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Learning to See in Hitler’s Munich

(Pictures: geschkult.fu-berlin.de; v-like-vintage.net; bg picture: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H02648: München, Goebbels im Haus der Deutschen Kunst)

I don’t know whether German writer Hermann Lenz’ novel Neue Zeit (originally published in 1975) is popular among art historians. It should be. Because it does not only convey what it meant to study art history in Hitler’s Munich in 1937ff, but does show the central personality Eugen Rapp, Lenz’ alter ego, learning (how) to see. And there are complicated intertwinings between learning (how) to see art, and learning (how) to see the political, social and cultural context wherein the studying of art does happen, and wherein Eugen Rapp has to find his way. And in the end it is about finding an ethical and human stance, in spite of (almost) everything, a stance that is based on and cannot be thought without: acutest observation. Which also means: that ethics go along, or might and should go along with acutest observation, might it lead to actual and active opposition or, as in Lenz’ case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Lenz): to inner opposition and to the self-given task of preserving a memory. Of what it meant to learn to see (or not to see).

Eugen Rapp is meant to prepare an essay on renderings of Apollo by Dürer, but he is not doing this with actual inner participation. The connoisseurial problem (the hatchings, the dating) does not concern him – what interests him right now is the getting to know more about a female student (his future wife), who is studying with him (but sitting right now somewhere behind him, so that, while he is supposed to read Flechsig’s monograph on Dürer, he is becoming an eavesdropper).
The person we are introduced to, from the beginning, is keen to read the signs.
Coming from Heidelberg where his Professor got suspended, he has been accepted by Professor Hans Jantzen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Jantzen ; http://kg.ikb.kit.edu/747.php) – on the tz of his signature you might rip your hand bloody –, a pupil of Adolph Goldschmidt. But who can be trusted? His Professor?
He is not sure about the stance of his Professor (and neither was Post-war Germany, because Jantzen got suspended shortly, but reinstated in 1945 as a Professor). And one does warn him that his girlfriend to be is, by Nazi definition, half-Jewish.

This is all autobiographical, and, no doubt also that this, so far, is nothing but the truth. But of course one might ask now, if this is indeed ›teaching of history by means of literature‹.
In other words: how much hindsight fallacy, how much knowledge in retrospect might be in there (and some critics went as far as to blame Rapp/Lenz for a supposedly only alleged innocence, because, later in the novel, as a soldier, Rapp still appears to be and to remain, in that view, ›all too‹ innocent)?
The question is legitimate (while unfounded allegation is not): From what perspective is this novel being told? From someone knowing better, but only after the facts?
One could’t say that Rapp actually does know things. In 1937. And one might imagine him choosing lectures and seminaries from the actual choice (see here: http://kg.ikb.kit.edu/821.php). He is not knowing, but still learning, tumbling also, and realizing that things, that already are complicated, will get more complicated any time soon (and with some pride he does realize that his girlfriend to be is indeed half-Jewish: which means that with some pride he does acknowledge things getting more complicated, because, probably, he does interpret this as a confirmation of his own, at least his envisioned own stance).
And by what measure he might appear innocent? By not getting his hands more dirty than he is forced to, later, as a soldier? One might, if reproaching would be on one’s mind, also reproach his for not being more active in his resistance.

The novel does raise such questions that not necessarily are meant also to be answered by that very novel. And it is not about checking the novel for historical inaccuracies here, or for the perspective a novelist (who is also writing autobiography) has chosen. Because here, we would only like to recommend this very novel for anyone interested in what it meant, or what it might have meant to study art history (while trying to enter a life), and what it might have meant to learn to see in 1937, the year of the ›degenerate art‹ exhibition at Munich (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entartete_Kunst_%28Ausstellung%29), thus: in Hitler’s Munich.

Further reading: Jutta Held, Kunstgeschichte im ›Dritten Reich‹: Wilhelm Pinder und Hans Jantzen an der Münchner Universität, in: Kunst und Politik 5 (2003), Schwerpunkt: Kunstgeschichte an den Universitäten im Nationalsozialismus, p. 17–59;

Nikola Doll / Christian Fuhrmeister / Michael H. Sprenger (Ed.), Kunstgeschichte im Nationalsozialismus. Beiträge zur Geschichte einer Wissenschaft zwischen 1930 und 1950, Weimar 2005

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