The Real Pieces of Nazi Art

This piece, presented assumedly to Mr. Hitler by the official Nazi sculptor Josef Thorak, seems to be the only really valuable piece of art offered by our happy American seller, as the rest of the collection is made up mostly of very marginal paintings, etchings and engravings, some military memorabilia and easily available books. This piece was presented to Hitler at the merry event that would inaugurate the German Art Festival in 1937 and that would last until the very end of the war undeterredly. The piece is highly unoriginal because the theme is recurrent all through Thorak's work; at the same time it is very likely the piece in question was either designed much later on or as well by a different artist for there's no information on the whereabouts of the original one, moreover the retail price is disclosed only to potential buyers. Mr. Thorak, together with his colleagues Arno Breker and Fritz Klimsch. The rest of their collection is a rather fetishist and vain attempt at a collection of truely "admirable" Nazi art.

Now let's see some of the real masters and their pieces which are happily exhibited in Germany today, because the "political" has nothing in common with the "aesthetic" (which of course had been very different under Mr. Hitler); a wonderful principle indeed. Some of their pieces are presented today in the most prestigious galleries and museums of Germany or destributed privately between private collections. The current art legislation doesn't compel German musems and collectors to return pieces looted from Jews by the Nazis nor the confiscation of allegedly Nazi art.

Fritz Klimsch lived until the ripe age of 90 (some accounts record 80) and was never tried for his participation in the Nazi regime as a artist, and easily got away from the Denazification committee (which outlawed the philosopher Martin Heidegger for a couple of years and deprived him of a pension even though he never received personal presents from Hitler, as in the case of Mr. Klimsch). A German auction house "Ketterer Kunst" based in Munich completely overlooks his Nazi past in their biography of him and as late as 2005 has held and closed auctions in the thousands of euros with works of this respectable gentleman. This is their biography of Klimsch http://www.kettererkunst.com/bio/FritzKlimsch-1870-1960.shtml. Four out of the twelve pieces successfully sold by Ketterer in the last 5 years were produced by Mr. Klimsch during the years of the Nazi regime. Besides the two little pieces offered by the American collector, there's a famous sculpture of Klimsch:

The so-called "Schauende" (1937) still exists today (as late as May 2006) in Chiemsee, where it had been placed under request of Hitler. The famous sculpture featured at the Art Festival of Munich in 1937 remains to this day visible from the terrace opposite the lake at the Chiemsee Lake Hotel.

Arno Breker lived also to the ripe age of 91, and lived unmolested as an artist following the end of the Nazi regime. Even though patrocinated by Max Liberman and considered often a "degenerate artist" he was fathered by Hitler and although never a party member (what kept him away from the Denazification Committee) he served the Reich until 1942. His neo-classical style appealed to the Nazis and fell in with the ideas of the Nazis on architecture, albeit quite Modernist and Mannerist in his style. A museum on his name was erected in 1985 and even beyond that, an exposition of his works opened in Schwerin in 2006 creating a stiff polemic over the display of this controversial gentleman. The auctioner "Ketterer" omits Breker's biography but has indeed sold three of his works (mostly very late works) in the last 5 years. In 1991 he died in Düsseldorf. Some of his works are of phenomenal quality, which doesn't diminish in anyway his involvement in the most murderous regime of modern times.

Undeniably his most famous work is the statue called "Die Partei" which was thought to invoke and represent the spirit of the Nazi party. Art of such originality and quality was seldom thought in the Soviet Union or under Mussolini for example, what brings to the fore the question of the uncannily messianic value of beauty that the Nazis placed on their holy tasks, whose aim more than anything else was the destruction and extermination of whole peoples.

"Die Partei" in the picture right.

Josef Thorak was an Austrian artist who lived up to the age of 63, free from Denazification in 1948 resumed work through a major exposition in Austria and continued his work until his death. He remains so far the most popular household name when one speaks about Nazi art, the following picture shows the heroic and monumental character of his sculpture work and contains the motif of the Aryan girl marketed by the American seller.