How Exhibitions Propagated Images of the Enemy

ORF, January 19, 2023

German original: https://science.orf.at/stories/3217207/

Propaganda played an essential role in National Socialism. Exhibitions were particularly "successful" in stirring up hatred, especially against Jews. Historian Rosemarie Burgstaller explores these visitor magnets in a guest article.

Under National Socialism, a large number of defamatory exhibitions took place, the aim of which was to slander world views, states and populations, right down to groups and individuals, and to declare them enemies. The zeal that was exercised until the downfall of the Nazi regime in order to stir up hatred and resentment among the population against the Jewish minority was enormous. For a long time, exhibitions were an underestimated medium for the dissemination of anti-Semitic and racist propaganda under National Socialism. Images of the enemy were not only disseminated in relevant events, such as the hate exhibition "The Eternal Jew.”

In many cases, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist sections and special shows were attached to popular product fairs and performance shows. Discrimination and slander were subliminally incorporated into exhibition displays through codes or with the help of details and allusions, for example in the context of craft shows. The focus was on two enemy image complexes: The Jewish-coded political-ideological opponents of communism and the Soviet regime, and hatred of Jews. Anti-Semitism also formed the basic constant of almost all other enemy images transported in these exhibitions, such as the Weimar Republic, liberalism and democracy, or the attacks on freethinkers, Freemasons and Slavic populations.

Images of the enemy were conveyed in business-promoting areas as well as in the area of charitable events. For example, through Nazi-infiltrated aid organizations, such as Brothers in Need and the Geneva-based International Pro Deo Commission, anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic enemy image exhibitions of the Nazi regime were disseminated not only in the German Reich but throughout Europe, for example in Great Britain, Poland, and France, with the support of collaborating local institutions.

In 1936, propaganda reached new dimensions

At the 1936 Nuremberg Party Congress of the NSDAP, the anti-Soviet agitation of the Nazi regime had reached a new dimension. The second Four-Year Plan announced here was dominated by economic autarky and accelerated military rearmament. In July of that year, the Spanish Civil War had begun. During this phase, the regime engaged in extensive alliance propaganda against the Soviet Union at exhibitions and trade fairs. In particular, the large-scale enemy image exhibitions that began in the fall of 1936 were intended to demonstrate unity.

Italy and Hungary were involved in the "Great Anti-Bolshevik Show," which opened in the library building of the Deutsches Museum in Munich in November 1936, with their own special shows. This exhibition was presented in seven major cities of the German Reich until 1938 and, according to the organizers, attracted more than 800,000 visitors. Parallel to this one, numerous other anti-Semitic and war-preparing traveling exhibitions such as "A Glimpse of the Soviet Paradise" and "World Plague Bolshevism" were on the road in rural areas. The traveling show "World Enemy No. 1: Bolshevism," built into truck trailers, toured Germany for a year and a half and was reportedly visited by more than 1.4 million onlookers at some 60 locations.

"The Eternal Jew" - also in Vienna

In the following year, 1937, the hate exhibition "The Eternal Jew" opened at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. From August 1938, the anti-Semitic machination was also shown in Vienna, then in other cities. "The Eternal Jew" has inscribed itself in the historical memory of the federal capital. For example, the striking advertising poster served as a temporal marker for the year 1938 in the Austrian feature film "Der Bockerer."

This exhibition was advertised in a particularly lurid manner. Its structure, its staging impetus and the intensive advertising can be used to illustrate how strongly voyeurism and curiosity were relied upon to attract the public.

The war meant the even closer linking of propaganda and violence. There are numerous surviving examples of exhibitions of enemy images being held in the run-up to anti-Semitic measures and deportations. These include the traveling exhibition "Le Juif et la France" in the occupied cities of Paris, Bordeaux and Nancy in 1941/42 and the deportations of the Jewish population of Hungary in 1944.

Crowd pullers under National Socialism

According to surviving sources, hate exhibitions were among the crowd pullers under National Socialism. Even the Social Democratic exile newspaper Der sozialistische Kampf, referring to Austria, stated in 1939: "The only cultural events where mass participation has really been achieved so far are the exhibitions: 'The Eternal Jew,' the 'Anti-Comintern Exhibition,' and 'Degenerate Art.'" Several hundred thousand visitors were probably not uncommon. Official protests by democratic governments hardly ever took place. And if they did, it was mostly about content-related demarcation, but never about a general criticism of anti-Semitic discrimination.

Outside Germany, on the other hand, counter-exhibitions were organized by expellees or by communist organizations. These actors did not go unnoticed by the National Socialists. Even small-scale exhibitions that provided education against the crimes of National Socialism were increasingly tried by the Nazi regime at a high political level with aggression that seemed disproportionate.

The Austrian Irene Harand, who in 1935 published "Sein Kampf. Antwort an Hitler" (His Struggle. Answer to Hitler), initiated a letter-sealing stamp campaign with portraits of important Jewish personalities in response to the exhibition "Der ewige Jude" (The Eternal Jew) in Munich in 1937. This campaign was one of the few acts of resistance against a National Socialist exhibition of enemy images.

About the author

Rosemarie Burgstaller is a historian and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Her book "Staging Hate. Enemy Image Exhibitions in National Socialism" was published by Campus Verlag in 2022.