Museum Arnhem opens Third Reich exhibition including art that hung on Hitler's wall

Museum Arnhem is opening an exhibition next week with 90 works created by German artists between 1933 and 1945 during the Nazi regime. The works involve paintings and some sculptures. According to a spokesperson, they include paintings that Adolf Hitler himself had hanging on the wall somewhere, such as "The Four Elements" by Adolf Ziegler, which adorned the Führerbau in Munich.

The main purpose of the exhibition is to show how art was used by the Nazi regime to distract and manipulate the population, although the artists in question often worked no differently than before 1933. However, 14,000 of them had registered with the Reich Chamber of Culture, which was a prerequisite for being able to practice one's work openly and at the same time was seen as approval of the regime.

With all the competition in the art world, the Nazi regime's interest and the resulting income for the artists were often very welcome. Visitors in Arnhem have to find out for themselves whether they like the works regardless of the context. There are also many works where the connection to the regime is not immediately obvious.

"Many people don't realize how much the Nazis used the visual arts for their propaganda industry, but it really happened on a grand scale. And public interest was huge. In Munich, there was a big exhibition every year in the large Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art). Half a million to 850,000 people went there every time," says the spokesman. It was traditional, realistic and easy-to-handle art; the Nazis famously didn't like modern art: it was 'entartet', meaning it was 'degenerate'.

They preferred to see paintings of tough people, such as "Water sports", a group of rowers by Albert Janesch (also in Arnhem), and of landscapes back home where you could get a breath of healthy fresh air. Family life and industrial progress were also worthwhile topics.

The museum has not (yet) received much criticism regarding its plans. When the Design Museum Den Bosch created an exhibition about design from the Third Reich in 2019, things were initially different, but the exhibition ended up being a real hit. Museum Arnhem is already noticing a great deal of curiosity about the subject.

Half of the art pieces come from the depots of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The exhibition in Arnhem runs from November 12 to March 24.