Summary of Lynn H. Nicholas's The Rape of Europa

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 On June 30, 1939, a major art auction took place at the Grand Hotel National in the Swiss resort town of Lucerne. The objects had been exhibited for some weeks before in Zurich and Lucerne, and a large international group of buyers had gathered.
#2 The auction of German art was a disaster. It did not bring in nearly as much money as was hoped, and the museums did not receive a penny. The French journal Beaux Arts called the atmosphere at the Grand National stifling.
#3 The Nazis had won their first parliamentary majority only six days before the museum locked up the show. Alfred Barr, who was a foreigner, was so furious that he asked architect Philip Johnson to buy several of the best pictures just to spite the sons-of-bitches.
#4 The reception of modern art was not made any easier by the very mixed reception it had received for many years. In 1939, a Boston art critic, reviewing a show of contemporary German works, sadly declared: There are probably many people in Boston who will side with Hitler in this particular purge.

Sujets

• Modern
• Art
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 12 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822507210
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Lynn H. Nicholas's The Rape of Europa
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On June 30, 1939, a major art auction took place at the Grand Hotel National in the Swiss resort town of Lucerne. The objects had been exhibited for some weeks before in Zurich and Lucerne, and a large international group of buyers had gathered.

#2

The auction of German art was a disaster. It did not bring in nearly as much money as was hoped, and the museums did not receive a penny. The French journal Beaux Arts called the atmosphere at the Grand National stifling.

#3

The Nazis had won their first parliamentary majority only six days before the museum locked up the show. Alfred Barr, who was a foreigner, was so furious that he asked architect Philip Johnson to buy several of the best pictures just to spite the sons-of-bitches.

#4

The reception of modern art was not made any easier by the very mixed reception it had received for many years. In 1939, a Boston art critic, reviewing a show of contemporary German works, sadly declared: There are probably many people in Boston who will side with Hitler in this particular purge.

#5

The Nazis had early shown an interest in art, and in 1928 they won enough votes in the Thuringian elections to claim seats in the provincial cabinet. Dr. Wilhelm Frick, former director of political police in Munich, became the Thuringian Minister of the Interior and Education. He was determined to eliminate all Judeo-Bolshevist influence.

#6

The Weimar Republic was not the only government to have problems with the arts in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and in four years, he refined the Nazi art criteria. Whatever Hitler liked was tolerated, and whatever was most useful to the government from the point of view of propaganda.

#7

The false art of mocking and contemptuous defamers of virtue and truth was shaken off by the people at the clarion call of one who united within himself all the noble characteristics of his race. The new German art would be based on the breath of the nation’s nostrils.

#8

The Nationalgalerie was reopened in Berlin by Alois Schardt, a former assistant of Justi’s, who had built up a similar collection at Halle. He presented German art as dynamic and nationalist. The students were pleased with this association.

#9

The measures taken against the artists were a success in Hitler’s eyes. In 1938, Oskar Schlemmer took a job painting commercial murals in Stuttgart. By 1939, he was painting camouflage on factories and military buildings.

#10

The cultural mentors of Nazi Germany began to focus on the placement of the artworks. They would show the government as extravagant and representative of all that was decadent and wrong with Germany.

#11

The continued absence of absolute rules would be shown in the choice of works for the opening exhibitions of the new Temple of Art. Hitler wanted a comprehensive and high-quality display of contemporary art. The jury, which included several mediocre artists, chose an open competition.

#12

The Nazis organized a purge of paintings and sculptures from German museums. They took them, and they took them quickly. The culmination of these activities came in what must be the strangest three days of art history. On July 17, the Reich Chamber of Culture held its anniversary meeting.

#13

The exhibition was a pageant of more than 7,000 people, animals, and machines that wound through the streets toward the new museum. The interpretation of German was broad: golden Viking ships were mixed in with ancient Germanic costumes.

#14

Hitler closed all modern German museums on April 30, 1938, and replaced them with displays of idealized German peasant families, commercial art nudes, and heroic war scenes. The exhibition of Degenerate Art opened on the third day of the Passion of German Art.

#15

The exhibition in Berlin was a representation of the hundreds of works that had been removed from the museums. The catalogue was a badly printed and confused booklet, which was laced with the most vicious quotes from Hitler’s art speeches.

