Cultural

Art: A Way of Expression.

During the in-between wars period of time, people’s ideas and feelings were mixed and changed very fast. One of the areas in which this was shown was art. People use art to express what they are living and the emotions they were feeling. Many art movements were developed during this period of the time but some of the most representative were surrealism and expressionism.

Expressionism, as his name says, wants to show the emotions and feelings through the art. This movement was created in Germany and it tries to emphasized the expression of innermost feelings. This movement’s art showed very well how people felt in this period of time, especially in Germany. In painting, a leader is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner who twisted the shapes to show emotions.

In this painting , Kirchner shows two well-dressed prostitutes  walking down a street in Berlin  and the men looking at them. This artwork was created during a period of loneliness.  Kirchner was a depressive painter and he even took his life when the Nazi told that his work was degenerated.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: “Street, Berlin” 1913.

In printmaking, we can see the works of Käthe Kollwitz, she mostly created black and white artworks when most artist did color in that period of time. In her work below, Kollowitz shows the sadness of the lower class mothers after losing their husbands and left alone to care for their children after the World War I.  In this picture, she shows the pain and the suffer that people went through during that period of time and how she is concerned about them.

Käthe Kollwitz: “The Mothers”, 1919

Surrealism isn’t only an art movement but also a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s. In art, surrealism expresses the imagination as reveled in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. “ The aim of Surrealism was to reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with rational life. Surrealism also aimed at social and political revolution and for a time was affiliated to the Communist party” (Artrepublic: http://www.artrepublic.com/art_terms/19-surrealism.html)  The main leaders are Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst.

 Salvador Dali: “Soft Construction with Boiled Beans“(Premonition of Civil War), 1936

In this painting, Dali expresses the destruction during the Spanish Civil War, which he was present of  and the self-destruction that it causes. The beans represent that there were many difficulties in the war so the Spanish citizens had to do their best to deal with their problems.

In my opinion, art is a way in which people escape from reality and show in a different way how they feel about the changes that took place. These art movements showed clearly how people felt and it is shown in the paintings with deep meanings.  A good artist isn’t just the one with good techniques, it is the one who manage to show people the way he feels and that makes people indentified with his work and the artist of this period of time did that because many people felt just the same way, worried and scared.

by: Fernanda Zurek

Sources:

1. Glencoe: Gene Mittler and Rosalind Ragans "Understanding Art"(  Editorial:Glencoe/McGraw- Hill)

2. Art Republic: Surrealism http://www.artrepublic.com/art_terms/19-surrealism.htm

3. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

Indoctrination in Nazism- The Hitler’s Youth

Indoctrination comes from the verb indoctrinate, which is the act of teaching someone  to accept doctrines uncritically. Indoctrination is extremely useful for convincing people that your idea is the right one and that they should follow you, and that is exactly why Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party used it in Germany.

Hitler realized that in order to succeed he needed the young people to support him, so he decided to use education to his favor and used it as a tool for the consolidation of the Nazi system. For doing that, he needed teachers on universities and schools to follow the Nazi curriculum and he made sure that it happened, so he sent Nazi officials to inspect them and if any teacher didn’t do it, they would be sent a month away to training courses and they will be taught how to teach the new curriculum.

The main changes occurred in the courses of Religion, Physical Education, Biology, German and History.  Religion was omitted because Christianity opposed to many ideas of the Nazist ideology. In German, the center was to have a nationalistic spirit and that being a German was the most important, so they taught superiority of the German race. History emphasized the victories of Germany and this led that young people would have a strong nationalism towards their country. Biology taught the importance of the Aryan race, discrimination and the Nazi’s racial theory and  kids couldn’t failed Physical Educations tests and fitness exams because they could be expelled from school.

The Nazis created an organization and a camp called Hitler’s Youth in 1922, which was made up of the Hitlerjugend , for male youth ages 14–18, Deutsches Jungvolk for ages 10–14; and the girls section that was called the Bund Deutscher Mädel. The girls needed to attend to the BDM ) were they would learn how to be good wives and mothers and to love Hitler. This related to the Nazi idea of of “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”, that said that the women’s role was in the house and that they should only take care of the children. The boys had different exciting activities, like war games  and they were taught how to be labor leaders and technicians. In the Hitler Youth, indoctrination was very present and the children that went there were seen as “Aryan Superman”. In the Hitler Youth they were taught to worship Hitler as well.  

Hitler Youth's Flag

I think that Hitler was very cruel but also intelligent in using education for his own good. The young people were forced to accept this and they really didn’t know any other way of thinking than the one that the Nazis presented to them. It was like if they inserted them these ideas and they weren’t free to think what they want and do what they thought was the right thing. I think it was dangerous that Hitler had the control of the Youth, the future of the country, until 1945. 

Sources: Indoctrination in Nazi Schools (September 10, 2008): http://socyberty.com/history/indoctrination-in-nazi-schools/

Hitler Youth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth

By: Fernanda Zurek