Censorship in Nazi Germany

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Censorship in Nazi Germany was extreme and strictly enforced by the governing

political purge known as the Night of the Long Knives
in 1934.

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

avante garde stage director Max Reinhardt, whom Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy have dubbed "one of the most picturesque actor-directors of modern times". Reinhardt eventually fled to the United States as a refugee from the imminent Nazi takeover of Austria. His arrival in America followed a long and distinguished career, "inspired by the example of social participation in the ancient Greek and Medieval theatres", of seeking "to bridge the separation between actors and audiences".[2]

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:

Dramatists banned include:

Philosophers, scientists, and sociologists suppressed by Nazi Germany include:

Politicians suppressed by Nazi Germany include:

Criticism and opposition

Jewish American musicians in creating and performing both, were banned as Negermusik, but remained very popular among the Swingjugend counterculture anyway and were always in very high demand on Nazi Germany's thriving black market
.

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

scheme to appease Wilson
. 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

Federal Republic of Germany
.

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

See also

References

  1. ^ "Control and opposition in Nazi Germany". BBC Bitesize.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ "Max Reinhardt - music, theatre, circus". Forbidden Music. 18 August 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
  4. ^ Adam, Peter (1992). Art of the Third Reich. New York:, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.., pp. 121-122
  5. ^ The Engineer as Ideologue: Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany - J Herf - Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London, Beverly Hills …, 1984 – [1]
  6. ^ Jorge Luis Borges (1999), Selected Nonfictions, Penguin Books. Pages 200-201.
  7. ^ Robert C. Doyle (1999), A Prisoner's Duty: Great Escapes in U.S. Military History, Bantam Books. Page 317.