Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

by Peter Watson

  The encounter between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger was revealing not just in itself but also for the way it showed that intellectuals were not only victims of Hitler’s inquisition; they helped perpetrate it too.

  This is an area of prewar and wartime activity that has only become crystal clear since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which made many more archives available to scholars. Among the scientists who are now known to have conducted unethical research (to put it no stronger) are Konrad Lorenz, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1973, Hans Nachtsheim, a member of the notorious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics in Berlin, and Heinz Brucher at the Ahnenerbe Institute for Plant Genetics at Lannach.

  Lorenz’s most well known work before the war was in helping to found ethology, the comparative study of animal and human behaviour, where he discovered an activity he named ‘imprinting.’ In his most famous experiment he found that young goslings fixated on whatever image they first encountered at a certain stage of their development. With many of the birds it was Lorenz himself, and the photographs of the professor walking on campus, followed by a line of young birds, proved very popular in the media. Imprinting was theoretically important for showing a link between Gestalt and instinct. Lorenz had read Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West and was not unsympathetic to the Nazis.52 In that climate, he began to conceive of imprinting as a disorder of the domestication of animals, and drew a parallel between that and civilisation in humans: in both cases, he thought, there was degeneration. In September 1940, at the instigation of the Party and over the objections of the faculty, he became professor and director of the Institute for Comparative Psychology at the University of Königsberg, a government-sponsored position, and from then until 1943 Lorenz’s studies were all designed to reinforce Nazi ideology.53 He claimed, for instance, that people could be classified into those of ‘full value’ (vollwertig) and those of ‘inferior value’ (minderwertig). Inferior people included the ‘defective type’ (Ausfalltypus), created by the evolutionary conditions of big cities, where breeding conditions paralleled the ‘domesticated animal that can be bred in the dirtiest stable and with any sexual partner.’ For Lorenz, any policy that reduced ‘the ethically inferior,’ or ‘elements afflicted with defects,’ was legitimate.54

  The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics (KWI) was founded in 1927 at Berlin-Dahlem, on the occasion of the Fifth International Congress for Genetics, held in the German capital. The institute, and the congress, were both designed to gain international recognition for the study of human inheritance in Germany because, like other scientists, its biologists had been boycotted by scholars from other countries after World War I.55 The first director of the institute was Eugen Fischer, the leading German anthropologist, and he grouped around him a number of scientists who became infamous. They included Kurt Gottschaldt, who ran hereditary pathology; Wolfgang Abel, racial science; Fritz Lenz, racial hygiene; and Hans Nachtsheim, in charge of the department of experimental hereditary pathology. Nearly all the scientists at the KWI supported the racial-political goals of the Nazis and were involved in their practical implementation – for example, by drawing up expert opinions on ‘racial membership’ in connection with the Nuremberg laws. There were also extensive links between the institute’s doctors and Josef Mengele in Auschwitz. The institute itself was dissolved by the Allies after the war.56

  Nachtsheim studied epilepsy, which he suspected was caused by lack of oxygen to the brain. Since the very young react more overtly to oxygen deficiency than adults, it became ‘necessary’ to experiment on children aged five to six. In order to determine which of these children (if any) suffered from epilepsy, they were all forced to inhale an oxygen mixture that corresponded to a high altitude – say, 4,000 metres (roughly 13,000 feet). This was enough to kill some children, but if epilepsy did result, the children could be lawfully sterilised. These were not völkisch brutes carrying out such experiments, but educated men.57

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  Using newly opened archives in Berlin and Potsdam, Ute Deichmann has shown the full extent to which Heinrich Himmler (1900–45) largely shaped the goals of the science policy of the SS as well as the practical content of the scientific and medical research it initiated. He grew up in a strict Catholic home and, even as a child, took an interest in warfare and agriculture, notably animal and plant breeding. He also developed an early interest in alternative forms of medicine, in particular homeopathy. A superstitious man, he shared with Hitler a firm belief in the superior racial value of the Germanic people. It was Himmlers Institute for Practical Research in Military Science, within the framework of another SS branch, Das Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), which set about clarifying the ‘Jewish question’ anthropologically and biologically. Himmler played a decisive role in the establishment of Das Ahnenerbe in 1935 and was the first curator. A detailed analysis of SS research authorised by Das Ahnenerbe shows that Himmler’s central concern was the study of the history of, threat to, and preservation of the Nordic race, ‘the race he regarded as the bearer of the highest civilisation and culture.’58