#16

The Degenerate show, which toured Germany after its Munich opening, only took care of a few hundred works. The purged objects were taken to Berlin and stored in a warehouse in the Copernicusstrasse. The Bavarian Museums carefully insured their shipment before it left, declaring substantial market value.

#17

The Nazis began selling off the paintings that they confiscated from the museums. They set up a commission to sell them for foreign currency, without arousing positive evaluations at home.

#18

The trade of art went far and wide. The director of the Basel Kunstmuseum, Georg Schmidt, persuaded his city fathers to give him SFr 50,000 to invest. He spent it well both at the Schloss and at the Lucerne auction.

#19

The Exploitation Commission, which was made up of dealers, decided to sell the paintings in Lucerne in June 1939. The whole process of purifying the German art world, and its final solution in flames, eerily foreshadowed the terrible events to come in the next six years.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Until 1937, German collectors and museums were still lending generously to shows outside of Germany. But by 1938, exhibition organizers outside Germany began to notice a reluctance to loan Old Masters on the part of German museums.

#2

The German government had been receiving requests from other countries for loans of art, and in July they decided to allow only urgent foreign policy reasons to justify exceptions. Other nations should not be upset if Germany was reluctant to loan fragile and irreplaceable treasures.

#3

The world, including future belligerents Italy, Japan, and the USSR, had sent more than five hundred paintings and innumerable other objects to both events. The French government, in addition to installations of entire period rooms and loans of paintings, had sent over René Huyghe, curator of paintings at the Louvre, with a large travelling exhibition entitled From David to Lautrec.

#4

The international art trade was affected by Hitler’s programs. Some Jews moved to branch offices in New York, Paris, or Amsterdam, while other businesses sold their names and assets to gentiles, a process called Aryanization.

#5

The next adviser to enter Hitler’s art circle was Karl Haberstock, who was well established in Berlin. He had schemed unceasingly to ingratiate himself in right-wing circles by promoting Alfred Rosenberg’s Combat League and supplying important Nazi supporters with suitable art.

#6

Hanfstaengl was one of the first to recognize what profits could be made from the coming purge of modern works. He was behind a scheme to sell French Impressionist works from German museums to an unnamed but important Parisian for RM 5 million, to be used to refurbish the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich and establish a fund for German artists.

#7

After the director of Hamburg was fired for having invested in modern works, Haberstock tried to talk his way into the museum storerooms, to see what might be available. A city official who threw him out was reprimanded.

#8

Goering was the head of the Luftwaffe, the Four-Year Plan, and the government. He had obtained government funds to start the construction and furnishing of a country house fifty miles from Berlin. He loved excess, and his house was constantly being added to.

#9

In 1937, Goering’s art operations were well organized. He had acquired many paintings, objets d’art, and rare animals. By 1938, his collections had surpassed those of Hitler.

#10

The Austrian Chancellor Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Hitler’s handpicked successor, prepared the legal documents which would transform the Austrian nation into an integral part of the Reich. The next day, March 14, Hitler made his triumphal entry into Vienna.

#11

The liquidation of the Rothschild properties was particularly prolonged. Because of the multinational nature of their holdings, it took a year of negotiations to satisfy the Nazi mania for the legal. The influx of German officials and entrepreneurs left no doubt who would be in charge in Austria.

#12

The mayor of Nuremberg, Liebl, had been trying to get the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been taken to Vienna in 1794, returned to Nuremberg.

#13

Hitler had his own dream of turning Linz into a German Budapest. He had visited the city several times, and in May 1938 he went to Rome to meet with Mussolini. He realized that Germany’s existing public collections would not suffice to adorn the new museums being planned for Berlin and Linz.

#14

The Nazis began confiscating the property of Jews in Germany, which included paintings, coins, and jewelry. They would allow the Jews to keep family portraits, but the rest of their possessions would be confiscated.

#15

The Linz organization was under Hitler’s direct control until he died in 1942. He had realized that the burgeoning storerooms of confiscated art and the greedy dealers and officials hovering about them must be dealt with in an organized fashion.

#16

The arrangement was not easy to accept at first. As late as November 1939, Goering’s secretary had to write several times to the Viennese administrators of confiscated goods to make clear that her chief would have to desist from the purchase of secured art objects.

#17

By 1939, the plans for Linz had expanded from one museum for nineteenth-century German art to a complex with separate buildings for each discipline. The Rothsch