May 8, 1999
Taste
for kitsch outlasted
Hitler HITLER'S private art collection, best
described as totalitarian kitsch, went on
display yesterday for the first time since
the war, prompting a discussion about the
banality of the cultural tastes of
dictators. Working girls happily returning from
the fields, a dutiful mother dishing out
soup to her ten children in lederhosen,
and a number of naked blondes as asexual
as Claudia Schiffer are on view in
Weimar from this weekend. The curiosity of the paintings is how
Hitler's tastes shaped a generation
long after the collapse of the Third
Reich. This can be seen in Weimar:
alongside Hitler's collection - 118 out of
705 works which were found by the
Americans in a disused mine shaft near Alt
Ausee in Austria - Weimar is showing
exhibitions of "degenerate art" (Modernist
paintings abhorred by Hitler) and of East
German Communist art. The themes from the Communist era are
almost interchangeable with Hitler's.
Muscular peasants who never sweat, village
scenes without a speck of visible mud and
above all young women who seem to be
passing the time, in various states of
undress, waiting for their chance to bear
children for the Fatherland. But as the 52-year-old psychoanalyst
Gudrun Brockhaus remarks, the taste
for such themes was not unique to the
East. "It was only when I went to an
exhibition of Third Reich art that I
realised my family's furnishings and
paintings directly reflected the aesthetic
mood of the Third Reich." Similar revelations are expected during
the course of this exhibition. Even now it
is difficult for Germans to see the crude
romanticism favoured by Hitler as kitsch;
it is just part of the backdrop. Visitors
to Rhineland pubs can see the very same
bellowing stags as those admired by
Hitler. The Nazi leader's dream was to build a
vast gallery for his collection in Linz;
judging by the Weimar display it would
have been full of bathing Dianas and other
mythological themes transplanted to a tidy
Bavarian setting. One of the pictures, by Ivo
Saliger, captures the depressed,
mediocre spirit of the collection. It is a
version of the Judgment of Paris: youth in
short trousers, standing in an evidently
German landscape, tries without much
enthusiasm to choose between three naked
Aryan women who are, thanks to the
artlessness of the artist, virtually
identical. Hitler did not like paintings that
posed questions or choices. The Czech
satirist Milan Kundera, writing of
communist art, said: "In the world of
totalitarian kitsch the answers are known
in advance and eliminate the need for
questions." Unsure of the connection between
Hitler's taste and his abysmal deeds,
German authorities preferred to store his
collection in a sealed Munich warehouse.
Now, with the paintings on display in the
city designated Europe's cultural capital,
the real message emerges: Hitler was
uniquely evil but did not have uniquely
bad taste. His view of what was good in
art was shared by millions and not only
because his line was dictated to them.
Hitler
wanted to build a gallery in Linz for his
collection Goering was an even more
voracious collector - stealing or buying
at very low prices from dealers profiting
from the destruction of Jewish households;
but he seemed to have a more sophisticated
eye. Hitler had a feel for minor German
Romantics. Changing tastes are reflected in market
values. The 118 paintings from Hitler's
collection are insured for £300,000 -
hardly worth breaking into the gallery
for. The 200 paintings from the nearby
"degenerate art" exhibition are insured
for £160 million.  | 
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to David Irving