M HKA Ensembles

Poster

Collection: Collection MHKA, Antwerp.

The exhibition entitled Entartete Musik was organised in Düsseldorf in 1938 by Hans Severus Ziegler, a leading cultural manager under the Nazis. This Nazi propaganda poster is a crude exaggeration of the original poster for the opera Jonny spielt auf that was popular in the 1920s, the times of the 'golden era' in the Weimar Republic. The exhibition was a part of a larger and more well-known Nazi campaign against 'degenerate art' ('entartete Kunst'). Similar to the policy in fine arts, the Nazi government attempted to discredit and ban any kind of music that was believed to be harmful for German society. It considered several types of music to be degenerate, basing its judgement on racial prejudice (such as music by Jewish- and African-origin composers), or related to political confrontation (Marxist or Bolsheviks composers) and modernist music, which was considered to be inferior to German classical music of the past and offended the Nazi sense of civilisation and evolution. Composers whose music was perceived as degenerate were disparaged, ostracised and politically persecuted.