The following essay investigates the role of art and more specifically aesthetics within the context of a wider discourse on German society, tracing aesthetics’ lineage from Schinkel -to the Nazi regime, and focusing on how monument and memory interact with society and politics, both before and after the Holocaust.  Schinkel’s monumental Altes Museum in Berlin was intended for a society still ruled by royalty, yet it served as the setting for the 1936 Olympic Games as well.

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The end of the eighteenth century was one of great changes in philosophy and the way people thought about the society they lived in, paralleling the vast changes taking place politically at the same time.  Among German thinkers, aesthetic theory certainly figured heavily in the debates of the time, commencing with Kant, Hegel, Goethe, and Schiller, but also August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, F.E.D. Schleiermacher, and F.W.J. Schelling.  Art history came to the fore as a powerful new discipline in the 1750s and 1760s, most notably with the publication of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s works on classical art.  As museums were still largely in political and religious hands at this time, thinkers and citizens alike had access to art primarily through such books, but the information was available nonetheless and thus acted as a catalyst to the development of new ideas about the role of art in society. [1]

The French Revolution and the occupation by French forces taught Germans not to take art for granted, as French occupying forces spirited off German objects of art to enhance France’s glory.  In “Aesthetic Theory and Architectural Practice: Schinkel’s Museum in Berlin,” James. J. Sheehan explains that because it was historically valuable and historically at risk, “art had to be protected from the destructive power of history – an imperative that became one of the primary motives for the foundation of museums.” [2]   As Germans experienced a cultural and political crisis as a direct result of the French Revolution, intellectuals sought refuge in the arts as a cohesive force.  Schiller’s younger contemporaries did this most emphatically by forming the Romantic movement, at a time when Germany was seeking political unity.  Perhaps Schinkel expresses this most eloquently:

Nations decline and fall because every human power exhausts itself, but they live on in the monuments of art and science, which eternally retain their effectiveness.  They provide us a touchstone for the cultures of past and present. [3]

In Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind,” published in 1795, he laments the “sad state of art in an age dominated by utilitarian values … Schiller insisted that art is not useful in the everyday meaning of the word.”  Schiller believed that art had no place in his century’s “noisy marketplace,” but nevertheless insisted that art was not without a purpose, thereby distinguishing purpose from utility in the Kantian sense. [4]   Kant’s aesthetics expressed what he termed the Absolute, a universal moral consciousness.  In “The Battle for Art,” David Elliott describes Kant’s idea of autonomy of artistic expression:

Art was purely an end in itself; and, if its practice happened to illustrate other forms of reality, this was coincidental to the act of transcendent creation whereby art became a paradigm of individual and social freedoms. [5]

However, having been released from its political and religious bonds for only a few short decades intense debate, art was once again pressed into the servitude of the greater good of the country, giving it a perverse sort of Benthamite Utility.  Schiller’s Romantic sentiment leads him to believe that “in order to resolve every political problem in practice, one must take an aesthetic path, because it is only by way of beauty that one comes to freedom.” [6]   Taken out of context such a statement could sound like hopeless sanguinity, but it makes sense as part of his larger argument that art holds a special place in society as the only medium that is free and fully autonomous, and therefore plays a vital role as mediator between “freedom and restraint, reason and emotion, individual and group.” [7]

Art’s short-lived freedom from political and religious constraints therefore soon resulted in its ignominious but this time more ambiguous return to political servitude – this time as a force with which to not only unite citizens of the nascent unified Germany, but to ultimately serve as yet another tool at the disposal of the political authorities.  Schiller’s firm belief in the purpose of art was matched by his conviction in the precondition that art must remain autonomous.  In Prussia, this precondition was soon dispensed with, leaving art squarely in the hands of the state.  The Romanticists differed on the interrelationship between art and religion, some considering it a “surrogate faith” in a secular time - others still thinking of it as a means to the end of revitalizing traditional belief, but both sides agreed to art’s need for essential autonomy.

Kant similarly believed art inhabits an autonomous realm, insisting on the “disinterestedness” of aesthetic experience.  In his Critique of Judgment he writes:

Everyone must admit that a judgment on the beautiful which is tinged with the slightest interest, is very partial and not a pure judgment of taste.  One must not be in the least prepossessed in favor of the thing, but must preserve complete indifference in this respect, in order to play the judge in matters of taste. [8]

At the same time that these developments in aesthetic theory were taking place, new institutions for supporting art began to appear.  The museums in the possession of the aristocracy became more accessible to the public, and new museums were created for the purpose of dispensing art to the masses.  Museums essentially housed various objects and works of art, displaced from their origin and deprived of their purpose.

