Censorship in Nazi Germany
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Censorship in Nazi Germany was extreme and strictly enforced by the governing
The ministry tightly controlled information available to their citizens. Almost all recent innovation in art, including Impressionism, Cubism, and Expressionism, were ruled degenerate art and banned by the Ministry. All works by composers of Classical music with Jewish ancestry like Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Schoenberg were banned as degenerate music.
In a particularly egregious example, the Ministry banned and
Reinhardt's brief Hollywood career resulted in his acclaimed 1935 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was banned by the Ministry, as well. This was due not only to Joseph Goebbels' belief that Reinhardt's filmmaking style, which drew heavily upon German expressionist cinema, was degenerate art, but even more so due to the Jewish ancestry of Reinhardt, Classical music composer Felix Mendelsohn, and soundtrack arranger Erich Wolfgang Korngold.[3]
The black list
Amongst those authors and artists who were suppressed both during the Nazi book burnings and the attempt to destroy modernist fine art in the "degenerate" art exhibition were:[4]
Artists banned include:
Composers banned include:
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold
- Gustav Mahler
- Felix Mendelsohn
- Arnold Schoenberg
Dramatists banned include:
Philosophers, scientists, and sociologists suppressed by Nazi Germany include:
- Albert Einstein
- Niels Bohr
- Edmund Husserl
- Karl Marx
- Friedrich Engels
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Sigmund Freud
- Max Scheler[5]
- Magnus Hirschfeld
Politicians suppressed by Nazi Germany include:
Criticism and opposition
To similarly evade censorship, black market copies of banned books were bound within innocent-looking covers and were called Tarnschriften.
In his 1938 essay "A Disturbing Exposition", Argentine author and anti-Nazi
. I find it normal to support with fervor a man who promises to defend their honor. I find it insane to sacrifice to that honor their culture, their past, and their honesty, and to perfect the criminal arts of barbarians.In a highly effective tool of deprogramming from Nazi ideology after
Furthermore, ever since its opening in 1980, the Memorial to the German Resistance in Berlin has included exhibits showing illegal anti-Nazi Samizdat literature, which was written and distributed by groups like the White Rose student movement in high risk defiance of Nazi censorship laws.
In popular culture
- The 1993 film Jazz and Swing music.
- The 2005 German language film Nazi ideology. The film stars Julia Jentsch as Sophie Scholl, Alexander Held as Gestapo interrogator Robert Mohr, and André Hennicke as Volksgerichtshof Judge Roland Freisler.
See also
- Censorship in Germany
- Nazi propaganda
- Degenerate art
- Degenerate music
- List of authors banned in Nazi Germany
References
- ^ "Control and opposition in Nazi Germany". BBC Bitesize.
- ^ Edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (1970), Actors on Acting: The Theories, Techniques, and Practices of the World's Great Actors, Told in Their Own Words, Crown Publishers. Page 294.
- ^ "Max Reinhardt - music, theatre, circus". Forbidden Music. 18 August 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
- ^ Adam, Peter (1992). Art of the Third Reich. New York:, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.., pp. 121-122
- ^ The Engineer as Ideologue: Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany - J Herf - Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London, Beverly Hills …, 1984 – [1]
- ^ Jorge Luis Borges (1999), Selected Nonfictions, Penguin Books. Pages 200-201.
- ^ Robert C. Doyle (1999), A Prisoner's Duty: Great Escapes in U.S. Military History, Bantam Books. Page 317.