Why Did Arno Breker Decide to Collaborate with the Nazi Cultural Programme? (PDF)

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject History Europe - Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 72.0%, Durham University, language: English, abstract: According to Jonathan Petropoulos, Arno Breker was arguably the artist most admired by the Nazi leaders and most celebrated by the Nazi regime. As such, Arno Breker does not represent a simple cog in the National Socialist cultural machine, but rather occupies a position of almost unrivalled prominence and esteem in the cultural history of the Third Reich. Importantly, within recent academic analysis of art and culture under the National Socialist regime, there has been an ostensible recognition among historians and art historians alike that our manner of approaching figures such as Breker must be altered significantly.

Culture, and especially art occupied a position of unique significance in Nazi Germany, and the cultural policies of National Socialism worked to aestheticize politics and ideology. Indeed, Taylor and van der Will argue that under Adolf Hitler, Fascism came to represent a form of government which depended on such aestheticized politics, whereby the cultural programme was transmogrified into the 'aesthetics of political symbolism'. It is within this vital framework of understanding that one must approach the multifarious motives for Arno Breker's acquiescence with the Nazi regime after 1936-7.

Although Breker possessed a truly impressive artistic pedigree prior to his ascent to fame in Nazi Germany, he did choose to continue his career, arguably in a different artistic style and approach, under the Nazis. It is in this decision that historians claim can be found Arno Breker's ultimate undoing as an artist. The palpable changes evident in the sculptor's artistic style raise the issue, as elucidated by Alan E. Steinweis, of the distinction between artists' 'passive compliance' and 'active collaboration' with the regime's cultural policies. However, the case of Arno Breker raises problems beyond Steinweis' significant, but simultaneously constricted, scope of approach. The very motivations for his collaboration are overshadowed by the politically-dictated culture of which he became an indispensable part. One must question to what extent Arno Breker was transformed under National Socialism from a sculptor and an 'artist' into a purely political artist functioning to propagandize the ideological tenets of the Nazi regime.