Offered for sale is this

VERY RARE ORIGINAL 1937 HEAVILY ILLUSTRATED EXHIBITION GUIDE

OF THE ANTI-JEWISH / ANTI-BOLSHEVIST EXHIBITION

ABOUT WHAT THE NAZIS CALLED “DEGENERATE ART”

AUSSTELLUNGSFÜHRER ENTARTETE “KUNST”

THIS EXHIBITION WAS DISPLAYED IN ALL MAJOR CITIES IN THE GERMAN THIRD REICH TO EDUCATE THE FELLOW ARYAN

ABOUT THE “SICK” UNDERSTANDING OF ART OF THEIR DECLARED ENEMIES, JEWS AND BOLSHEVISTS

This extremely rare 6 x 8-1/2 inch exhibition guide was the official exhibition guide of the infamous Nazi exhibition ENTARTETE “KUNST” which displayed the paintings and sculptures of Jewish and Bolshevist artists who were no longer tolerated in Hitler-Germany. Please note that the word Kunst (art) in the title is put in quotation marks which indicated that the Nazis did not regard the displayed items in this exhibition as art at all. The Degenerate Art exhibit opened by the National Socialists on July 19, 1937 (Entartete Kunst). It was a collection of over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints and books from 32 public museums. According to Stephanie Barron “The works were assembled for the purpose of clarifying for the German public by defamation and derision exactly what type of modern art was unacceptable to the Reich, and thus ‘un-German’”. Admission was free and from 1937 until 1940 the exhibit was viewed by over four million people throughout Germany and Austria. In 1933 already the “Deutscher Kunstbericht” issued a five-point manifesto describing “what German artists could expect from the new government.” These included:

-All works of a cosmopolitan or Bolshevist nature should be removed from German museums and collections, but first they should be exhibited to the public, who should be informed of the details of their acquisition and then burned.

-All museum directors who “wasted” public monies by purchasing “un-German” art should be fired immediately.

-No artist with Marxist or Bolshevist connections should be mentioned henceforth.

-No boxlike buildings should be built.

-All public sculptures not “approved” by the German public should be immediately removed.

Hitler used the attack on art to further German anti-Semitic feelings. Avant-garde works were charged with “degeneracy”, confiscated “to purify German culture”.

At the opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst Hitler announced “From now on we are going to wage a merciless war of destruction against the last remaining elements of cultural disintegration….Should there be someone among [the artists] who still believes in his higher destiny- well now, he has had four years’ time to prove himself. The four years are sufficient for us, too, to reach a definite judgment. From now one- of that you can be certain- all those mutually supporting and thereby sustaining cliques of chatterers, dilettantes, and art forgers will be picked up and liquidated. For all we care, those prehistoric Stone-Age culture-barbarians and art-stutterers can return to the caves of their ancestors and there can apply their primitive international scratchings.”

“Degenerate Art” was defined as art that “insult German feeling or destroy or confuse natural form or simply reveal an absence of adequate manual and artistic skill.”

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