The spaces within follow logics that are internal to the museum itself, and do not relate specifically to any of the items within.  The museum’s disinterestedness and impartiality in the objects it houses parallel the autonomy of art from society at large, so that art’s purpose is only fulfilled when it is allowed to remain autonomous, yet one might argue that the museums contemporary to Schiller and Kant were never truly as disinterested or unbiased as they ought to have been.  Towards the end of the 18^th century, however, collections began to be arranged to more closely follow the emerging discipline of art history, so that curators arranged the spaces in such ways as to make visible the history behind the art, which had until then been hidden from view altogether.  This rather more scientific approach inherently relies more on its own internal logics, as does art, so that it may be concluded that – at least in such cases as the Vienna gallery of 1781, designed by Christian Mechel – both museums and their contents were independently autonomous from society, and disinterested in each other. [9]

Many among the Prussian officials as well as the aristocracy had read the Romanticists’ manifestos, and firmly believed in art as a valuable public resource.  Sheehan quotes one Prussian official as saying that if it is the purpose of the state to “bring the highest benefits to mankind, this can only be done through science and the fine arts.” [10]   This official’s reference to the “highest benefits to mankind” is reminiscent of Bentham’s Utility, as the Romanticists – or at least their sympathizers in the government – clearly thought of art as possessing the ability to bring the “greatest good to the greatest number.”  Furthermore, science and fine art are not such disparate subjects as at they may first appear to be, as art history was emerging as a discipline at this time, seeking to bring some order to the study of art in the same way attention had been paid to history in general.  It was not a science, certainly, but attempted to be as objective and neutral as science ought to be.

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Schinkel’s Altes Museum

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As early as the late 1790s, several prominent members of the Prussian government believed building a museum to house the royal collection would constitute a valuable contribution to the state’s cultural mission, but due to the struggle with Napoleon and Prussia’s defeat in 1806 but ultimate victory in 1813 at Leipzig, the project was delayed until 1822, when Karl Friedrich Schinkel took on the project.

Fig. 1, Wetzel 19: Altes Museum, façade

Schinkel associated with leading poets, philosophers, and statesmen of his day, and their discussions concerning aesthetics and the purpose of art did more than influence him passively; he consciously sought to apply these theories to his architectural work.  The Altes Museum was intended to be simply an extension of the Royal Academy, but Schinkel insisted it be an autonomous building sited at the northern end of the Lustgarten, opposite the palace.  A canal was filled in and a number of rather decrepit buildings were removed to make way for the museum.  Siting it to face the palace and inserting it between the River Spree and a number of smaller buildings allowed him to accommodate the project’s not very generous budget, since only the museum’s façade needed ornamentation worthy of such an eminent neighbor as the palace, the Königliches Schloss. [11]

Fig. 2, Wetzel 17: Berlin in the 1830s, 1. Museum, 2. Cathedral, 3. Palace, 4. Arsenal

Concerned as he was with art’s place in society, Schinkel located the museum on axis with the palace and adjacent to the cathedral and arsenal, giving it a central place among these three pillars of the Prussian state.  The museum’s relationship with the state only went so far as the façade, significantly, in that it bore an inscription acknowledging the king’s leading cultural role, yet “the museum was in no sense an extension of the court nor merely an expression of royal power.  The king may have been the state’s most important patron of art, but he was also a participant in art’s public veneration.  The façade, therefore, bore his name, but the building’s interior was to belong to art and its public.” [12]

It appears monumental on the exterior, but the same is not true for its interior.  Its autonomy is preserved by recognizing the court’s role in the cultural life of Prussian society, while simultaneously disallowing this acknowledgement of power from affecting the museum’s internal logic.  The building thus presents one face to the outside, while presenting quite another inside, reminiscent of the Janus symbol of one head with two faces, a double-edged sword, or the opposite sides of a coin.  In its acknowledgement of power it is clearly monumental, as expressed in its façade’s breadth and the very real as well as perceived weight of its entablature.

Schinkel employs the Greek stoa poikile as used in the agora of Athens, a secular form.  Yet Sheehan argues that Schinkel considered art sacred, and its place of repose – the museum, he considered sacred space.  Sheehan considers the dichotomy between bowing to authority and resolutely breaking with it inside the museum as one essentially between the secular and the sacred, in the Romanticist sense.  Thus, art itself could be experienced in a space suitable for it, rather than in an extension of a palace or a university, both of which would violate art’s autonomy.  Schinkel’s museum attempts to suggest how art is connected to the world socially, culturally, and morally, and seeks to resolve the apparent dichotomy between the museum’s autonomy within the context of the “three pillars of Prussian society,” as symbolized by the palace, arsenal, and cathedral.

