| Part of a series on |
| Censorship by country |
|---|
 |
| Countries |
| See also |
Censorship in Nazi Germany was extreme and strictly enforced by the governing Nazi Party, but specifically by Joseph Goebbels and his Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Similarly to many other police states both before and since, censorship within Nazi Germany included both domination and propaganda weaponization by the State of all forms of mass communication, including newspaper, music, literature, radio, and film.[1] The Ministry of Propaganda also produced and disseminated their own literature over the mass media which was solely devoted to furthering Nazi ideology and the Hitler Myth.
With disturbingly close similarities to propaganda in the Soviet Union, crudely drawn caricatures intended to dehumanize and inflame hatred towards Jews and the single party state's both real and imagined political opponents lay at the core of the Ministry's output, especially in 1940 films such as Jud Süß and The Eternal Jew. Also, similarly to Stalinism, the Ministry also promoted a secular messianic cult of personality surrounding Adolf Hitler with early films such as Triumph of the Will of the 1934 rally and The Victory of Faith made in 1933, and which survives now only because a single copy was recently rediscovered in the UK. This is because The Victory of Faith was later banned by the Ministry owing to the prominent role played in the film by Ernst Roehm, who was later shot without trial during the 1934 political purge known as the Night of the Long Knives.
The ministry also tightly controlled news media and whatever information was made available to their citizens. All innovation in art starting with Impressionism, especially Cubism and Expressionism, were ruled degenerate art and banned by the Ministry. All works by composers of popular or Classical music with Jewish ancestry like Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Schoenberg were banned as degenerate music.
In a particularly egregious example, the Ministry banned and blacklisted legendary avante garde stage director Max Reinhardt, whom Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy have dubbed "one of the most picturesque actor-directors of modern times". Reinhardt, whose Max Reinhardt Seminar acting school was later refounded in post-World War II Vienna, eventually fled to the United States as a refugee from the imminent Nazi takeover of Austria. His arrival in America had followed a long and distinguished career, "inspired by the example of social participation in the ancient Greek and Medieval theatres", of seeking "to bridge the separation between actors and audiences".[2]
When Reinhardt's brief Hollywood career resulted in his acclaimed 1935 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the film was banned from German theatres by the Ministry, as well. This was due not only to Joseph Goebbels' belief that Reinhardt's filmmaking style, which drew heavily upon the pre-1933 tradition of German expressionist cinema, was degenerate art, but even more so due to the Jewish ancestry of Reinhardt, Classical music composer Felix Mendelsohn, and soundtrack arranger Erich Wolfgang Korngold.[3]
- ^ "Control and opposition in Nazi Germany". BBC Bitesize.
- ^ Edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (1970), Actors on Acting: The Theories, Techniques, and Practices of the World's Great Actors, Told in Their Own Words, Crown Publishers. Page 294.
- ^ "Max Reinhardt - music, theatre, circus". Forbidden Music. 18 August 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search