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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. Crudely drawn caricatures intended to dehumanize the Party's political opponents and to inflame Antisemitism lay at the core of the Ministry's propaganda, especially in 1940 films such as Jud Süß and The Eternal Jew. 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 after a single copy recently discovered in the UK. It was later banned by the Ministry owing to the prominent role in the film of Ernst Roehm, who was later murdered in the political purge known as the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.
The ministry tightly controlled information available to their citizens. Almost all recent innovation in art, including Impressionism, Cubism, and Expressionism, were ruled degenerate art and banned by the Ministry. All works by composers of 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 eventually fled to the United States as a refugee from the imminent Nazi takeover of Austria. His arrival in America 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]
Reinhardt's brief Hollywood career resulted in his acclaimed 1935 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was banned by the Ministry, as well. This was due not only to Joseph Goebbels' belief that Reinhardt's filmmaking style, which drew heavily upon 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.