Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. . - Arts of Darkness - book review

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2003 by Timothy Brittain-Catlin

By Frederic Spotts. London: Hutchinson. 2002. [pounds sterling]25

The idea that aesthetic policy was an integral part of National Socialism has been established at least since Peter Cohen's unforgettable documentary 'The Architecture of Doom' of 1989, but Frederic Spotts here presents something more specific: that Hitler himself was obsessed about the arts beyond any other concern as dictator, and that while stealing paintings and bullying musicians was left to cronies and go-betweens, he himself had a credible grasp of architecture and an astonishing, almost freakish, memory for its details. He was himself, says Spotts, the designer of much of what was put up in his name during the Third Reich, and Speer, with his office of 1000 staff, was merely an efficient and self-glorifying bureaucrat.

Hitler had informed but determined views on the visual arts and he intended to impose them on the rest of the world. He disliked the 'Nazi' art displayed in Troost's Munich gallery--except for the homoerotic statuary--and he was, apparently, an early twentieth--century admirer of Angelica Kauffmann. He did not rule out Modernism: he had Bonatz design a Modernist railway station for Munich. Everything had to be 'the largest in the world'. According to the German media, Hitler's new autobahns, presented here as an aesthetic, social, project, were 'the greatest single masterpiece of all times and places', 'the sixth wonder of the world', 'greater than the Great Wall of China', 'more impressive than the pyramids', more imposing than the Acropolis', and 'more splendid than the cathedrals of earlier times'. Some of Hitler's early service stations were apparently designed by Mies van der Rohe. The new roads did not have, according to Spotts, any military role, and indeed their high visibility made them an easy targ et.

If Spotts' book has a facetious character to it--and, for some reason, he is at his most facetious when referring to architecture--it is certainly matched by the altogether grotesque nature of the story being told.