The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany

The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany presents a new interpretation of National Socialism, arguing that art in the Third Reich was not simply an instrument of the regime, but actually became a source of the racist politics upon which its ideology was founded. Through the myth of the Aryan race, a race pronounced superior because it alone creates culture, Nazism asserted art as the sole raison d'être of a regime defined by Hitler as the dictatorship of genius. Michaud shows the important link between the religious nature of Nazi art and the political movement, revealing that in Nazi Germany art was considered to be less a witness of history than a force capable of producing future, the actor capable of accelerating the coming of a reality immanent to art itself.

Author: Eric Michaud
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 04/30/2004
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 8.64h x 6.44w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780804743266

About the Author
Eric Michaud is Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.