The Woman Who Heard Color (28 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

Sculpted eagles clutching swastikas perched atop tall pylons along Prinzregentenstrasse. Hundreds of poles displaying bright Nazi flags, as shrill as the color of blood, lined the route from the railroad station to the center of Munich. A parade of more than seven thousand—soldiers in military uniform, performers in colorful costumes, garishly decorated animals, and motorcars—wound through the streets, moving with a great sense of celebration to the temple of German art.

Hanna was given a place of honor on a large dais, along with dignitaries and several other women, mostly widows of men whom the Führer had admired. Men dressed as Renaissance artists and Nordic gods marched triumphantly, intermingled with Viking ships and scale models of Hitler’s architectural wonders, in this bizarre pageant to celebrate the artistic achievements of Germany. If Hanna had been one of the
volk
lining the street to view this spectacle, rather than an honored guest, she might have laughed. But as she looked down toward the cheering crowd she could do nothing but tremble with fear.

The highlight of the Day of German Art was the opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst with the
Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung
, the Great German Art Exhibition.

From those still bold enough to make light of Hitler’s grand accomplishments, Hanna had heard the building described as the Palazzo Kitschi, as well as the Munich Air Terminal. She had even heard a group of young people on the street referring to it as the
Bratwürstelgalerie
because the pillars that ran along the front of the building looked like sausages hanging from a butcher’s shop. It was a monstrous, ugly building, constructed of sandstone and wasted, sacrificial marble, designed by one of Hitler’s favorite architects, Paul Ludwig Troost, who had since passed on. His widow, Gertrude, was one of those being honored that day.

The Führer stood before his new temple, microphones set in place, as the parade concluded. Hanna, as a guest, was assigned a position so close she could see the twitch in his cheek as he prepared to address the crowd. He looked over the mass, his eyes moving slowly, though they appeared glazed—he was not seeing individuals, merely a throng of entranced followers.

He began his speech, praising the art of Germany.

“The artist does not create for the artist, but for the people,” he declared, beaming with pride. He went on speaking of the valuable enrichment of Germany’s cultural life. And then, abruptly, his tone and even his face shifted, and words like
purification
and
extermination
flew frantically and fervently toward the adoring crowd. “With the opening of this exhibition has come the end of artistic lunacy and with it the artistic pollution of our people,” he shouted. From where Hanna stood she could see the spittle spraying from his mouth.

As Hitler had told her just weeks earlier, in conjunction with the grand opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, another exhibition would take place. The following day the exhibition of
Entartete Kunst
, Degenerate Art, would open, and Hanna knew that today Hitler was just warming up the crowd for what was to follow.

After the speech, Hanna and the other guests were escorted into the building. They waited, standing together in the vast entrance, an enormous hall lined with red flags, potted laurel trees, and busts and paintings of the Führer. No one spoke, as if they were in a grand cathedral waiting for the services to begin on a sacred holiday.

After some time, Hitler appeared, dressed in a newly pressed uniform. Hanna had noticed he was dripping with sweat by the time the parade and speech finished, and he had obviously kept them all waiting while he freshened himself.

He loved a grand entry, Hanna observed, and she guessed that he enjoyed keeping his audience waiting, arriving late. He allowed a moment of silence to fill the room, giving his mere presence an air of importance, as if the words that were about to come out of his mouth were the most important ever uttered. And Hanna knew there would be more words.

Frau Troost, the architect’s widow, who had spoken to Hanna earlier as they watched the parade, expressing a truly sincere regret that her husband had not lived to see this day, glanced over at Hanna as if to say,
How fortunate we are to be here in this man’s presence
. Hanna could not help but think of her own husband.

She lowered her eyes, wishing not to reveal her true feelings as Hitler began to speak—another lengthy diatribe, enhanced repetition of what he’d said to the general mass gathered outside. Hanna shifted from one foot to the other on the hard stone floor, her legs weary from standing so long, wishing that she, too, had had time to refresh herself.

