Did you know that Adolf Hitler in his early years, earned a living by using his artistic skills to produce paintings that were sold to the public or used for postcards?
Hitler studied fine arts, music, opera, painting, sculpture and architecture. While living in Vienna under conditions of poverty, he read voraciously and spent whatever meager income he had to attend lectures, concerts, opera, and the theater. Even when he barely had enough money to survive he refused to compromise and always purchased the best paints, brushes, paper, and canvas.
As a remarkably prolific artist, he is estimated to have created between 2000 and 3000 drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings. His artistic talent revealed itself at an early age and continued painting and drawing throughout his life. Even while behind the front lines in World War 1, he continued to paint in his spare time and contributed instructional drawings and cartoons to the military newspaper.
His art continued throughout his leadership of Germany and included detailed building plans, furniture design, city planning, and monuments. Hitler considered the lack of architectural standards to be a serious problem. The words below are his thoughts on city character:
“In the 19th Century our cities began to lose the character of cultural centers and became simply human settlements.
When Munich was a city of 60,000, it wanted to be one of the major German centers of culture. Today nearly every industrial city claims this honor, usually without being able to show any significant accomplishments of its own. They are nothing more than collections of houses and apartment buildings.
How can such an insignificant place have any appeal? No one will have particular loyalty to a city that lacks any individuality at all, that avoids anything resembling art.
Even the big cities are becoming poorer in real works of art even as they increase in population.
The modern era has done nothing to increase the cultural level of our big cities. All the glory and treasures of our cities are the inheritance of the past.”
3 comments:
The most remarkable book I've read lately is the Power of Aesthetics which posits that Hitler's art was what drove him far more than most historians consider, and that Speer was only making real what Hitler himself had set forth. In fact, many of the sketches shown in your post are used in the book as examples.
Thanks Keir, for your comment!
Obliged to have a German historian comment on this post!
Will definitely look for "Power of Aesthetics".
And Keir! What fantastic blogs you maintain! Took me some time to navigate!
Wow!
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