Expositions of ‘ degenerate ’ art and music in nazi Germany : reflections on totalitarian aesthetics and education

During the Third Reich (1933-1945), Nazi intellectuals conceived the music and the plastic arts as elements that form moral values, which can corrupt education and compromise political and social life. From the theoretical formulation of a totalitarian aesthetic, every art considered "degenerate" was censored and exposed as an example of immorality. Inaugurated in 1937, the exhibitions Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) and Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) brought to the city of Munich works related to modernism, Bolshevism, as well as the artistic production of black people, Jews and Soviets. Based on a bibliographic research supported by the Critical Theory of Society, this article analyzes the content of those exhibitions, demonstrating the pedagogical role of art in the formation of the moral values of German society from the perspective of Nazi intellectuals.


Introduction
The purpose of this article is to analyze the relationship between art and education in the exhibitions Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) and Entartete Musik (degenerate music), inaugurated in 1937 in the city of Munich, during the German Nazi fascist regime.
Our work will be based on texts, images and documentaries about the history of Germany during the Third Reich period (1933)(1934)(1935)(1936)(1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) -the period in which the country was under the command of Adolf Hitler (1889Hitler ( -1945 -in dialogue with authors who addressed on the question of history, art and education in the totalitarian regimes of the first half of the twentieth century. We consider that from the historical perspective we can identify the main guiding axes and the fundamental characteristics of the Nazi formation project. At first, the aim is to demonstrate how Nazi intellectuals sought to maintain a close relationship between education and art, considering their pedagogical role in shaping the moral values of German society. Finally, we will bring to the debate the critiques of the totalitarian model of education based on Theodor Adorno (1903Adorno ( -1969 from his theory of semi formation 1 . Analyzing a complex period like the Third Reich is a task that brings us several challenges. To follow this path, the contextualization of Germany is necessary before and during the period of World War II (1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945). The Third Reich was the period when Adolf Hitler 2 ruled the country after the Weimar Republic (1918)(1919)(1920)(1921)(1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932)(1933), when Germany 1 In opposition to a critical and emancipating cultural formation (in German, Bildung), semi formation (Halbbildung) would comprise an education based on a model of totalitarian rationality, reproducing authoritarianism, insensitivity, bourgeois coldness, hatred and violence (ADORNO, 2010). The concept will be explained in detail throughout the article, where we will outline not only the context of its production by the critical theorists of the University of Frankfurt, but also its relevance to the field of Education. 2 We do not intend to make a lengthy exposition here about the life of Adolf Hitler. However, some notes about his rise to power are necessary for the development of our work. Born in Austria in 1889, Hitler was a military man active in World War I (1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918), who closely followed the political events of Germany during the conflict and later, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the establishment of the Weimar Republic, between 1919-1933, period of strong economic and political crisis that preceded his rule. He was arrested in 1923 after a failed coup attempt; a year later, he wrote his career in the book Mein Kampf, published in 1925and 1926. In 1933 he was appointed chancellor, leading the Federal Government of Germany; months later, backed by strong popular support and an efficient radio propaganda apparatus, a referendum would seal his victory, giving him full powers to act autonomously. The death of president Paul Hindenburg    (1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918), imposing a series of restrictions and punishments on the country 3 .
This series of retaliations, added to all the economic impacts of the 1929 crisis, during which the capitalist world economy seemed to collapse, paved the way for the emergence of an authoritarian ideology, inspired by Benito Mussolini's Italian fascism . In the case of Germany, fascism was "a reaction to the trauma of the Great Depression and the inability of the Weimar governments to cope" (HOBSBAWM, 1995, p.131).
