Cabaret Lighting SHU

Culbert, David. The Impact of Anti-Semitic Film Propaganda on German Audiences: Jew Suss and The Wandering Jew. Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich. Ed. Richard A. Etlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 139-157. Print.

“Two films had theatrical releases in Germany in the Fall of 1940 that intended to instruct German audiences about the so called Jewish question…”

The “enormously successful” Jew Suss and the box office failure The Wandering Jew.

“Both films bear indirectly on a much-debated issue: whether Adolf Hitler intended the eradication of European Jewry from his earliest days as an unknown political agitator (known as the intentionalist argument) or only with the failure of the Soviet campaign (the functionalist argument),” (Culbert 139).

Diehl, Par Gaston. Max Ernst. Bergamo: Flammarion, Pallas Script Agency, 1973. Print.

Visual References, paintings. Max Ernst.

Etlin, Richard A. Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Print.

Anthology of essays. From the editor’s note: “Here the reader will find a dozen studies by scholars from different fields who treat specific aspects of culture in Nazi Germany--- music, film and radio, architecture and interior décor, garden and landscape design, painting and sculpture, and pulp fiction,” (Etlin xv).

On the Modernists: “The various avante-garde movements in numerous cultural fields before World War Two certainly provided new visions, new expressive and aesthetic possibilities, and contained, within their numbers, substantial, timeless masterpieces. On the other hand, the abandonment of a recognizable story line in film or literature; the abandonment of recognizable subject matter in painting and sculpture or the distortion of the natural world, especially the human body; the abandonment of anthropomorphic features in architecture deprived the arts of the most easily understandable means for rooting the public’s response in the primal world of archetypes, base metaphors, and myths,” (Etlin 11).

The Nazis exploited the nature of the avante-garde: “Whenever possible, Nazi enthusiasts presented avante-garde art in a manner that would engage archetypes, base-metaphors, and myths to their advantage. As has been stressed by recent studies of the infamous exhibition in 1937 of Entartete Kunst (degenerate art), whose very title employs a term from biology that suggests the organic degeneration of the vital germ of life, the nonrepresentational works of art and the abstracted depictions of the human body in two –and three-dimensional art were juxtaposed and crowded together to foster a sense of chaos and deformity. This physical arrangement was supplemented by derisive wall captions and even the use of actors pretending to be visitors whose mocking comments were intended to set the tone for all observers,” (Etlin 13).

James-Chakraborty, Kathleen. The Drama of Illumination: Visions of Community from Wilhelmine to Nazi Germany. Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich. Ed. Richard A. Etlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 181-201. Print.

“Between 1934 and 1938, the single most dramatic moment of the Nazi Party rallies held annually in Nuremberg was not a military parade or a political speech but the Lichtdom, or Cathedral of Light, which gave spatial structure to the experience of the night sky. In 1934, 130 searchlights ringed the Zeppelin Field, casting their light upward to a height of more than 20,000 feet. Two years later, 150 searchlights requiring 4,000 kilowatts were assembled, this time focusing, as Hitler entered, on a single point in the sky. Albert Speer, the architect responsible for this spectacle, wrote of the first Lichtdom that ‘The feeling was of a vast room, with the beams serving as mighty pillars of infinitely light outer walls,” (James-Chakraborty 181).

Albert Speer, the Reich Architect, was a classicist. Regarding his mentor Heinrich Tessenow’s Festhalle in Hellerau:

“The Festhalle’s extraordinarily bare and carefully lit performance space provided an important precedent for Speer’s adept manipulation of light in Nuremberg and elsewhere. Here the glow of artificial light defines the parameters of the space, which is entirely uncluttered by architectural detail,” (James-Chakraborty 185).

The antithesis of Classicist lighting---Colored light, Theatre Spectacle and Bruno Taut’s ‘romanticization of light:’“…the importance Taut placed on glass and colored light to unite a mass public in a spiritual reawakening,” (James-Chakraborty 188).

The Glashaus at the 1914 Werkbund exhibition in Cologne:

“Daylight tinted by stained glass windows fell onto opulently colored tiles and danced off glass beads burbling in the fountain. The kinetic effect was compounded by a kaleidoscope which threw constantly shifting colored light onto the rooms reflective surfaces,” (James-Chakraborty 188).

Innovative use of lighting in architecture prompted talk of “a new utopian architecture,” that was at first rejected by the new nationalist government, (James-Chakraborty 189).

