distributed also in the occupied foreign countries, a sign of the importance of
these works for the National Socialist propaganda machine. They were part of a
sculptural program which would eventually provide twenty four giant reliefs.
Breker's monumental reliefs were not only telling examples of the new sculptural
style: The devastating effect of these works lies in their all
embracing symbolic import, wrote Dr. Werner Rittich in the
magazine Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich.,
January, 1942. By this he meant that these works expressed the heroic will to
fight and the readiness to be sacrificed, two qualities which became more and
more necessary in a time of losing
battles.
The two stone reliefs that visitors to the
Great Exhibition Of
German Art saw were only a small version of the planned final
version. Small in National Socialist terms meant 5 metres. The final reliefs, in
green granite, were intended to be twice that size. Together with the twenty two
other monumental reliefs, they were destined to decorate a giant building to be
erected along the East-West axis in Berlin. The axis was eventually to display
eighty reliefs. Measuring 15 metres high, Breker's works would force the
onlooker to look up at them: a gigantic row of pictures all celebrating the
heroic virtues of the German Race. It was hoped that the exaggerated execution
of the relief would attract the eye from far
away.
The plans for the giant building were kept secret, but the public was informed
about the gigantic task for the sculptor. Plaster models 1 metre high were made
in Breker's studio for the other reliefs -- in a scale of 1:10. They included
The Flag Bearer;
Awakening
Of The Homeland, with the figure of a woman, describing her
role in accepting the sacrifice of men;
The Caller, taking up once more the theme of the torchbearer;
Warrior's Departure, a figure with a sword;
Vengeance,
The Sacrifice, a picture of a fallen soldier;
Domination, and finally
Destruction -- a
reasonable accurate survey of the philosophy of the Third Reich, deeply embedded
in a deadly war that prevented these works from ever being
made.
Under the National Socialists' influence Breker developed an increasingly
monumental style, and with it a brutal hardness and a feeling for the triumph of
strength, although his portraits, like that of Max Liebermann (1934) and
Aristide Maillol (1943) still echoed the subtlety of his earlier
phase.
His real break came in 1936 when, in an art competition that demonstrated links
between achievement in sports and the arts, he won two silver medals for his
sculptures The Decathlon and
Victory for the Olympic Games. For Hitler's
birthday in 1937 he was nominated
Official State Sculptor, which entailed not only a professorship, but also the gift of a
giant studio. Breker employed forty three people, among them twelve sculptors.
Hitler also paid large sums for the restoration of a castle in which Breker
lived, and for a second studio which employed over a thousand people.
Accommodation for them and a church and school were also
planned.
Breker's honours were numerous and included a Mussolini Prize and a large
exhibition in occupied Paris in 1942. His bust of Wagner stood in the Berghof.
It now holds pride of place outside the Wagners' residence at Bayreuth.
I have chosen the two pillars upon which each State is built,
the man of the spirit represented by the torch, and the defender of the Reich by
the man with the sword, wrote Breker. The figure of the former
holds a torch which greets the onlooker and invites him to lend his support. The
figure lights the way: it is Prometheus. The Army figure holds the sword, emblem
of victory. They inspired confidence in the two powerful foundations of National
Socialist
society.
The two sculptures encapsulated the basic aesthetic Hitler demanded from this
art form. They also expressed a longing for eternity. They inspired admiration
and legitimisation for the system. Everything about them is idealised: their
hair, lips, bodies. It is the faultless picture of man modelled on antiquity.
Everything is noble, even the
material.
The title of Breker's
Readiness of 1939
implies that this is man ready for battle,
an impression emphasised by the half drawn sword. The
muscles of the legs and arms are emphasised. The hand is forceful, designed to
grasp. The interplay between stillness and movement in the pose creates a
deliberate tension that is the result of the contrast between reflection and
aggression. As in many art works of this period, the function of this piece was
to divert people's attention from reality and lead them into a dream world in
which work and love, battle and achievement were formed into a new popular
myth.
The National Socialists knew that the extreme details of rendering and its
enforced realism would seduce the onlooker to identify himself with the figures
and what they stood for. We can easily see the living image of a person;
individuality is clearly visible. The gesture is natural. It emanates from
feelings we can understand. The frozen pose became the ideal instrument of
political indoctrination, the elimination of personal freedom. Everything about
them is full of infinite possibility and of yearning; they are human and warm.
Each gesture is dictated by an inner
necessity.
Breker was asked to design many sculptures for the new Berlin, most notably a
huge square with a fountain in the middle of which two jets of water were to
rise 30 metres into the air beside a giant statue of Apollo 7 metres
tall.