Authors such as Kracauer (1985) and Bartoletti (2006) agree that Adolf Hitler's rise to power was grounded in the authoritarian mindset that had been developing in the country since the late nineteenth century. For many years, this rise of authoritarian rule and speech would be seen as the great salvation for the problems of the German people, which had been suffering from political instability, the economic crisis and the humiliation of defeat in World War I. Although it appeared as an attempt to establish a democratic government, the Weimar Republic passed insecurity and instability to the Germans, who lacked strong leadership to resolve the chaotic situation in which the country lived. Thus, both Italian and German fascism, as well as other radical right movements in the first half of the twentieth century were the result of the correlation of various factors such as the reaction to liberalism (in other words, the accelerated transformation of capitalism), the rise of the working-class movements inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the mass migration of foreigners to Europe, intensifying xenophobia in the form of anti-Semitism that became stronger from the second half of the nineteenth century (HOBSBAWM, 1995). Norbert Elias (1997) Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945, music, the fine arts, sports, and architecture should meet the interests of the National Socialist Party, as Contier (1988) states: During the period of the authoritarian regimes of the 1930s and 1940s, some governments sought to establish official projects in the field of culture, at a time when popular music was greatly expanded through radio and records. At that moment music reached all social classes, becoming a danger in favor of the penetration of alien cultures, capable of putting in check the national populist principles, the ideological sustaining shades of these states (CONTIER, 1988, p. 112-113).
The consolidation of a totalitarian ideology and aesthetics was one of the main aspects sought by German intellectuals through a new model of education. From 1933, all content taught in schools and universities followed the guidelines of the Ministry of Science, Education and National Culture, under the command of Minister Bernhard Rust (1883-1945) (SHIRER, 1990). In this context, the works of authors considered as harmful to the regime began to be censored and burned in public square 6 . Teachers should join the Masters Alliance of National Socialism, defend the German state and train students on party principles, otherwise they could be fired and even beaten publicly (BARTOLETTI, 2006). Backed by the discourses, advertisements, and theories that preached Aryan superiority over other peoples of the world 7 , intellectuals such as physicists Rudolf Tomaschek    , German Young Women League (Bund Deutscher Mädel) psychologist and leader Jutta Rüdiger  and Minister Bernhard Rust himself extended to the 4 Expression used to refer to the German Nazi Party -officially the National Socialist Party of German Workers (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) -or just the National Socialist Party. 5 In Cambi's (1999, p. 577) definition, "a totalitarian state is an authoritarian, bureaucratically organized state run by a single party capable of controlling and unifying in a common action project the whole of society, without waste", founded on a "ideologically compact, rigidly structured model, committed to conforming the masses to party-state objectives". 6 During 1933, the Nazi party organized a series of library looting and book burning in Germany. The extensive list of censored authors included names such as Thomas Mann, Helen Keller, Jack London, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, among others (KNUTH, 2003). 7 According to historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917Hobsbawm ( -2012, the ideals of German superiority had existed in Germany since the second half of the nineteenth century and were strengthening in the first half of the twentieth century, especially with the development of the branch of applied genetics, "which dreamed of creating a human super race by selective breeding and the elimination of the incapable" (HOBSBAWM, 1995, pp.121-122). In a similar perspective, Friedlander (1995, pp.18-19) states that the holocaust was only possible thanks to the scientific acceptance of eugenics and anti-Semitism by anthropologists, geneticists, psychiatrists and physicists (including teachers, assistants and students) at German universities still in the early twentieth century. camp of Education the racist and anti-Semitic policy of racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene) and, subsequently, the policy of extermination (Vernichtungspolitik) (SHIRER, 1990), that had already been outlined by Adolf Hitler in the chapter "People and Race" from his Mein Kampf: The role of the strongest is to dominate. It should not be mixed with the weak, thus sacrificing its own greatness. Only the weak born can see this as cruelty, which is explained by its weak and limited complexion [...]. Numerous proofs of this provides us with historical experience. With astonishing clarity, she demonstrates that in every blood mix between the Aryan and inferior peoples the result has always been the extinction of the civilizing element. North America, whose population is decidedly for the most part made up of Germanic elements, which have very little mingled with inferior and colored peoples, has a different humanity and culture than Central and South America, where the immigrants, almost all Latinos, merged in large numbers with the indigenous inhabitants. Such an example would suffice to recognize the effect of the fusion of races clearly and distinctly. The German of the American continent rose until its domination, because it was kept purer and without mixture; there he will continue to reign until he is victimized by the sin of the mixture of blood. In few words, the result of crossbreeding is therefore always as follows: A) Lowering of the level of the strongest race; B) Physical and intellectual return and thus the onset of a slowly but surely progressing disease. To provoke such a thing, then, is nothing but an attack on the will of the Creator. Punishment also corresponds to sin (HITLER, 2016, p. 212-213).
