Darkness into Light Box Set

by Michael Dean

  Hitler was quite conscious of the advantage of presenting himself as artist-politician (in that order): it linked him with Bismarck. ‘The particular application of the ancient idea of statecraft as an art to the ideology of the German Reich, the source of Hitler’s posture as an artist-politician, had been fully formed in the cult of Otto von Bismarck, the founding politician of the German Empire of 1871.’[30]

  And Hitler was, indeed, a Kunstmensch – encompassing artist-practitioner, art sponsor (the Great Exhibition of German Art, already mentioned), mediator of art taste (the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition) and art collector, both in his own right and on behalf of the nation – often, of course, an excuse for expropriation and looting by all Nazis from Hitler down.

  As an art collector, Hitler’s tastes were rooted in the nineteenth century. He preferred Bavarian genre painting and the German romantics. Accounts of exactly which paintings he had on the walls of his apartment in Munich vary, but his tastes remained those of ‘an Austrian petit-bourgeois’ as Henni Hoffmann/von Schirach[31] put it.[32]

  But our primary interest is in Hitler as art-practitioner:

  A contemporary, Konrad Heiden,[33] quotes from Hitler’s school report for the fourth class of the Staatsrealschule (State Middle School) in Steyr, for September 16th 1905. Hitler would have been sixteen, at the time: Free hand drawing in the first semester was graded ‘laudable’ and in the second semester ‘excellent.’

  We can make our own judgements on Hitler’s draughtsmanship, even earlier than that, thanks to Werner Masur, who reproduces two drawings by the eleven-year-old Hitler in his collection of Hitler’s letters and notes. [34] The first is a naturalistic representation of Wallenstein – the seventeenth-century general who fought for Ferdinand II in the Thirty Years War. The sketching of Wallenstein’s armour and plumed hat is skilful, the rendition of his face is competent. Masur comments that the drawing shows that the eleven-year-old ‘doesn’t yet have any serious issues.’ (page 37, my translation) Masur discerns a different attitude in the young Hitler in the drawing he reproduces on the next page. This is a cartoon Hitler has drawn of one of his teachers. It shows a rather sulky face – well-rendered – above an immaculate, formally-dressed figure, incongruously clutching an ice-cream cone dangerously close to his lapel. The cartoon is meant to be funny, and it is. It is a revealing drawing – revealing of the drawer more than the sitter. An interpretation will be offered later in this essay.

  In 1907, as is well-known, Hitler went to Vienna ‘armed with a pile of drawings’ to sit the examination for the General School of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts.[35] This period of Hitler’s life is particularly mired in myth, and it is worth staying with Masur, one of the few Hitler biographers to give Hitler-as-artist any weight, to dispel some of them:

  First, the ‘poverty’ and the ‘hard fate’ Hitler referred to in Mein Kampf to describe his life at this point, is simply not true. The income from his father’s inheritance plus his orphan’s pension amounted to 83 kronen a month. ‘At that time a lawyer’s salary … was 70 kronen a month, that of a teacher … 66 kronen.’ (Masur Hitler p43). Hitler was not a down-and-out, not a tramp, and the men’s hostel in Meldemannstrasse he lived in from 1909-1913 was comfortable, if not luxurious – perhaps comparable to a YMCA today. (It’s still there. There are pictures of it online at http://smoter.com/hitler.htm )

  Secondly, although he famously failed to get into the Academy, and so could loosely be called a failed artist, it does not follow that he had no technical ability at, or talent for, drawing. The cause of good, and the memory of the millions who perished because of Hitler, is not served by pretending that he was a worse practitioner of drawing and painting than he was. It may even obscure the truth about him. I shall be arguing below that it does.

  There were 112 other candidates for the Academy’s examination, in September 1907. They ‘chose two subjects for composition, to be executed in two sessions of three hours each.’ (ibid p39). The list of subjects, given in full by Masur, includes such daunting themes as Expulsion from Paradise and The Blinding of Sampson. Thirty-three candidates failed. Hitler passed.

