Rosenberg

Goebbels and Rosenberg squabbled over whether some forms of modern art should have a place in the new Germany, with the former taking great pains to keep Expressionist artists such as avowed Nazi Emil Nolde in the political fold and dispel criticism that Nazi cultural policy was overly reactionary.

And in the battle for practical control of the party’s cultural policy, Goebbels, a far more consummate politician and organizer than the pedantic Rosenberg, appeared to seize the upper hand; in September 1933, Goebbels founded the Reich Chamber of Culture, which all working German artists were required to join, Aryan certificate in hand.

Rosenberg received an even harsher rebuke from Hitler, who preferred Greek and Roman classicism to Rosenberg’s neo-Gothic aesthetic and denounced “those backwards-lookers who imagine that they can impose upon the National Socialist revolution, as a binding heritage for the future, a ‘Teutonic art’ sprung from the fuzzy world of their own romantic conceptions.”

Nazi leaders like racial theorist Alfred Rosenberg embraced Schultze-Naumburg’s theory as a magnificent insight.

Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News and columnist for Al Jazeera English.