Introduction

Much has been written on the Nazi use of art and culture as propaganda tools. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the extensive study of the 1937 exhibition titled Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). The exhibition displayed more than 650 paintings, prints, sculptures, and books that were confiscated from over thirty German museums and claimed by the Nazi regime. Its aim was to demonstrate what the Nazis perceived as the distorted and depraved nature of expressionist and avant-garde art, which did not align with the regime's aesthetic ideals. (This art was also considered by the Nazis as particularly "Jewish", regardless of whether the artist was Jewish or not.) Alongside the Degenerate Art Exhibition, the Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibition) served as a complementing example of a regime's dictation of a set of aesthetic values and preferences that complements its ideology. To contrast the modernist character of the so-called “degenerate art” the coinciding Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung featured officially approved works of art comprising primarily of pieces glorifying Greek and Roman mythology, heroic battle scenes, and the enchantment of rural life. 

Heralding exhibitions like Entartete Kunst and the Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung were publications such as Paul Schultze-Naumberg's Kunst und Rasse (Art and Race, 1928) and Die Kunst der Deutschen. Ihr Wesen und ihre Werke (The Art of the Germans. Its Nature and its Works, 1934) that served explicitly to associate particular works of art with specific ideologies. The theories evinced in these books set Greek and Roman sculptures as a physical ideal and contrast these with avant-garde, or modernist “degenerate” works, as they are called by Schultze-Naumberg, which, according to him, imitated physical deformities. 

However prevalent this explication of Nazi values through overt propaganda was, there were also numerous cultural events that took place in Germany during the period of the Nazi regime—either theater performances, concerts, operas, or literary events—that were not accompanied by any explicit piece of propaganda meant to “illuminate” the works. Such events are perpetuated in the programs collected by Richard Campbell in the Richard Campbell Collection at the University of Colorado Boulder Special Collections and Archives. These programs detail the works (chiefly musical and theatrical) that were performed in various venues throughout Germany. While some programs may provide an anecdotal discussion of a formal or historical feature of the work such as the merits of Sonata Form in the traditional symphony or the plot of an opera by Richard Strauss, notes that may allude to Nazi ideals but do not state them openly, others seem to indicate nothing more than the titles of the works and the name of the artist(s).

The program itself, its design and distribution to the public—the audience of a cultural event—calls to mind Adorno and Horkheimer's famous critique of the Culture Industry and particularly of advertising in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (originally published 1944, Trans. Edmund Jephcott, 2002):

Today, When the free market is coming to an end, those in control of the system are entrenching themselves in advertising […] So complete is their triumph that in key positions it is no longer even explicit: the imposing buildings of the big companies, floodlit advertisements in stone, are free of advertising, merely displaying the illuminated company initials on their pinnacle, with no further need of self-congratulation […] Advertising becomes simply the art with which Goebbels presciently equated it, l'art pour l'art, advertising for advertising's sake, the pure representation of social power. (DE, 132)  

Advertisements, say Adorno and Horkheimer, are no longer required to do actual advertising. What they stand for becomes abstract, a symbol ostensibly detached from actual substance. The authors identify an analogous danger in the idea of l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake.) The separation of art from life, its treatment as an absolute that has no bearing on social and political conditions, allows for the perpetuation, through art, of certain ideologies that now no longer need to be explicitly articulated. Placed in this context, the Nazi appropriation of names like Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, or Beethoven on concert and theater programs similarly no longer requires further advocating or explication. Names and titles of works that used to represent progressive humanist values can easily be "reoriented" and associated with a regime whose tenets are opposed to the beliefs held by their original creators. The program, disseminated among the crowd of spectators or listeners as though it were a leaflet or an advertisement of sorts, can display nothing but the name of an artist and the title of the work without further elaboration on how, if at all, the choice of this specific work fits into any particular ideology. 

About This Project

The following project, accordingly, offers a curated collection of programs, brochures, and catalogues from before, during, and after the period of Nazi regime in Germany. The presentation of these materials progresses chronologically from 1913 to 1961. The aim of this project is to explore the medium of the program, brochure, or catalogue as an instrument that reflects the social and ideological tendencies of its time. 

This project observes the variations in such documents from different periods in Germany and poses the following questions:

- Which works are selected for exhibition and performance at each period?
- How are the these programs, etc. structured and organized?
- Do the programs, brochures, and catalogues give any additional information about the works other than their titles and names of the artists? If so, what additional information is provided?
- Is it possible to identify different approaches to the same works exhibited or performed in different periods?


Finally, the project asks how was the Nazi regime able to appropriate and re-contextualize cultural works through programs, brochures, and catalogues? 

With the inclusion of related, supporting materials such as newspaper clippings, letters, and posters, (which are also part of the Richard Campbell Collection) this exhibit invites all to contemplate the various ways in which programs, catalogues, and brochures served as carriers of ideology, even when they conveyed nothing more than “mere” titles and names.