While studying Schinkel’s Altes Museum it is impossible to ignore the building’s use of architectural forms traditionally reserved for religious buildings.  The ground floor’s center is rotunda, a direct reference to the Pantheon as well as the Museo Pio Clementino.  Equally difficult to ignore is Schinkel’s own writing on the matter in an essay on “religious buildings” he states that “art itself is religion [and] the religious is eternally accessible to art.  The religious building alone … can be the point of departure for the entire definition of an architecture.” [13]   Yet when Alois Hirt confronted him with criticism of his employment of the rotunda for displaying artworks, he replied that his building could not be without “a dignified central point” and that “the beautiful and sublime space makes [the visitor] receptive and creates a mood for the enjoyment and understanding of what the building contains.” [14]   It appears Schinkel himself encapsulated the dichotomy between secular and religious in the way he wrote about the sacredness of art, yet made no mention of this sacredness in a public response to criticism of the rotunda.

Fig. 3, Sheehan 18-20

Aesthetics and art history developed simultaneously over the course of the 18^th century.  These two disciplines formed the programmatic hierarchy for the Altes Museum: the ground floor housed art from the ancient world, while the second floor contained paintings, organized by period and style.  The classical art was not arranged in any particular order, but rather was presented as one entity, in unison – it was not considered as yet another “period,” but as timeless, as opposed to the paintings, which were carefully arranged according to the contemporary precepts of art history.  This essentially Hegelian distinction between classical and postclassical art (which he refers to as “romantic art”) assumes that classical art is timeless, ideal, foundational, while “romantic art” was considered historical and dated – the opposite, in fact, of being timeless. [15]   As he grew older, Hegel drifted away from Romantic notions of art’s special power, coming to believe this to be a thing of the past.  Schiller steadfastly believed art’s autonomy endowed it with special powers to transform society, but Hegel took a more pessimistic (or perhaps more realistic) view of the matter, believing instead that art’s separation from religion guaranteed art’s cultural marginality. [16]   Schinkel consciously departed from Hegel’s formulation that after being divorced from religion, art became insignificant and its lack of utility was thus revealed, even though it may still have clung to its cherished purpose.  Schinkel believed in art’s transformative powers, but left visitors to his museum a somber lesson in the form of two depictions of the destructive elements at work in human life.  Located on the second floor of the museum at the top of the staircase, these paintings, entitled “Violence in Nature” and “Violence in War,” emphasize the “fragility of our efforts to stand against the forces of disorder and destruction.” [17]   These murals were not completed until much later, and were soon thereafter destroyed by World War II bombing.

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Fascism, monumentality, and the memorial

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A failed painter himself, Hitler had a deep belief in the importance of controlling culture in addition to the economy.  This departed from Marx’s insistence on only controlling the economy.  At the opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, 1937, he stated: “a new epoch is moulded not by literary men but by warriors.” [18]   The Nazis, like the Leninists, believed in using “art as a weapon.”  In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin concludes that the introduction of aesthetics into political life is the “logical result” of Fascism. [19]   It follows that cultural revolutions preceded the real war, since control of culture was considered by the Nazis to be a prerequisite to effectively carrying out their revolution.  Hitler and Lenin both agreed that, “in a revolutionary society, culture had to be engaged with the party.” [20]   The Nazis did not have an established party culture, and did not want avant-garde artists voicing what the Nazis considered dissent, so they embarked on a campaign to eradicate Modernist art, an integral component of their overall campaign against all aspects of what they deemed “degenerate” culture.  Elliott states that when the avant-garde was “faced by the naked reality of power its fragile autonomy soon crumbled:”

In the brave new worlds of the dictators, the idea of an avant-garde could seem either like an unwelcome reminder of the past or a rallying point for counter-revolution.  It was, accordingly, one of the first manifestations of the old order which had to be obliterated. [21]

Speaking at the opening of the Third Day of Art in Munich, 14 July 1939, Dr. Otto Dietrich, Joseph Goebbels’s Chief of Press, makes a reference to the fact that this third annual celebration of art happened to fall on the 150^th anniversary of the French Revolution.  His belief in collective will contradicts his assertions that the idol of 1789 was in fact the enemy of freedom and individuality, in that he offers only the concept of “we” instead of “I,” which only leads to an erosion of freedom and individuality, by definition.  Collective will necessitates an abdication of at least some autonomy on the part of the individual, yet Dietrich states:

The [French] Revolution wrote, as it were, the word freedom on its banner but, in truth, it equated freedom with the arbitrary will and licentiousness of the individual … This idol of 1789, which [in fact] was the enemy of freedom and individuality, has been destroyed by us and replaced by a monument to true freedom … [The German Revolution] has effected a complete change from the concept of “I” to the concept of “we,” from the individual to the whole. [22]

Nazi Germany wanted to harness the power of collective will, and in so doing sought also to control culture and thereby art.  Control of art leads to the obliteration of its autonomy, because it constrains the individual only to the will of the collective whole, whereas art as described by Kant in his Critique of Judgment is dependent upon the autonomy of artistic expression.

