7A: The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany: Premises
- Michaud, “Positions,” xi – xiv (Reading Journal entry is not required.)
- Michaud, “Glossary of Nazi Terms,” 255 – 256 (Reading Journal entry is not required.)
- Michaud, “Artist and Dictator,” 1 – 25.
- Key Themes
- Fascism linked to Modernism in that both seek to explain, define, condense, and unify the world;
- Adolf Hitler “an artist-dictator” (authority founded on art);
- Life as a Gesamtkunstwerk.
- Key Themes
- Michaud, “The Artist-Führer: A Savior,” 26 – 73.
- Key Themes
- Hitler as the Messiah (though without religion);
- autosuggestive nature of art (its “creative power”) “belief that artistic activity is the process by which a people produces itself as a people” (Michaud, p 36);
- group affect accomplished through large group experience (Erlebnis).
- Key Themes
- centrality of art and visual culture to the making of the Nazi myth;
- art not only shaped the myth, but made the Nazi myth a reality;
- the world was to be shaped in the image envisioned by Hitler;
- his vision was a kind of “creative work”;
- watch for places that he returns to this parallel objective of de-Germanizing Nazism.