The guests began their personal tour of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. A portrait of Hitler, standing proud in his military uniform, greeted the observers who moved silently into the first exhibition hall. The marble floors sparkled. Large skylights brought abundant light in to illuminate the paintings and sculptures.

The art was nicely spaced, giving viewers an opportunity to contemplate and study each piece. Hanna stood before one of the many large nude male sculptures that dominated the exhibition. When she heard one of the admirers whisper, “Such lovely classical lines, surely inspired by the Greeks,” Hanna prayed that she would not burst into nervous laughter. She thought of Helene’s describing Hitler’s coliseum built for the Olympics, and her comments about how the man must believe that bigger is better. There was nothing at all elegant or classical about this sculpture. It was simply large.

Hanna took a deep breath, knowing it was more terror than humor that might drive her to hysterics. She continued on, moving along with the crowd.

Paintings of German mothers with perfect blond children hung beside portraits of healthy Aryan families. Muscular, square-jawed soldiers appeared alongside mythical heroes. Idealized pictures of farm laborers greeted the visitors. And there, among the art, Hanna found paintings that she herself had selected for the Führer.

Hitler strutted about the gallery. Cameras flashed. And Hanna was there, her photo taken, recorded for all. Yes, she was there, standing alongside the chosen, smiling as if she approved, smiling to keep from crying.

 

 

T
he next day the
Ausstellung Entartete Kunst
, the Exhibition of Degenerate Art, opened for a special group of supporters and officials to be followed by admission for the general public. The art was housed in a run-down building in the Hofgarten, a short distance from the new art museum. The Führer did not appear. Hanna surmised that the theatrics and drama of the previous day had drained his energy completely.

The opening speech was delivered by Adolf Ziegler, president of the Chamber of Art. In words reminiscent of those Hitler had spoken just the day before, Herr Ziegler described this art as the monstrous offspring of insanity, imprudence, ineptitude, and sheer degeneracy.

Entry to the exhibition was through a dark, narrow stairway. As Hanna stepped onto the landing in the upper level where the exhibition began, she was struck by the wood carving of Christ on the cross that hung in the entrance. The figure was sharply and unnaturally angled, stark and thin, the carved nails hammered through feet and hands, the ribs in the chest protruding, the distorted head crowned with thorns tilted toward the viewer. Terribly disturbing, surely as the artist Ludwig Gies had intended. But here, made even more so by the fact that it hung to be ridiculed, with the caption:
This horror hung as a war memorial in the Cathedral of Lübeck.
Hanna knew, particularly after seeing the exhibition the day before, that Hitler wished to portray war and battle as heroic, not disturbing.

The lighting in each small, narrow room was poor, the display space so cramped it was impossible to properly view the art. Hanna thought of the vast, well-lit rooms of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. Here one piece, one artist, was forced upon another, and words of insult and hate, vile descriptions, were scrawled on walls between the paintings.

Insolent mockery of the Divine under Centrist rule
, on the wall beside Emil Nolde’s
Leben Christ
, Life of Christ, in Room 1.

Revelation of the Jewish racial soul
, in Room 2, which contained only works by Jewish artists, Marc Chagall, one of Hanna’s favorite, among them.

Insult to German womanhood
, alongside nudes by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Mueller in Room 3.

The ideal cretin and whore
, scrawled in black on another wall.

A red sticker had been placed below many of the paintings.
Bezahlt von den Steuergroschen des arbeitenden deutschen Volkes
, paid for by the taxes of the German working people. Hitler was determined to show how the Republic had misused their money on the degenerate art that did nothing but defile the German people. The prices that the liberal Republic had paid for the art were often noted. It didn’t take a fool to realize that these were prices that had been paid during a time of extreme inflation, when a loaf of bread could be obtained for no less than a dozen buckets of near-worthless marks, when people were burning money to warm themselves in the cold Munich winters.