In “Speaking Without Adjectives: Architecture in the Service of Totalitarianism,” Tim Benton discusses the relationship between fascism and architecture.  He considers the “regime architecture” of the 1930s as conceivable primarily as a form of propaganda.  Just as the microphone was a new and powerful tool at the disposal of totalitarian states, architecture was put into service to convey messages at great distances and to vast crowds, allowing the state to both maintain a veneer of autocracy and present itself as familiar.

The foremost example of such fascist architecture is Albert Speer’s Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg, completed in 1934.  This building, designed to host annual Nazi party rallies, is perhaps best captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the same era, Triumph of the Will.  Built at a truly monumental scale, it conveys the simple message that the collective will is overpowering; this is reflected in the building’s lack of detailing adequate to a human scale, so that the visitor either feels overwhelmed or in sheer awe of the power of the state.  Either way, the architecture had accomplished the goal set for it by its Nazi patrons.  Although it can be reasonably assumed that this complex of buildings and its contemporaries intentionally operated at a much greater scale than would otherwise be deemed appropriate or “comfortable” to a visitor, part of this may be attributed to the relative rapidity with which the Nazi regime sought to construct such complexes; the techniques used were sometimes geared more towards completing the project in as frugal a fashion as possible, which would certainly lead to a reduction in detailing, yet this reduction would still not be enough to account for the utter immensity of the complex – a reflection of the ambitions of the Nazis. [23]

Fig. 4, Benton 37: Albert Speer, Zeppelinfeld, Nuremberg, 1934 (as seen in 1979)

Speer was also responsible for the Lustgarten May Day Parade of 1 May 1936.  The following day, the Nazis’ 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin commenced and were cast on a stage set intended for a world audience, distributed by means of newsreels and radio, primarily, although there were also experiments in live television broadcasting in the Berlin area.  The Lustgarten’s monumentality on this occasion was intended to be of such a magnitude that even those seeing photographs of the ceremonies from the 1936 Games would understand the power of National Socialism – this is most evident in the ubiquitous repetition of the swastika on banners draped on all sides of the square:

Fig. 5, Benton 43: The Lustgarten decorated for the Olympic Games, Berlin 1936

The banners installed by Speer denied and masked the architectural realities of the city.  This tells us much about the “National Socialist will to build”… the banners installed by Speer create an anonymous, pure, cubic space in the centre of the city and of the Reich, a space that denies the Cathedral and the topography of the river, and turns its back on the former Royal Palace in order to concentrate attention on the speaker’s tribune in front of the Altes Museum, which itself is reduced to an anonymous screen … An anonymous space was thus created that had freed itself from the immediate history of Berlin, the church and the monarchy, yet was still associated with Schinkel and with the distant aura of an Hellenic past. [24]

In a strange twist of fate, one side of the Lustgarten is home to the palace, symbol of a former system of government that the Nazis are attempting to usurp once and for all, and the Altes Museum, still silently acknowledging the power of the king, long after his departure from power.  Trees that once dotted the Lustgarten’s surface had been felled in preparation for the Games, effectively transforming the park into a parade ground.  The references to Berlin as a “new Athens” turn out to be quite appropriate, as the ground floor of the Altes Museum housed the classical and Hellenic works, all grouped together as a collective whole.  Thus, the speaker at the tribunal would literally have years of classical culture behind him, but visible only through the thick screen of Nazi symbolism that enveloped the entire square.

Fig. 6, Whyte 46: Albert Speer, Decorations for Lustgarten Parade, 1 May 1936

Following Germany’s descent into Fascism and its rather lengthy foray into eugenics, new generations of Germans began to contemplate the construction of new memorials.  The Holocaust left newer generations wondering how to proceed to build adequate memorials for the victims of the Nazi regime, yet monument designers were loath to invoke the same monumental imagery employed at such an enormous scale by Speer, most especially in the May pole.  The result is a monumentality that is anything but:

Perhaps no single emblem better represents the conflicted, self-abnegating motives for memory in Germany today than the vanishing monument.  On the one hand, no one takes their monuments more seriously than the Germans.  Competitions are held almost monthly across the “Fatherland” for new memorials against war and fascism, or for peace; or to mark a site of destruction, deportation, or a missing synagogue; or to remember a lost Jewish community. [25]

