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

Abstract

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.