Taut, Reinhardt and others were doing with light what the Bauhaus painters were doing with painting. They were also using color to blur the line between actor and audience. Albert Speer did this with a classic white light approach that was all-inclusive, and relentless. Hitler embraced Speer’s classicist lighting techniques and used them in his ritualistic spectacles.

“Perhaps no previous government in modern European history had paid so much attention to ritual. During the Third Reich such performances became an effective substitute for the conventions of parliamentary government, eliminating the space for individual expression, and with it, dissent…Thrilling lighting techniques were among the strategies that diverted attention away from the cost of unity in the murderous suppression of difference,” (James-Chakraborty 193).

“For three decades, Germans employed light to shape spaces that architects, theatrical producers, and politicians hoped would transcend the country’s dangerous social and political polarization. Some of these efforts were benign, wrapping the romance of technological progress around an evening’s entertainment at the theatre or cinema. Others were frankly coercive, using militarism on an unprecedentedly sublime scale to annihilate any sense of the individual,” (James-Chakraborty 198).

Kirkpatrick, Sidney D. Hitler’s Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print.

German Born US Army Lieutenant and art historian Walter Horn finds clues to Nazi seized Art and Holy Relics including the Crown Jewels in a vault beneath Nurnberg Castle, leading to the actual jewels hidden under an elementary school. Biographical information pertaining to key players in the Art World and the military during the rise and fall of the Third Reich in Europe. Key themes: The Nazi obsession with Teutonic myth and legend, forced possession of National treasures, Cultural changes through propaganda, History of Religious artifacts, mystical architecture and anti-Semitism.

Koehler, Karen. The Bauhaus, 1919-1928: Gropius in exile and the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., 1938. Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich. Ed. Richard A. Etlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 287-315. Print.

“Gropius wanted the Bauhaus to be a school that would initiate changes in art, architecture, and education, but most important, changes in society. The Bauhaus was to bring about these transformations not only by creating a new relationship between people and the objects that surrounded them but also by emphasizing new kinds of communities; the school itself was to serve as an example of such a place,” (Koehler 289).

Dessau Bauhaus closed under Nazi Censorship:

After the November 1931 election, the Nazis promised “to dissolve the Bauhaus if elected, and at the soonest possible moment the funding for the Bauhaus was terminated. In order to make their decision seem legal, Nazi officials insisted that Mies mount the routine exhibition that took place at the end of term, which they would judge to determine if the Bauhaus deserved to continue. They called in as their expert the ultranationalist writer Paul Schultz-Naumburg, author of ‘Art and Race’. After taking a few perfunctory minutes to view the show, the Nazis rendered their judgment; the Dessau Bauhaus was dissolved on October 1, 1932. Eventually the Bauhaus buildings were turned into a Nazi training camp,” (Koehler 292).

LaCoste, Michel Conil. Kandinsky. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1979. Print.

Visual references, Kandinsky.

“Too often interpreted as an interlude, whereas it actually was situated at the crossroads of the painter’s career, the return to Moscow, in a climate of world change and revolution(1914-1921), set in motion the geometric treatment of forms Kandinsky would describe in detail in his interdisciplinary teaching at the Bauhaus, alongside Paul Klee, in Weimar (1922-1925), then in Dessau (1925-1933),and what he would codify in ‘Point-Line-Plan’ (1926), (LaCoste book jacket).

Lucie-Smith, Edward. Art of the 1930’s: The Age of Anxiety. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1985. Print

“The tradition Hitler preferred was that of German classicism. The architecture of Karl Frederich Schinkel (1787-1841), the greatest German architect of the nineteenth century, provided a model for the work of Hitler’s crony Albert Speer and also for that of other architects employed by the regime. The classical manner was also used in much of the official painting and sculpture commissioned by the German government—the influences here being the paintings of artists like Christian Gottlieb Schick (1776-1812), and the sculpture of Gottfried Schadow (1764-1850). The classical style simultaneously spoke of reverence for the German past, and of imperial ambitions for the future. Hitler’s own favorite artist was the classical painter Adolf Zeigler, nicknamed ‘the master of German pubic hair’, and in his time away from the studio, one of the chief sniffers out of ‘degenerate art’ in German institutions,” (Lucie-Smith 38).

Masteroff, Joe. Cabaret (revised). New York: Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc., 1987. Print.