In Part One, Chapter One of Young’s The Texture of Memory.  Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, he discusses what he terms “the countermonument.”  Two examples of such “self-abnegating” monuments are Sol Lewitt’s Black Form projects for Munich and Hamburg-Altona, and Jochen and Esther Gerz’s Monument against Fascism in Harburg.  The former is intended to remain in a square, a black and lonely form, to recall the disappearance of the Jews of Munich.  An unintended outcome of Black Form was that it was removed from Munich after much public debate over its appropriateness to the expensive plaza it inhabited, and moved to Hamburg-Altona instead, so that even the monument itself became subject to forced, unplanned removals and disappearances.  The latter, the Gerz’s Monument against Fascism, was intended to disappear into the ground, to be covered and never seen again, and as such it was only visible for a number of years, until it was entirely covered in names and graffiti. [26]   Young goes on to explain this desire to avoid building “monumental monuments” in the traditional, now-Fascist sense of the word:

Given the state-sponsored monument’s traditional function as self-aggrandizing locus for national memory, the ambiguity of German memory comes as no surprise.  After all, while the victors of history have long erected monuments to their triumphs and victims have built memorials to their martyrdom, only rarely does a nation call upon itself to remember the victims of crimes it has perpetrated. [27]

Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin incorporates such notions of self-abnegation and disappearance as well, though less directly.  Although it is not a “vanishing monument” as such, the seemingly random slits in its walls refer to the otherwise entirely invisible traces of the whereabouts of Jewish citizens of Berlin.  One might well argue that it is more monument than museum, but the fact that it so invisibly refers to the Holocaust seems to contradict that.  However, it is not via the intellect that Libeskind’s museum conveys its connection with and memorialization of the unbelievable terrors of Nazi Germany, but rather through a visceral response that the building evokes from the visitor with its sharp, jagged cuts.  Contemporary German monument artists desire to build monuments, but to do so in a way that in no way recalls the gargantuan forms employed by the Nazis, yet still seek to recall the events not only instigated and precipitated by the Nazis, but carried out as well.  To do this subtly and in a tasteful manner is a tall order, one that the above-named artists as well as Daniel Libeskind have managed to fill.  Young explains this further:

Ethically certain of their duty to remember, but aesthetically skeptical of the assumptions underpinning traditional memorial forms, a new generation of contemporary artists and monument makers in Germany is probing the limits of both their artistic media and the very notion of a memorial.  They are heirs to a double-edged postwar legacy: a deep mistrust of monumental forms in light of their systematic exploitation by the Nazis, and a profound desire to distinguish their generation from that of the killers through memory. [28]

Over the course of two centuries, the German notion of the monument or memorial became completely inverted, seeking not necessarily to undo what cannot be undone, but hoping at least to be able to make a worthwhile contribution to German society’s recovery from the horrors of war.  Contemporary artists and monument builders still believe in the regenerative powers of art much as the Romanticists did, although the initial euphoria and altruism are gone, replaced with a sullen realism, yet one that acknowledges that the only road to recovery is one that involves remembering the past and its concomitant unpleasant details.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter and Hannah Arendt, ed.  “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations.  New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Benton, Tim et al.  “Speaking Without Adjectives: Architecture in the Service of Totalitarianism,” Art and Power: Europe under the dictators 1930-1945, p.36-42.  London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1995.

Britt, David and Stephanie Barron, ed.  Degenerate Art.  Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991.

Elliott, David et al.  “The Battle for Art,” Art and Power: Europe under the dictators 1930-1945, p. 31-35.  London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1995.

Hegel, G.W.F.  Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik: Werke, vols. 13-15.  Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970.

Kant, Immanuel.  Critique of Judgment.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.

Schiller, Friedrich.  “Über die äesthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen,” Sämtliche Werke.  5 vols.  Munich, 1959.

Sheehan, James J. and David Wetzel, ed.  “Aesthetic Theory and Architectural Practice,” From the Berlin Museum to the Berlin Wall.  Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1996.

Whyte, Iain Boyd et al.  “Berlin, 1 May 1936,” Art and Power: Europe under the dictators 1930-1945, p. 43-49.  London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1995.

Wistrich, Robert S. and Luke Holland.  Weekend in Munich.  Art, Propaganda and Terror in the Third Reich.  London: Pavilion, 1995.

Wolzogen, Alfred von.  Aus Schinkels Nachlass: Reisetagebücher, Briefe und Aphorismen.  Berlin, 1862-64.

Young, James E. The Texture of Memory.  Holocaust Memorials and Meaning.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.