Paul Schultze-Naumburg: Difference between revisions

'''Paul Schultze-Naumburg''' (10 June 1869 – 19 May 1949) was a German traditionalist architect, painter, publicist and politicianauthor. HeA leading critic of [[modern architecture]], he joined the [[NSDAPNazi Party]] in 1930 (aged 61) and wasbecame an important advocate of [[Nazi architecture]] and a leading critic of [[modern architecture]].

Schultze-Naumburg was born in Almrich (now part of [[Naumburg (Saale)|Naumburg]]) in the current federal state of [[Saxony-Anhalt]], and, by 1900, was a well-known painter and architect, first emerging as a more-conservative member of the group of artists who established the [[Jugendstil]] and the Arts and Crafts workshops in Munich. His series of books the ''Kulturarbeiten'' ("Works of Culture"), nine volumes published 1900–1917, were extremely popular and established him as aan majorimportant tastemaker for the German middle class. By the First World War, he had become a majorstrong proponent of traditional architecture, an originator of the "Circa 1800" movement, and an important voice in both the [[Deutscher Werkbund]], and the nationalist German architecture and landscape preservation movement. A well-known example of his architecture from thisthat time is the [[Cecilienhof]] Palace in Potsdam, built byin 1914–1917, on the orderorders of [[Wilhelm II]], for his son, crown prince [[Wilhelm, German Crown Prince|Wilhelm]] in 1914–1917.

On 5 January 1922, Paul Schultze-Naumburg married in Saaleck Margarete Karolina Berta Dörr (1896–1960). They were childless and divorced nastilyunpleasantly on 7 February 1934. A couple of weeks later, Margarete married the Reich Minister of the Interior [[Wilhelm Frick]].<ref>[http://www.saaleck-werkstaetten.de/archiv/personen/familie_schultze-naumburg.html "Familie Paul Schultze-Naumburg“]</ref>

In response to theGermany's defeat ofin the [[First World War]], and of his own traditionalist marginalization in the interwar "progressive" architectural discourse, Schultze-Naumburg's articles and books began to take on a far harshermore and less progressiverobust character, condemning modern art and architecture in racial terms, thereby providing muchsome of the basis for [[Adolf Hitler]]'s theories, in which [[classical Greece]] and the [[Middle Ages]] were the true sources of [[Aryan]] art.<ref>Adam, pp. 29–32</ref> Schultze-Naumburg wrote such books such as ''Die Kunst der Deutschen. Ihr Wesen und ihre Werke'' ("The Art of the Germans. Its Nature and Its Works") and ''Kunst und Rasse'' ("Art and Race"), the latter published in 1928, in which he argued that only "racially pure" artists could produce a healthy art which upheld timeless [[Platonic idealism|ideals]] of [[classical beauty]], while racially "mixed" modern artists showed their inferiority and corruption by producing distorted artwork. As evidence of thisthat, he reproduced examples of modern art next to photographs of people with deformities and diseases, graphically reinforcing the idea of [[modernism]] as a sickness.<ref>Grosshans, p. 9</ref>

Along with [[Alexander von Senger]], [[Eugen Honig]], [[Konrad Nonn]], and [[German Bestelmeyer]], Schultze-Naumburg was a member of a [[Nazi Party|National Socialist]] para-governmental art propaganda unit called the Kampfbund deutscher Architekten und Ingenieure (KDAI) (Combat Association of German Architects and Engineers).<ref>{{cite book |last=Diefendorf |first=Jeffry M. |title=In the Wake of War : The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II |year=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press Inc. |location=New York |isbn=0-19-507219-7 |page=51 }}</ref>

In September 1944, heSchultze-Naumburg was named in the [[Gottbegnadeten list]] as one of the first rank of artists and writers important to Nazi culture in the [[Gottbegnadeten list]].

Schultze-Naumburg died in [[Jena]] in 1949. His ashes were placed in the [[Historical Cemetery, Weimar|Weimar Historical Cemetery]], in a mausoleum designed by him in 1909 for the poet [[Ernst von Wildenbruch]] in [[Historical Cemetery, Weimar|Weimar Historical Cemetery]].

* [[EsterList Claessonof German artists]]

*Adam, Peter. ''Art of the Third Reich'' (1992). New York: [[Harry N. Abrams, Inc.]]. {{ISBN|0-8109-1912-5}}

[[Category:20th-century German architects]]

[[Category:AcademicsAcademic staff of Bauhaus University, Weimar]]