Cultural Bolshevism (German:Kulturbolschewismus), sometimes referred to specifically asart Bolshevism,music Bolshevism orsexual Bolshevism,[1] was a term widely used by state-sponsored critics inNazi Germany to denouncesecularist,casual clothing,modernist andprogressive cultural movements. The term is closely related to theJewish Bolshevism conspiracy theory.
This first became an issue during the 1920s inWeimar Germany, when German artists such asMax Ernst andMax Beckmann were denounced byAdolf Hitler, theNazi Party, and otherGerman nationalists as "cultural Bolsheviks". Nazi claims about attacks on conceptions of family, identity, music, art and intellectual life were generally referred to as Cultural Bolshevism, theBolsheviks being theMarxist revolutionary movement in Russia.[2][3][4]
"Cultural Marxism" is a contemporary variant of the term which is used to refer to the far-right antisemiticCultural Marxism conspiracy theory.[5] This variant of the term was used by far-right terroristAnders Breivik in the introductory chapter of his manifesto.[6][7]
The development ofmodern art at the beginning of the 20th century, albeit with roots going back to the 1860s, denoted a revolutionary divergence from traditional artistic values to ones based on the personal perceptions and feelings of the artists. This rejection oftraditional authority, intimately linked to theIndustrial Revolution, theindividualistic values of theAge of Enlightenment and the advance ofdemocracy as the preferred form of government in the West, was exhilarating to some. However, it proved extremely threatening to others, as it took away the security they felt underthe older way of things. To many Germans of the time, and especially to the adherents ofNazism, the very cohesiveness ofWestern culture andcivilization appeared to be in dire peril.[8]
Themodernist break occurred around the same time as theOctober Revolution of 1917 in Russia, and those who felt threatened by the new artistic viewpoint associated it with the group that came to power after that revolution, theBolsheviks with theirMarxist–Leninist political philosophy. In reality, the connection between the modernism and Bolshevism was extremely tenuous, and primarily a matter of both existing at the same turbulent time in European history. Still, some artists inWestern Europe drew inspiration fromrevolutionary ideals, to the extent thatDadaistRichard Huelsenbeck confidently declared in 1920 that Dada was a "German Bolshevist affair".[9]
One of the first writers outside of Germany to associate Bolshevism as an art movement, a link to what would becomeCultural Marxism in the late 1990s, was Italian far-right authorJulius Evola. Evola was adadaist painter after the first World War, something which was considered decadent and subversive. In an article calledSui limiti del bolscevismo culturale, published in February 1938 inLa Vita Italiana monthly magazine, he named the movement as "cultural Bolshevism" (bolscevismo culturale).[10]
The association of new art with Bolshevism circulated inright-wing andnationalist discourse in the following years, being the subject of a chapter inAdolf Hitler'sMein Kampf. AmidHitler's rise to power, the Nazis denounced a number of contemporary styles as "cultural Bolshevism," notablyabstract art andBauhaus architecture. After seeing a colleague beaten by Nazi supporters for comments sympathetic to modern art, typographerPaul Renner published an essay against Nazi aesthetics titled "Kulturbolschewismus?"[11] Around the same time,Carl von Ossietzky mocked the flexibility of the term in Nazi writings:
Cultural Bolshevism is when conductorKlemperer takes tempi different from his colleagueFurtwängler; when a painter sweeps a color into his sunset not seen inLower Pomerania; when one favors birth control; when one builds a house with a flat roof; when aCaesarean birth is shown on the screen; when one admires the performance ofChaplin and the mathematical wizardry ofEinstein. This is called cultural Bolshevism and a personal favor rendered to HerrStalin. It is also the democratic mentality of the brothers [Heinrich andThomas]Mann, a piece of music byHindemith orWeill, and is to be identified with the hysterical insistence of a madman for a law giving him permission to marry his own grandmother.[12]
Once in control of the government, the Nazis moved to suppress modern art styles and to promote art with national and racial themes.[13] VariousWeimar-era art personalities, including Renner, Huelsenbeck, and the Bauhaus designers, were marginalized.
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