Breker's figures were often musclemen of iron with grim expressions; his model
was the athlete Gustav Stührk). The sinewy bodies, trained in the gym, bursting
with energy, represented the new ideal. All Breker's sculptures seemed to be
destined for the sports field or the swimming pool. His statues expressed
tension and wrath, humanity and antiquity. Breker's statues were images of
masculinity and power. Their aim was to seduce the young German into becoming a
fighter and to identify with a carefully planned ideal of omnipotent manhood.
For this, intellectual probing or doubting was not required. These figures
therefore should not be taken out of their political
context.
In April, 1942, during the occupation of France, the German Government staged an
Arno Breker exhibition in the Orangerie in Paris. For this occasion Jean Cocteau
wrote an enthusiastic introduction in the exhibition catalogue, apotheosising
Breker because the great hand of Michelangelo's
David has guided you. In the Fatherland where we are compatriots
you speak to me about France. (Bertrand Dorléac, Histoire de l'Art, Paris, 1944, page
83.)
The French sculptor Charles Despiau, whom Breker knew from his earlier years in
France, also wrote a sympathetic book about the German sculptor. Breker's
exhibition included quite a few of his earlier works, to show, as the German
press pointed out, the change that had come over this artist due to the new
philosophy. There were many of his latest sculptures: Comradeship,
Prometheus,
Dionysus,
Readiness,
Daring, and
others.
Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich put out a
special edition, in July, 1942, with colour reproductions of Breker's work,
describing the tremendous success of the exhibition which allowed
the Parisian art world to study the art will of the new Germany. The exhibition was highly publicised by the special Propaganda
Department installed in Paris to monitor the art world in
France.
Abel Bonnard of the Académie Française opened the show. A year earlier, at the
instigation of Hitler, a delegation of French artists had, in the limelight of
the press and the newsreels, visited Breker and Thorak in their studios. In the
delegation were Despiau, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Henri Bouchard, André
Derain, Kees van Dongen, Othon Friesz, and Maurice Vlaminck. The National
Socialists well utilised the publicity from this visit for international
legitimation. On his return, Bouchard, the French sculptor and Director Of The
Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
wrote:
The German State wants the well being of the artist. He shall
no longer suffer from the critics ..... The care of the State also extends to
his personal life. Well known artists and sculptors like Arno Breker in Berlin
and Thorak in München have been given large studios in order to fulfil state
commissions for monuments which represent a gigantic and heroic humanity .....
In this way a great country honours its artists and their work, its intellectual
culture and the dignity of human existence. It has recognised the value of art
as a historical necessity. (Bouchard,
in Illustration,
February 7th,
1942.)
The trip created much ill feeling after the liberation of Paris, and the
participants had to defend themselves against the accusation of collaboration.
Nevertheless, after the war Breker sculpted the heads of Jean Cocteau, Ezra
Pound, and Maurice Vlaminck, as well as Céline, Henri de Montherlant, Serge
Lifar, Jean Marais, Salvador Dali, Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Ehrhard, the art
collector Peter Ludwig and his wife, and many of the members of the Wagner
family. Breker was consistent in his choice of sitters, who were largely drawn
from the rightwing establishment and the
collaborators.
Breker bought many of his remaining sculptures in a private auction in 1961. For
the rest of his life, another thirty years, they stood in his garden near
Düsseldorf.
Under National Socialism the stone relief flowered. Like the large wall
frescoes, the mosaics, and the many new fountains, it showed the renewal of old
traditions and forms. Fusing sculpture to architecture and giving it a function
was seen as a visible battlecry against the degenerate
art for
art's sake tradition. The scenic storytelling possibilities of
the reliefs were widely exploited. All the monumental sculptors of the Olympic
Stadium were commissioned to make stone reliefs. There was hardly a new
building, from banks and insurance companies to ministries and hospitals, that
did not feature stone
reliefs.
One of the largest was
Soldiers by Arnold
Waldschmidt:
for the Pillar Hall of the
Reich Aviation Ministry in Berlin. The large pillars formed niches, which
Waldschmidt filled with a row of marching soldiers. There was a Storm Troop,
guards with a band, The Leader on a horse taking up the central position, and a
troop of flag carriers. It was begun in 1937 and finished in 1941.
In its contents, composition, and rhythm this work is the
presentation of the soldierlike, disciplined Prussian spirit,
said Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich in January,
1941.
Scores of artists were commissioned to create monumental works for the sports
arenas in Berlin and Nürnberg and for the new public squares in front of new
official buildings. Kolbe, Scheibe, and especially Klimsch presented handsome
Aryan types, and their works are far superior to the figurative sculptures in
other
countries.
Josef Wackerle's
Horse Tamer in the Olympic
Stadium in Berlin is a very good example of the monumental sculpture of the
1930s.
