NEW – National Socialist, ‘Degenerate’, Émigré and Looted Art: The Aesthetics, Economics and Ethics of Art in the Third Reich
On campus
Dr Ines Schlenker
Tuesday 9 – Wednesday 10 September 2025
£250
Course description
This course explores the art politics during the Third Reich and its far-reaching legacies. The National Socialist campaign against modern art, begun not long after the takeover of power in 1933, culminated in two exhibitions staged simultaneously in Munich in 1937. The Great German Art Exhibition presented official National Socialist art, deemed appropriate for the German people by Hitler. The exhibition Degenerate Art denounced the modern art, confiscated from public collections, that would no longer be tolerated in Germany.
We will examine what qualities made artworks unacceptable to the Nazi regime and how their creators, the elite of contemporary artists, were replaced by hitherto little-known traditionalists. Artists rejected by the Nazis faced drastic consequences, ranging from adaptation, ‘inner exile’ and emigration to suicide and murder. We will investigate how artists dealt with these disrupted careers and, for example, attempted to start again in a foreign country.
We will also look at the financial implications of National Socialist art policies. The Great German Art Exhibition was a gigantic art fair, generating enormous sales. Hitler was a particularly enthusiastic buyer, whose purchases drove up prices. ‘Degenerate’ art, if not destroyed, was exploited for financial gain and sold abroad for foreign currency.
In addition, many artworks were looted from their owners all over Nazi-occupied Europe and after the war have become the subjects of restitution claims that still shake the art markets and the museum world today.
These issues will be explored in lectures and visits to relevant London collections.
How to book
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If you have any questions please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk
Lecturer's biography
Dr Ines Schlenker has a degree in economics and obtained her MA and PhD in art history from The Courtauld. She is an independent art historian and curator with a research focus on National Socialist, ‘degenerate’ and émigré art. Hitler’s Salon, her study of the officially approved art in the Third Reich as shown at the Great German Art Exhibition, was published in 2007. She wrote the catalogue raisonné of the paintings of the Vienna-born émigré Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (2009) and co-edited the artist’s correspondence with the writer Elias Canetti (2011). Recent publications include Capturing Time, a study of the life and work of the émigré artist Milein Cosman (2019), and Chagall (2022).