  At the Institute for Practical Research in Military Science, experiments were carried out on cooling, using inmates from Dachau. The ostensible reason for this research was to study the effects of recovery of humans who suffered frostbite, and to examine how well humans adapted to the cold. Some 8,300 inmates died during the course of these experiments. Second, were the experiments on yellow cross, otherwise known as mustard gas. So many people were killed in this experiment that after a while no more ‘volunteers’ could be found with the promise of being released afterward. August Hirt, who carried out these ‘investigations’, was allowed to murder 115 Jewish inmates of Auschwitz at his own discretion to establish ‘a typology of jewish skeletons.’ (He committed suicide in 1945.)59 No less brutal was the Ahnenerbe’s Institute for Plant Generics at Lannach, near Graz, and in particular the work of Heinz Brücher. Brücher had the distinction of having an entire commando unit at his disposal. During the German invasion of Russia, this unit stole Nikolai Vavilov’s collection of seeds (see below, page 319). The aim here was to find hardy strains of wheat so as to be able to provide enough food for the German people in the ever-expanding Reich. Brücher and his unit also went on expeditions to areas like Tibet, carrying out ethnological as well as plant studies, which show that they were thinking far ahead, identifying remote areas where ‘inferior’ peoples would be forced to produce these foods, or else to make way for others who would.60

  On 2 May 1938, Hitler signed his will. In it he ordered that, upon his death, his body was to be taken to Munich – to lie in state in the Feldherrnhalle and then to be buried nearby. More than any other place, even more than Linz, Munich was home to him. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had described the city as ‘this metropolis of German art,’ adding that ‘one does not know German art if one has not seen Munich.’ It was here that the climax of his quarrel with the artists took place in I937.61

  On 18 July that year, Hitler opened the House of German Art in Munich, nearly 900 paintings and pieces of sculpture by such Nazi favourites as Arno Breker, Josef Thorak and Adolf Ziegler. There were portraits of Hitler as well as Hermann Hoyer’s In the Beginning Was the Word, a nostalgic view of the Führer consulting his ‘colleagues’ during the early days of the Nazi Party.62 One critic, mindful that speculative criticism was now outlawed, and only reporting allowed, disguised his criticism in reportage: ‘Every single painting on display projected either soulful elevation or challenging heroism … the impression of an intact life from which the stresses and problems of modern existence were entirely absent – and there was one glaringly obvious omission – not a single canvas depicted urban and industrial life.’63

  On the day that the exhibition opened, Hitler delivered a ninety-minute speech, a measure of the importance he attached to the occasion. During the course of his remarks he reassured Germany that ‘cultural collapse’ had been arrested and the
vigorous classical-Teutonic tradition revived. He repeated many of his by now well known views on modern art, which he depicted this time as ‘slime and ordure’ heaped on Germany. But he had more to offer than usual. Art was very different from fashion, he insisted: ‘Every year something new. One day Impressionism, then Futurism, Cubism, and maybe even Dadaism.’ No, he insisted, art ‘is not founded on time, but only on peoples. It is therefore imperative that the artist erect a monument not to a time but to his people.’64 Race – the blood – was all, Hitler said, and art must respect that. Germany, he insisted, ‘demands … an art that reflects our growing racial unification and, thus, the portrayal of a well-rounded, total character.’ What did it mean to be German? It meant, he said, ‘to be clear.’ Other races might have other aesthetic longings, but ‘this deep, inner yearning for a German art that expresses this law of clarity has always been alive in our people.’ Art is for the people, and the artists must present what the people see – ‘not blue meallows, green skies, sulphur-yellow clouds, and so on.’ There can be no place for ‘pitiful unfortunates, who obviously suffer from some eye disease.’65 Warming to his theme, he promised to wage ‘an unrelenting war of purification against the last elements of putrefaction in our culture,’ so that ‘all these cliques of chatterers, dilettantes and art forgers will be eliminated.’66