Guided by the Führer's 8 idea l of education and the orientations of the National Socialist Party, the Ministry of Science, Education and National Culture -whose intellectuals were called "racial experts" (Rassenkundler) -organized German educational reform out of drastic curricular change, based on the insertion of new disciplines, among which were "Racial Science" and "Eugenics". Racial Science classes taught young people that the Aryans were the superior race (Herrenrasse) and that God had sent them strong to rule a weak world. In Eugenics classes students were taught not to "mix blood", that is, they were instructed to believe that Aryans should only marry and relate to other Aryans in order to maintain the purity of their superior race (BARTOLETTI, 2006). They also learned how to identify Jews by physical traits "inferior" to Aryan traits, such as nose size and circumcision marks. In universities, deans, professors, and study groups were subject to the centralization of the Ministry, while youth associations and student unions were linked to the Hitler Youth fronts; resistance groups -such as the anti-Nazi White Rose movement (Weiße Rose) organized by the brothers Hans Scholl  and Sophie Scholl  -were persecuted by the secret police (Gestapo) and their members were condemned to death (SHIRER, 1990, p.919).
8 According to Bartoletti (2006, p. 40-41), Hitler "had precise ideas about education": his main goal was for all Germans to have the same "worldview" (Weltanschauung), that is, "education had the sole purpose of turning children into good Nazis." With this centralizing, hierarchical, bureaucratic, authoritarian, and militarized dynamic, education in the Third Reich became the main spokesperson for Nazi-fascist ideology. As Cambi points out (1999, p. 577), although Italian fascism pioneered the construction of a totalitarian ideological education project (extending from school to major universities, including the press), it was German Nazism "which outlined the most organic and coherent system of mass ideological education", based on "racist and militaristic principles, capable of involving all the growth of young generations, through family, school and extra-school". Thus, it was justified the organization of exhibitions and cultural events to educate the German population on the ideas of Nazi-fascism and to avoid the "deviations" attributed to social groups considered "degenerate", as we shall see below.

The pedagogical role of art in Nazi Germany: the exhibitions Entartete Kunst and the Entartete Musik
Alongside the moral education of young Germans through the Hitler Youth 9 , art was one of the main elements of ideological formation and Nazi propaganda 10 . Directed by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (1902Riefenstahl ( -2003, The fine arts, music and architecture were part of this centralizing dynamic of Nazi intellectuals, which determined the parameters to be strictly adhered to by German artists. The attempt to rescue the ideals of beauty of Classical Antiquity -especially of Greecewas demonstrated with each speech of the Führer in his visits to art exhibitions. For Adolf Hitler, Greece represented the noblest ideal of beauty, an archetype that was to be transplanted to Germany and followed by the Aryan race. The model of the "perfect body" 9 Founded in 1926, the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) was a political organization aligned with the National Socialist Party, created to guide the moral education of educated boys and girls to serve their Führer under any circumstances. It was based on strict military discipline, controlled physical and intellectual activities, organized military marches in various German cities and, above all, preached the total submission of young people to the leaders of the Nazi party. Hitler saw in this youth "a powerful political force that would help shape Germany's future", taking advantage of "their enthusiasm and loyalty" (BARTOLETTI, 2006, pp.13-14), which is why, after the rise of the Third Reich in 1933, entry into Hitler Youth make it compulsory for all young Germans. 10 Mass-oriented propaganda was one of the biggest concerns of Nazi intellectuals and Führer himself. In his Mein Kampf, Hitler stated: "I understood from the outset that the proper application of an advertisement is a true art...
