Pre WW2 attitudes in Germany.

I have often read that the German populace was rather libertiness in their social lives, lively night lifes, etc and that the National Socialist , at least in the public attitudes tended to be pious or pretended to be .! I found it interesting that they would find Art Nouveau a bit racy. I have spent my life in art , architecture and design and it is one of my favorite movements. That makes this article of strong interest to me..

Some years ago I was in Prague and spotted a beautiful Jugendstil building in green with gold details. The I noticed a small, about 1 meter high but on a pedestal, hyperbolic paraboloid cast in bronze with a beautiful patina. My first thought was McDonald's should copy it. I turned to look at the building and about 4' high "MacDonald's " in gold leaf on the glass. . The originality of the building was carefully preserved inside and out. I went in and right in the center was a statue of a nude woman, I guessed to be about 1900-1920 looking like it might have always been there. Around it were booths and tables, granite tops, mahogany wood, all carefully fitted around the original interior. I decided to have a malt and people watch. Lots of families in and out, no one paid any notice of the sculpture. If it had been in Auburn it woulds have been a scandal, boycotted, tweeted to death, politicians outraged, children scared for life....strange.. There it was ordinary and beautiful.
I am amazed it survived the Nazi's , it certainly would not have survived in Alabama. I am not exaggerating.

Pre-War Germany's Buried Art Nouveau Magazine

 

I know that Nordic and Germanic peoples do not share our prudishness re the human body. Their children from an early age are quite used to seeing parents and grandparents naked. I have never been to a public swimming pool in Germany with individual changing cubicles. My sister-in-law is half German and I had to show her how to change out of wet swimming gear while shielded with a towel. She thought it was hilarious but I wanted to avoid an ugly incident on a Scottish public beach crowded with families. It all depends on how you were reared. My prudishness did come to my aid when my son was a young teen and used to badger me. I would start taking my clothes off and he ran for the hills.

 

What I was curious about was that National Socialism proposed to be prudish, even saying Art Nouveau was decadent. It certainly is not Germanic as you said hhey and Scandinavians.....you could thrown in French and Italians as well as certainly open minded about such..

I always wondered about where the Nazis came up with that idea or could it have been just Hitler ?"

 

It's just as common a theme now as back then. Manufacture outrage, get in power, Don't fix the outrage because that erodes your voter base.
Say you can't fix it because you don't have enough power. Get voted more power. If politicians fixed problems they'd be out of a job.

Just look at Churchill. Won WW2 lost the next election.

 

I took a great course in College called 'Interwar Germany - 1919 - 1939". The emphasis was on the social and cultural changes that occurred in Germany once the Nazis took power.

For instance, Germany was much like the rest (i believe) of Europe, encouraging women to work, producing all sorts of crazy, grotesque looking art, etc. Once the Nazis took power, things took a reversal in direction. Women were no longer encouraged to work, but to become housewives and pop out as many German babies as they could and art returned to the Romanesque Theme and style - all very proper etc.

I would imagine that this also reflected on their 'night life' attitudes. Of course, dinner parties for the upper class and German Officers would have been the norm. It seems that while there were several brothels in Berlin in the 1920's, they were all shut down once the Nazis took power in 1933. Homosexuality seemed more acceptable post-WW1 as well, but was certainly not approved by the Nazi party, who I believe used it as part of their excuse to execute Ernst Rohm (head of the SA).

 

Indeed. IIRC, they had a slogan going around that said "Cheer Churchill, Vote Labor".

 

Hitler was using his racist beliefs in blaming the Jewish led cabaret style theatre as debauched. He hated American music especially jazz as it was negro in origin. I remember in the 60's that a lot of adults saw the pop culture as depraved and again of African origin. Look at the outrage when Elvis wiggled his hips.
Hitler wanted to go back (as he saw it) to a mythical Aryan lifestyle that was strong and pure and to accomplish this he had to demonize other races and blame them for the ills of the nation.

 

Yes, I think it was one of my top classes in college. Ironically both my favorite courses had nothing to do with my major. The professor would have era-music playing when we walked into class and projected images on the wall - of art or other sorts of things - and the focus of the course was cultural etc not political though we did get into a bit of what the Nazis were doing.

 

This thread is making me think back to my first foreign trip to attend a health benefits (Champus) course in the early 90's in Heidelberg, Germany. Me and the London receptionist decided to use the sauna facility in the hotel. We were unprepared to find our fellow male attendees with the full meat and veggies on display. Lead to much mirth and was slightly awkward at the conference the following morning hee hee.

 

Let it all hang out I say.