Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics - Softcover

Spotts, Frederic

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590201787 ISBN 13: 9781590201787

Publisher: Overlook Books, 2009

Synopsis

"A fascinating contribution to our understanding of Hitler's complex, chaotic, and catastrophic personality, and a compelling study of Hitler's artistic policies in the Third Reich."-Foreign Affairs Featuring a new introduction by the author. A starling reassessment of Hitler's aims and motivations, Frederic Spotts' Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics is an adroitly argued and highly original work that provides a key to fuller understanding of the Third Reich. Spotts convincingly demonstrates that contrary to the traditional view that Hitler had no life outside of politics, Hitler's interest in the arts was as intense as his racism-and that he used the arts to disguise the heinous crimes that were the means to fulfilling his ends. Hitler's vision of the Aryan superstate was to be expressed as much in art as in politics: culture was not only the end to which power should aspire, but the means of achieving it. Filled with evocative photographs and reproductions from Hitler's 1925 sketchbook, "Spotts's study of the Fuhrer's fascination with architecture, painting, sculpture, and music is ...elegantly composed and richly documented" (The New Yorker).

About this title

About the Author

Frederic Spotts has written four other books on European political and cultural affairs. His study of Bayreuth is acknowledged as the standard work on the subject. Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics was written while Spotts was a visiting scholar at the Institute for International Affairs at Berkeley.

From Publishers Weekly

The opening paragraph and photo powerfully capture Spotts's argument: The Soviet army is soon to launch its final, devastating assault on Berlin; the British and the Americans are about to invade Germany from the west. And there sits Adolf Hitler, gazing longingly at a model of a rebuilt Linz, his hometown, which is slated to become a grandiose symbol of the Thousand-Year Reich. For Spotts, this proves what Hitler himself claimed: that he was at heart never a politician, but an artist. Spotts, who has written an acclaimed study of the Wagner festival at Bayreuth, tries to substantiate his thesis by providing a panorama of Hitler's artistic activities, including his failed career as a painter, the purge of Jews and others from the cultural sphere, and his personal patronage of artists, musicians and architects. According to Spotts, Hitler's essence is to be found in his desire to create an empire in which "true" German art could flourish as never before. Yet Spotts overlooks the fact that Hitler, in megalomaniacal fashion, also claimed mastery of engineering, history and military strategy. His primary focus was arguably not on art, but on the creation of a racial utopia. Art and politics were but two sides of the same, racially minted coin. Spotts provides a lively, encyclopedic account of Hitler and the arts, but a more comprehensive and nuanced portrait of the Fuhrer and the Nazi regime can be found in Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography, which will remain the standard work for many years to come. 100 b&w and 4 color illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1590201787
• ISBN 13: 9781590201787
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464