[...] The end of advertising is not one's scientific education, but rather to draw the attention of the mass to certain facts, needs, etc., whose importance thus only falls within the visual circle of the mass. the support UNESCO, which considered the right to repatriation of works as a possibility of preserving the historical memory of these countries 11 . Thus, the return to antiquity was one of the main elements of the totalitarian aesthetics of the early twentieth century, affecting not only architecture and the plastic arts, but also the field of music, as Contier (1988) points out: The bureaucrats of the authoritarian regimes of the 1920s and 1930s took up concepts inherited from Ancient Greece about the art-citizen relationship. For the Greeks, music was part of their personality, of undeniable educational value, leading Plato, for example, in "The Republic" to raise questions about extremely strict control and regulation over music. Thus, each Greek mode represented a specific ethical value: the Doric, virility; the Phrygian, sobriety; the various modalities of Lydian, cheerfulness. According to these moral values, modes could exert corrupting influences on customs, even presenting risks to political and social life. From this problematic, the musical technique always relied on a certain system implicitly linked to cultural and ideological values varying according to the historical moment (CONTIER, 1988, p. 112 Resistance to avant-garde movements and modern art was another hallmark of Nazi censorship in the artistic field. As far as music is concerned, American jazz -"a kind of combination of black Americans, syncopated rhythmic dance music and unconventional instrumentation by traditional standards" (HOBSBAWM, 1995, p. 183) -represented an affront to music and German dances, being considered, along with the dancing rhythm of the swing, as "jungle music", danced and played by and for "degenerated" blacks.
Regarding the fine arts, the cutting-edge innovations of the early twentieth century - The events that culminated in the Nazi attack on modern art began to draw in 1927, in essays published by Alfred Rosenberg, ideologist of Hitler's party. Gathered under the title Der Sumpf (The Swamp), they accused the avant-garde aesthetics of representing a disease of the soul, imbalance and alienation, and the result of the combination of the money of capitalism and the mass culture maneuvered by the communists. Rosenberg's thinking exacerbated part of his feeling for the direction art had taken since the late 19th century and which had crossed the First World War. [...] Thus, by the time the Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933, the fate of modern art was already traced. Jewish or opposition artists and intellectuals were removed from public office. Supporters of modern art were removed from the direction of museums and cultural institutions (MIRANDA, 2007, p. 36 (HOBSBAWM, 1995). Nazi advocates pressured the government to close the school, accusing the institution and its students of disobeying the determinations imposed by Nazi aesthetic standards, thus being an "anti-German" school and therefore dangerous for the German nation (GOMBRICH, 2013  Available at https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=1248 (Accessed 10/11/2020). Part of the collection can also be seen in Peter Cohen's (1989) documentary Architecture of Destruction (Undergångens arkitektur). From these exhibitions, we observe how art was used in the formation process of German population in the Third Reich. This kind of education -hierarchical, doctrinal, and authoritarian -was widely criticized by the Frankfurt School intellectuals, especially from the Critical Theory of Theodor Adorno (1903Adorno ( -1969 and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973 16 .