  Of course, art criticism was not the only form of criticism outlawed in Germany; speeches by the Führer were apt to get an easy ride, too. This time, however, there was criticism of a sort, albeit in a heavily disguised way. For the very next day, 19 July, in the Municipal Archaeological Institute, across town in Munich, the exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) opened.67 This was a quite different show, almost an antishow. It displayed works by 112 German and non-German artists. There were twenty-seven Noldes, eight Dixes, thirteen Heckels, sixty-one Schmidt-Rottluffs, seventeen Klees, and thirty-two Kirchners, plus works by Gauguin, Picasso, and others. The paintings and sculptures had been plundered from museums all over Germany.68 This exhibition surely ranks as the most infamous ever held. It not only broke new ground in its theme – freely vilifying some of the greatest painters of the century – but it also set new standards in the display of art. Even the Führer himself was taken aback by the way in which some of the exhibits were presented. Paintings and sculptures were juxtaposed at random making them appear bizarre and strange. Sarcastic labels, which ran around, over, and under the pictures, were designed to provoke ridicule. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Peasants at Midday, for example, was labelled, ‘German Peasants as Seen by the Yids.’ Max Ernst’s The Creation of Eve; or, The Fair Gardener was labelled, ‘An Insult to German Womanhood.’ Ernst Barlach’s statue The Reunion, which showed the recognition of Christ by Saint Thomas, was labelled, ‘Two Monkeys in Nightshirts.’69

  If Hitler and Ziegler thought they had killed off modern art, they were mistaken. Over the four months that Entartete Kunst remained in Munich, more than two million people visited the Archaeological Institute, far more than the thin crowds that attended the House of German Art.70 This was small consolation for the artists, many of whom found the show heartbreaking. Emil Nolde wrote yet again to Goebbels, more than a trace of desperation in his demand that ‘the defamation against me cease.’ Max Beckmann was more realistic, and on the day the show opened, he took himself off into exile. Lyonel Feininger, born in New York of German parents but living in Europe since 1887, fell back on his American passport and sailed for the New World.

  After it closed in Munich Entartete Kunst travelled to Berlin and a host of other German cities. Yet another retroactive law, the degenerate art law of May 1938, was passed, enabling the government to seize ‘degenerate art’ in museums without compensation. Some of the pictures were sold for derisory sums at a special auction held at the Fischer gallery in Lucerne; there were even some pictures that the Nazis decided were too offensive to exist – approximately 4,000 of these were simply burned in a huge bonfire, held on Kopernikerstrasse in Berlin in March 1938.71 The exhibition was a one-off, mercifully, but the House of German Art became an annual fixture, at least until 1944. Here the sort of art that Hitler liked – pastoral scenes, military portraits, mountainscapes similar to those he himself had painted when he was younger—hardly changed from year to year.72 Hitler’s assault on painters and sculptors has received more attention from historians, but his actions against musicians were no less severe. Here too there was an initial tussle between Goebbels and Rosenberg; the modernist repertoire was purged from early on in 1933, with ‘degenerate’ composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Ernst Toch, and conductors who included Otto Klemperer and Hermann Scherchen expelled. An Entartete Musik exhibition was held in Dusseldorf in May 1938. This was the brainchild of Adolf Ziegler, and a major feature was photographs of composers – Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Webern – who were considered to have a destructive influence on German music. Jazz was treated less harshly. Goebbels realised how popular it was with the masses and that its curtailment might lose the Nazis much sympathy, so it could be performed, provided it was German musicians who were playing. Opera, on the other hand, came under strict Nazi control, with the ‘safer’ works of Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, and Mozart dominating the repertoire as modernist works were discouraged or banned outright.73

  If Alfred Rosenberg, on behalf of the Nazis, was to create a new National Socialist religion, as he hoped, then such religions as existed had to be destroyed. More than anyone else, Protestant or Catholic, one man realised this and the dangers it posed: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The son of a psychiatrist, Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, the brother in a set of nonidentical twins, the sixth and seventh in a family of eight. His father was one of the leaders of the opposition to Freud. He was taken aback when his son felt called to the church but, as a liberal, raised no objection.