Hanna lingered before a cluster of paintings, trying to imagine each hanging individually with room to take in the colors and forms without the distraction of half a dozen others forcing their way into her line of vision.

A watercolor by Paul Klee,
Der Geist des Don X
, The Spirit of Don X, was mislabeled—attributed to Kandinsky.

Two of the paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, who was described as “teacher of the Communist Bauhaus,” were hung vertically when Hanna knew they were meant to hang horizontally. The pieces were totally abstract, with geometric lines and shapes easily identifying them as those from Kandinsky’s Bauhaus period. But with the way they were hung, the balance and composition was upset, causing Hanna great distress. What an insult to the artist.

As Hanna walked through the narrow halls, the colors pushed and shoved in every direction, a dissonance of sounds blasting in her ears. It was a harsh melding of sound and color. Too much all at once. And this was indeed the intention—to create a claustrophobic confusion, an assault on the senses, which for Hanna came not only in what she saw, but also in what she heard. For a moment she sensed that she might faint or empty her stomach on the finely polished shoes of the president of the Chamber of Art. But she held her head high and continued through the gallery, silently bidding farewell to Chagall, Mondrian, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee, Marc, Dix, Beckmann, and so many more.

Leaving the exhibition, knowing she could not tolerate the confinement of the streetcar after what she had just experienced, Hanna walked. Her head throbbed, a pounding in her left temple as she attempted to sort out what she had seen over the past two days at the two very different exhibitions.

There were several smaller pieces in the German House of Art that she rather liked; a small sculpture by Max Esser of wild ducks, a painting of a farm that reminded her of the Allgäu and her own family farm. But overall she found the larger pieces, particularly the sculptures, lacking in originality and creativity.

In the Degenerate Art Exhibition, there were pieces she thought were poorly done. There were others that caused her great discomfort, among them drawings by Otto Dix depicting sexual mutilation and murder that some critics believed were allegory and social or political statements. She wondered if he had witnessed such horrors during the war and felt a need to express this through his art.

Children were not allowed to attend the exhibition of the degenerate art because it was considered too disturbing and obscene. Some pieces might require a thoughtful discussion or a decision to bypass such works, but should that not be the parents’ choice? Hanna was offended and saddened that the state itself had become the parent, dictating what a child was to see, to hear, to believe.

She thought of her own children in America. Willy loved colors and would have been delighted with some of the
entartete kunst
, particularly the Kandinskys and Klees. Isabella, on the other hand, could be rather moody about her art, and the thought made Hanna smile. Even at eight she might like a particular painting one day and choose something completely different the next. She would always express why she did or did not like them. Hanna knew her daughter would love the paintings by Franz Marc with cats and horses and birds.

Bicyclers sped by on the street, pedestrians walked briskly as Hanna continued on. She passed a young family with two children, a girl about four and a boy of seven or eight.

“Can we go for ice cream?” the boy asked, tugging at his mother’s hand.

Moments like this, seeing other families, intensified Hanna’s loneliness, her anger. How unfair that she could not take her own children for ice cream.

It was a warm afternoon and the walk was much more tiring than she had anticipated, particularly when she forced herself to take the longer route to avoid going by the Feldherrnhalle where Hitler had installed a memorial to honor his followers who had died at the hands of the Bavarian police the night of his attempted Putsch. Two SS guards in black uniforms were stationed there at all times and, out of respect, passersby were required to raise their arms in a salute.

Hanna’s head continued to throb and perspiration dripped from her forehead. She stopped and took a handkerchief from her handbag, gazing around as she removed her hat and wiped her brow. Decorations for the German Day of Art still lined the streets, which were busy with late-afternoon traffic.

What would Moses think of all this?
she wondered. For the past several days in particular she had felt the presence of her husband’s spirit. She was grateful that he was not here to see this, but at the same time wishful that he was so they might talk. How sad Moses would be to see how the Reich Chamber of Art had chosen to display the art, separating it into two specific categories—approved, not approved.