Nazi Art

9 Pages 2253 Words

no indication of social unrest under the rule of the Third Reich, it is an ideal Utopia where the every day person a subject worthy of intense interest. This is a blatant celebration of the virtues of a simple rural life (that in reality did not exist) as it presents the family in such positive and reverent way, a stereotyped ‘perfect’ standard for German families to aspire to. This was an extremely popular subject as indicated by the multitudes of paintings that were similar in genre, for example ‘Rest During the Harvest’ by George Gunter, and ‘Farm Girls returning from the Fields’ by Leopold Schmutzter. Hitler said that art should be the ‘expressions of the soul and ideals of the community’ and these painting certainly do present the ideals of life that the National Socialists chose to privilege. These values in turn, like a circulatory motion encouraged the feelings and values of the German people who saw it, by instilling a sense of national pride in a wholesome and righteous life dictated by the Nazi values. Nazi ideology is also illustrated by ‘Ploughing’, by Julius Paul Junghan; this is more specifically linked to the notion of ‘blood and soil’. A person who works with the land achieves a spiritual unity with it, so that they become a part of the natural world and integral to both the continuances of its fertility and yours. The painting displays this ancient German ideology that was appropriated and extended by the Nazis to rationalize the policy of Lebensraum or ‘living space’ so that the superior Nordic race could control over and order the land of other inferior nations. The oil landscape painting depicts a man reigning three sturdy workhorses with an archaic plow. The eyes are drawn from the three horses to the ‘intellectual’ force behind the action with sweeping converging lines, thus ploughing the land is a collective action, shared between farmer and animal, working towards a better field,...