Script reference to dummy of German Opera Singer, Smashed storefront (pre-Kristallnacht), Anti-Semitism, Nationalism (Tomorrow Belongs to Me), Poverty, Abortion, Decadence, Burlesque, Vaudeville, Love, Sacrifice, trains, travel, smuggling, Fear, change.

Neumann, Eckhard. Bauhaus & Bauhaus People. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993. Print.

A collection of interviews of Bauhaus artists, highlighting personal experiences, life in Weimar, Nationalistic Oppression, the spiritualism of the Bauhaus and the art produced there.

Lothar Schreyer, on Creative Lighting and the Bauhaus stage:

“Outside of our work we attended many performances of new theatre and dance works, above all Alexander Tairoff’s exciting ‘Unchained Theatre’. Of course we also took part in the work of Oskar Schlemmer in the room next to ours. Schreyer and Schlemmer shared the directorship in the Bauhaus theatre workshop. With great enthusiasm we went through the production of Schlemmer’s ‘Triadic Ballet’ in Stuttgardt in 1922. At that play: his presentation of the Story of Creation was unforgettable. We were delighted by this new light play and took part in several experiments, sometimes with colored lights. Once we presented our dance pieces, and later, when it seemed ready, we did the ‘Moon Play’ for a small group,” (Neumann 72).

O’Brien, Mary-Elizabeth. The Celluloid War: Packaging War for Sale in Nazi Home-Front Films. Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich. Ed. Richard A. Etlin. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002. 158-180. Print.

“Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was determined to direct the war like a staged event, catering to his audience’s needs while simultaneously manipulating public opinion in accordance with the changing military situation. As early as 1933, the National Socialist state began to institute measures to control all aspects of the film industry, from finance, distribution, advertisement, and critique to the choice of material, cast, crew, and directors,” (O’Brien 158).

Petropoulos, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Nazi art looting. The Dealers, The Artists, and The Museum Directors---how did they let it happen?

The Introduction begins with a description of Kajetan Muhlman, a Nazi, smuggling works by master painters (Raphael, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci) to Berlin---a stolen collection from the Czartoryski family in Cracow. On Muhlman: “He was a Nazi, a German nationalist, and took great satisfaction in the notion that these masterpieces , these examples of ‘Aryan’ superiority, were returning heim ins Reich,” (Petropoulos 1).

“These figures in the art world had the opportunity for a Faustian bargain because the Nazi leaders cared so much about culture---the visual arts in particular,” (Petropoulos 5).

Spotts, Frederick. The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Print.

“Failure to understand the importance of culture in a nation’s life was not a mistake Hitler made. Culture was not peripheral but central to his Occupation policy. In the arts he saw a narcotic to be used to pacify the French and make them amenable to collaboration while he was busy with his war in the Soviet Union. So he not only allowed but actively encouraged a rich artistic life. Indeed, he once boasted in a letter to Petain that no victor in history had ever treated a defeated nation so leniently. But he had further aim. Hitler’s racial theories compelled him to assert German cultural supremacy over the French and in that way to challenge their self confidence and to weaken their sense of national identity. Within a few months of the armistice he therefore launched a second blitzkrieg- this time artistic- with the intention of making Germany as supreme culturally as it was militarily, (Spotts 3).

Wolschke-Bulmahn, Joachim, and Gert Groning. The Nationalist Socialist Garden and Landscape Ideal: Bodenstandigkeit (Rootedness in the Soil). Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich. Ed. Richard A. Etlin. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002. 73-97. Print.

“Here, as elsewhere, Darwin’s theory of evolution as exemplified in The Origin of the Species gained considerable ideological influence and was applied not only to natural but also to social phenomenon,” (Wolschke-Bulmahn 74).

“Pure race and, thereby, pure culture were deemed prerequisites for the further evolution of Germany. Both the National Socialist landscape ideology, which was strongly influenced by the writings of the leading garden theorist of the first two decades of the twentieth century in Germany, Willy Lange”… “For Lange, garden art was a component of National Culture,” (Wolschke-Bulmahn 75).

“According to Ernard Mading, the officer for landscape formation on Himmler’s planning board, landscape formation became the ‘most decisive cultural task at present:’

‘The activity of landscape formation goes above and beyond physical and organic living conditions. Germans will be the first occidental people to form their own spiritual environment in the landscape and, thereby, for the first time in the history of mankind they will develop a lifestyle in which a people consciously determines the local conditions for its physical and mental life,’”(Wolchke-Pulmahn 83).