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

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822507210

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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,