In 1934 a special decree was issued requiring the use of sculpture on all public
buildings. Sculpture was to be taken out of the elitist confines of the museum
and placed in public squares and sports fields. Sculpture was either fused with
the building, in the form of reliefs placed in a predetermined space on top of
the building, or displayed in front of a smooth wall. Many statues were
conceived with an architectural framework in mind. They are frontal, with no
attempt made to reveal them from any other angle than head
on.
For the long facade of the House Of German Art, with its twenty two pillars, the
architect Paul Ludwig Troost had planned to fill the twenty one intervals with
statues. For the Great Hall planned to go in front of the Reich Parliament in
Berlin, Speer had also planned an extensive sculptural program which would fill
a pillared chamber. Hitler's own sketches show that most buildings were to be
adorned with statues and reliefs. The wide display of sculptures in the Olympic
Stadium in Berlin gives an idea of the kind of program planned. The entire area
is peppered with gigantic sculptures, making it something like a sculpture
garden. Sport, mass assembly, and art were thus fused to bring the message
home.
The competition for the decoration of the sports fields was an open one. There
were of course Breker's work for the House Of German Sport and Thorak's
Fighters and a Hitler bust, this last by special
request of The Leader. The rest of the many works ranged from Wackerle to
Kolbe.
The Olympic Stadium is one of the few remaining complexes where one can still
get an idea of some of the big sculptural projects. Among those standing today
are: Karl Albiker's Relay Runner and
Discus Thrower, Willy Meller's
Goddess Of Victory, Adolf Wamper's reliefs, and
Breker's Victor and decathlon figure. But on
the whole, not many of the sculptures survived. The Custom House in München has
only a few smaller figures, mostly portraits of Hitler and other Party Leaders.
Many of the monumental works were never cast, and the gigantic plaster models
that populated the studios of Breker and Thorak were destroyed by British and
American terror bombing and by the Russian barbarians. Only the two documentary
films of Breker's and Thorak's studios bear witness to the inspiring
undertaking. The monumental sculptures by Willy Meller in Vogelsang are still
there, but much damaged. Still intact is Wackerle's
Neptune
Fountain in München. Some of the representations of eagles can
still be seen in parks or on
houses.
For Nürnberg, too, a huge sculptural program was planned. Thorak had been
commissioned to produce several large groups for the Luitpold Arena and the
Marzfeld (a military review field). Some of the statues, many still only the
original plaster casts, which were shown in the official exhibition at the House
Of German Art, were destined for Nürnberg. Schmid-Ehmen's lifesize gilded
statues Female Nudes were meant to adorn the
Hall Of Honour together with two Breker statues,
Victory and
Battle. The two
Female Nudes were later renamed
Faith and
Honour. The sculptural program continued, but time and money were missing.
For the time being the eagle and Swastika had to suffice.
The importance of sculpture to architecture can be seen in the German Pavilion
that Albert Speer built in Paris for the 1937 World's Fair. Thorak's two large
groups in front of the pavilion,
The Family
and
Comradeship, form a triangle with
Schmid-Ehmen's eagle on top of the building (see illustration pages
246-47).
They not only complement the architecture but they also broadcast a political
message, the prime virtues of the regime: the eagle is the symbol of power. A
third statue by Kolbe,
Spirit Of Proclamation, gives the building a religious flavour (in German the same word is
used for proclamation and
annunciation). As in so many of the regime's
buildings, sculpture and architectural decorations like pillars and braziers
gave the building a pseudoreligious aura, which in this case camouflaged a trade
fair, selling superior German technical
innovation.
Right up to the end of the war sculptors continued to turn out figure after
figure depicting noble subjects.
The young man rides in noble
dignity on his amphibious horse. The sower sows the corn. The warrior, his arm
lifted in sorrow, mourns the passing of his dead comrade. The orator convinces
with the power of his word. It is the task of the artist to proclaim manly
strength and manly attitude and to reveal the beauty and soul of the woman. The
works that bear witness to the creativity of German artists are documents of our
being, for which we fight. (Deutsche
Wochenschau --
German Weekly Review, number
518.)
The best sculptures were no longer mere works of art; they had been elevated to
symbols. The symbol is the highest and the most difficult and
therefore the proudest task of art. Here, it is no longer enough for the artist
to portray the deep feeling of a slice of life, to let his fantasy loose, to
create a dreamlike world. Here he has to find the most economical, meaningful
expression of the thoughts and feelings of his Folk. Not just the representation
of any figure taken from reality, but the creation of a figure that is the ideal
image of the Folk. (Wilhelm Westeker, in
Die
Kunst im Dritten Reich, October,
1938.)
There was certainly no room for any critical so called intellectual discussion
in an art which had been made into a pseudoreligious credo.