Joseph Goebbels

Image shown above:

Joseph Goebbels, Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,

delivers a speech during the book burning on the Opernplatz in Berlin.

Source: United States Holocaust Museum

I

n 1933, Goebbels, Nazi Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda began to implement his plan to bring the arts into line with Nazi goals. The government purged cultural organizations of Jews and others alleged to be politically or artistically suspect. The works of leading German writers such as Bertholt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger and Alfred Kerr were consigned to flames in a book burning ceremony in Berlin.

Regulation

Beginning in September 1933, a Reich Culture Chamber (composed of the Reich Film Chamber, Reich Music Chamber, Reich Theatre Chamber, Reich Press Chamber, Reich Writing Chamber, Reich Chamber for Fine Arts, and the Reich Radio Chamber) supervised and regulated all facets of German culture. Nazi aesthetics emphasized the propagandistic value of art and glorified the peasantry, the "Aryan," and the heroism of war. This ideology stood in stark contrast to modern, innovative art, such as abstract painting, denounced as "Degenerate Art," as well as "art bolshevism"and "culture bolshevismâ €?

Black Monday

The 1920s were marked by a period of exploration and creativity in the arts. New possibilities and genres were being explored in painting, writing and music. Then, on October 29, 1929 (Black Monday) the Wall Street stock market crashed causing a chain reaction of catastrophic events. Banks failed, businesses closed, and rampant unemployment left governments powerless to stop the worldwide economic collapse.

Contemporary arts

Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews not only for the economic crises, but also for the alleged degrading effects of contemporary art movements. The Jewish presence within Germany was declared a threat to the purity of the German State. When discussing the arts, Nazi leaders used the terms "Jewish" and "degenerate" interchangeably. Beginning in 1939, German authorities segregated Polish Jews in ghettos, or restricted zones. Originally instituted to separate Jews from the non-Jewish population, ghettos later served as staging grounds for the extermination of European Jewry.

Culture in the ghettos

Under terrible living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, Jews sought to preserve their humanity and their culture through song and verse. The Yiddish poem "Es Brent" (It's Burning) by Mordecai Gebirtig (written in 1938 in response to a pogrom in Poland) It became the anthem of the underground resistance in the Krakow ghetto."Es Brent" (It's Burning) A translation