Like Jews and Marxists, these German intellectuals were persecuted by the Nazis and ended up in exile in countries in Europe and America, from where they made strong attacks on the semi formation 17 instituted by the Nazis. For the authors, there would be a moral responsibility of philosophy for the rise of fascism, totalitarian regimes -Benito Mussolini 16 The origin of the term "Critical Theory" is found in Max Horkheimer's article Traditional Theory and Critical Theory. The term was used to evade the terminology "historical materialism" used by Orthodox Marxism. The "critical" component of the theory aimed to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism, and economic determinism. In Adorno and Horkheimer's view, Marxian theory was current, but it should be updated incorporating philosophical, cultural, political and psychological aspects (HORKHEIMER, 1989). 17 In his Semi formation Theory, Adorno explains that the word semi would not be half, but an impediment, that is, it is the capitalist society itself that prevents the full development of culture, which semi forms rather than forming subjects. Supported by school, family, and the state, deforming or semi formative attitudes destroy autonomous formation and affect society, not just the field of education. Similarly, this semi formation would reach not only the intellect (reason), but the sensory and the corporeal (ADORNO, 2010). This debate on the regressive character of culture was also sketched in the classical work Dialectic of Enlightenment, published in 1944 from the partnership between Adorno and Horkheimer (ADORNO;HORKHEIMER, 2006 and barbarism continued to exist in the postwar context, which is why critical philosophy and education would play a key role in resisting to semi formation: Any debate about educational goals lacks meaning and importance in the face of this goal: that Auschwitz should not be repeated. It was the barbarism against which all education is directed. There is talk of the threat of a regression to barbarism. But this is not a threat, because Auschwitz was the regression; barbarism will continue to exist if the fundamental conditions that generate this regression persist. That is what terrifies. Despite the current lack of visibility of misfortunes, social pressure continues to impose itself (ADORNO, 2000, p. 118-119).
In this sense, Adorno proposes a political and reflexive education, focusing on the autonomy of the subjects: an educational process opposed to the one that culminated in Auschwitz concentration camps, the result of a supposed reason, turned into a blind doctrine in the end. Only by combating semi formation could men humanize and question themselves, as opposed to 'hardening', bourgeois coldness, intolerance, barbarism, and insensitivity to the differences that marked the education of totalitarian regimes. In the words of Adorno (2000): This educational idea of severity, which many may recklessly believe, is totally mistaken. The idea that virility consists in a maximum degree of pain-bearing capacity has long been the facade of a masochism which -as psychology has shown -is very easily identified with sadism. The praised goal of "being hard" in such an education means indifference to pain in general. Even the pain of the other is not so different from the pain of himself. He who is severe with himself acquires the right to be severe with others, taking revenge on the pain whose manifestations he needed to conceal and repress. This mechanism needs to be made conscious as well as the promotion of an education that does not reward pain and the capacity to endure it, as it used to be. In other words, education must take seriously what philosophy has long known: that fear must not be repressed. When fear is not repressed, when we allow ourselves to be as afraid as this reality requires, then precisely this way will probably disappear most of the deleterious effects of unconscious and repressed fear (ADORNO, 2000, p. 127-128). The rescue of the critical and political potential of education based on a "critical selfreflection of social conditioning" and a "criticism of the ideological way of promoting semi culture" could contribute to the "realization of the formative experience and, consequently, of emancipation" (GOMES, 2010, pp.204-205). Similarly, the Adornian proposal to resist the process of semi formation through critical education remains current 18 , considering the survival of fascist ideology even after the deaths of leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. After all, was Theodor Adorno "who asked if it was still possible to write poetry after Auschwitz. It was he who shouted against the 'liquidation of the subject'" (BRONNER, 1997, p. 219-220).

Final considerations
Through the exhibitions Entartete Kunst and Entartete Musik, we observe the education and art used in the service of semi formation, contributing to the construction and reaffirmation of the ideals of Nazi fascism, racial superiority, anti-communism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-modernism and eugenics -an educational and aesthetic model that censors, oppresses, and encourages hatred and intolerance. In contrast, Adorno's aesthetic theory and his theoretical contributions to the field of Education stress the need for approximation between critical philosophy and art, in order to avoid its being used in the name of the semi formation of subjects -as in the case of Nazi exhibitions -because "a priori, prior to his works, art is a critique of the fierce seriousness that reality imposes on human beings" (ADORNO, 2001, p. 13).
We believe that Adorno's Critical Theory comprises a theoretical possibility for the construction of a critical education model, constituting at the same time a denunciation and a struggle against the semi formation that persists in time, even after the fall of the totalitarian regimes that devastated the world during the first half of the twentieth century.
By presenting these issues and bringing to light the main elements that made up education and art in the Third Reich, we do not intend to exhaust the subject in question, considering its relevance and complexity. However, supported by the authors who focused on the where art and philosophy are placed at the service of a critical formation and the overcoming of the state of barbarism.