Three Perspectives on Art as a Force in German History

Abstract

Some years ago the art historian Hans Belting published a short book, Die Deutschen und ihre Kunst, which recently came out in an English translation with a subtitle that indicates the author's thesis and hints at his approach: The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship. In a preface to the new edition, Belting argues that the visual arts have played a role in the history of that is at variance from that of other countries: they have always had a greater social impact in Germany (p. 1). This may be another way of saying that in more often and more insistently than elsewhere, works of art have been subjected to judgments driven by ideology or political calculation, whether by the state, segments of society, or art historians and critics. Obviously this has not invariably been the case ? abstract painters were no better off in Soviet Russia than in the Third Reich. But there are times when we can recognize a significant difference in attitudes. Nowhere in Europe before the First World War, to mention one example, was the debate over (usually apolitical) art as politicized as in Germany. Belting believes that such episodes formed part of a