HAVC 135B : German Art 1905-1945

What task did German artists in exile face with regard to saving art and culture from Hitler’s destructive vision? How did that anxiety surface in artworks, films, and intellectual thought produced by Germans in exile?

After World War II, there was an exile of German artists from Germany moving to different places in the world, in another way having the term "exile." placed on them. In the 20th century, because of the dawn of film making and Hollywood interest in perspective, a new generation of German artists would use film to help alert an American public the fears of fascism and dictatorship. By communicating and expressing their art to the American people, these German "exile" artists would use film as a way to preserve German intellectual and at the same time save the German art style from Hitler's past.. Films that would have deep meanings that would speak about the idea of fascism and wrong dictatorship, Citizen Kane and Casablanca, for example are prime examples of German Exile cinema being expressed as a warning to the American people. For example, in Casablanca is a scene where a man trying to enter into a country gives the wrong passport papers to enter the country, and is found to illegally come in the country. In an attempt to not go to prison, the individual tries to escape and run away, but is shot. This could act a metaphor of a dictatorship, or a country in which full control is consuming everyone.
- Summer 2016

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