Customer Reviews

The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany (Cultural Memory in the Present)

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Eric Michaud's book is an erudite marvel of cultural and intellectual history. Not only does it complement and improve on existing accounts of the role of art in Nazism (particularly the tradition stemming from George L. Mosse's work), it intelligently argues for a rethinking of art's importance in the Nazi project of a new Europe-wide order.

Michaud connects art to the Christian and voelkish aspects of Nazism, as well as to the Hitler-cult and the attempt at a total mobilization and domination of society. His discussion of individual artworks, in the context of both art history and Michaud's philosophical treatment of culture helps explain the political and political pervasiveness of Nazism and brings together a number of tropes and issues that, though seemingly disparate, can now be shown as central and well-connected. The analysis of racism is original and useful; so is the discussion of Nazism's fantasy of its relationship to time and its construction of its own eternity.

The review below is motivated and pointlessly unfair: Michaud's research is extremely wide-ranging and very well put together. This book will be debated by scholars for a long time and, being eminently readable, informative on every page, and well-rounded as an interpretation of the genealogy of modern European culture and the destructive power of nazism, it is worth reading several times.