  Bonhoeffer had an academic bent and High Church leanings. Although he was a Protestant, he liked the confessional nature of Catholicism and was much influenced by Heidegger and existentialism, but in a negative sense. One of the most influential theologians of the century, he wrote his major books in the 1930s, during the Nazi era – The Communion of Saints (1930), Act and Being (1931), and The Cost of Discipleship (1937) – though Ethics (1940—4, never completed) and Letters and Papers from Prison (1942) – also became famous. As the second title hints, Bonhoeffer agreed with Heidegger that it was necessary to act in order to be, but he did not think that man was alone in this world or faced with the necessarily stark realities that Heidegger identified. It was clear to Bonhoeffer that community was the answer to the solitariness bemoaned by so many modern philosophers, and that the natural community was the church.74 Community life was therefore, in theory at least, far more rewarding than atomised society, but it did involve certain sacrifices if it was to work. These sacrifices, he said, were exactly the same as those demanded by Christ, on behalf of God: obedience, discipline, even suffering on occasion.75 And so the church, rather than God, became for Bonhoeffer the main focus of attention and thought. Operating within the church – as a body that had existed for centuries, since Jesus himself – teaches us how to behave; and this is where ethics fitted in. This community, of saints and others, teaches us how to think, how to advance theology: in this context we pray, a religious existential act by means of which we hope to become more like Christ.76

  It was no accident that Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on community, obedience, and discipline should become central theological issues at a time when the Nazis were coming to power, and stressing just these qualities. Bonhoeffer saw immediately the dangers that the Nazis posed, not just to society at large but specifically so far as the church was concerned. On 1 February 1933, the very day after Hitler took power, Bonhoeffer broadcast a contentious speech over Berlin radio. It was entitled ‘The Younger Generation’s Changed Views of the Concept of Führer,’ and it was so directly confrontational that it was cut off before he had a chance to finish. In it he argued that modern soci
ety was so complex that a cult of youth was exactly what was not needed, that there was a false generation gap being created by the Hitler Youth movement, and that parents and youth needed to work together, so that the energies of youth could be tempered by the experience of age. He was in effect arguing that the Nazis had whipped up the fervour of the youth because mature adults could see through the bombastic and empty claims of Hitler and the other leaders.77 This speech reflected Bonhoeffer’s beliefs and attitude but, as Mary Bosanquet, his biographer, makes clear, it also highlighted his courage. From then on, he was one of those who repeatedly attacked efforts by the state to take over the church, and the functions of the church. The church, he said, was founded on confession, man’s relation with God, not with the state. He showed further courage by opposing the ‘Aryan’ clause when it was introduced the following month, and arguing that it was a Christian duty to care for the Jews. This made him so unpopular with the authorities that in summer 1933 he accepted an invitation to become a pastor of a German parish in London. He stayed until April 1935, when he returned to take charge of a seminary at Finkelwalde. While there he published The Cost of Discipleship (1937), his first book to attract widespread attention.78 One of its themes was a comparison of spiritual community and psychological manipulation. In other words, he was contrasting the ideas of the church and Rosenberg’s notions in the Mythus and, by extension, Hitler’s techniques in eliciting support. Finkelwalde was closed by Himmler in that same year, the seminarians sequestered, and later in the war sent to the front, where twenty-one died. Bonhoeffer was left untouched but not allowed to teach or publish. In the summer of 1939 he was invited to America by the theologian Reinhald Niebuhr, but no sooner had he arrived in New York, in June, than he realised his mistake and returned to Germany, taking one of the last ships before war broke out.79