  He passed to Part 2 of the examination, Sample Drawings. Candidates had to show work they had done outside the examination room. The drawings Hitler submitted ‘showed relatively few heads, a shortcoming which decided the examiners to exclude him from the Academy … Hitler failed this examination in company with fifty-one other fellow candidates. One of them, Robin Christian Andersen, was later to have a distinguished career in art and to hold leading positions in the very Academy that had once rejected him. Of the 113 candidates, only twenty-eight passed both sections of the entrance examination.’ (ibid p40)

  At the age of nineteen, for the first time in his life, Hitler undertook what Masur describes as ‘a bout of hard, unremitting, and single-minded work.’ He took painting lessons from a sculptor and teacher called Panholzer. He then took the Academy’s examination again, in the autumn of 1908. But this time he failed the first part, which he had passed the previous year. He was therefore not allowed to show all the work he had produced, under instruction, over a year of full-time art training.

  During his time in Vienna, Hitler nevertheless made a living as an artist. He himself later estimated that he had produced between 700 and 800 pictures during his Vienna days (1907-1913)[36]. He painted buildings; ‘paintings of interiors and still-lifes were extremely rare.’ (ibid p134). ‘Some scenes he painted so often, he later told friends, he was able to paint them from memory’ (ibid p127). This point, too, will be revisited later.

  Among work registered at the Federal Archive in Coblenz, and elsewhere, were architectural drawings of all the main buildings in Vienna, including the Parliament, the old Ferdinand Bridge and Charles Church. Spotts reproduces Hitler’s architectural drawing of the Charles Church, Vienna (facing page 138). It is of professional quality.

  In May 1913, Hitler moved to Munich. During the Munich period, and in the first world war, Hitler’s art production can be grouped into three categories:

  There are the watercolour paintings, like Defile Near Wytschaete, Ruined Monastery Messines, both 1914, Dressing Station, Fromelles, 1915, and Haubardin, the Seminar Church, 1916, which is reproduced in Spotts, opposite page 139.

  They need not detain us long. They are pleasant views, competently painted – Spotts generously says that Haubardin, The Seminar Church represents ‘a remarkable technical leap’ (page 134). They were devoid of the figures which famously caused Hitler problems to render. Hitler knew perfectly well they were inferior to the architectural drawings, and they manifestly are. Later, he occasionally gave them as presents to favoured acolytes.

  The second group is the drawings. The drawings of buildings in Flanders and France show a certainty and mastery absent from the always shaky watercolours. They include German Infantry Playing Draughts in the Trenches - an excellent pen and wash, reproduced opposite page 69 in Masur (Hitler). Highly competent sketches of a dugout shelter in Fournes, later tinted, and a pencil sketch of a church in Ardoye, in Flanders, done in summer 1917, are reproduced in Spotts (pages 132 and 133.)

  How good these drawings were is cleverly shown by Masur in Hitlers Briefe … opposite page 44, where he reproduces a Hitler drawing of the Hofbräuhaus (Munich, 1913) below a colour postcard of the original. They are identical, and for a moment it is hard to perceive which is the copy. One difference, however, is that the drayman and his dray cart have been moved into the distance in Hitler’s copy, to sidestep the difficulty he would have had with this non-architectural element.

  On page 74, ibid, Masur reproduces an even more revealing drawing. Done in 1915, Hitler shows his company, including himself, on the march. But the figures in this ostensibly serious subject are cartoon-like – as if Hitler could not help but draw them that way.

  Mention must also be made of Hitler’s drawings of imaginary or wished-for buildings.

  As a boy, he would draw imaginary houses and pala
ces. In 1924, a stream of ‘small-format, carefully-executed, Indian-ink sketches with architectural themes’ (Masur, Hitlers Briefe … page 130, my translation) followed in Landsberg Fortress, when an incarcerated Hitler had no buildings in front of him to copy. As Masur points out, he kept these sketches, and many others, with him in the Berlin bunker, until he killed himself. Unlike the watercolours, they were never given away. Later, of course, Hitler’s sketches of wished-for buildings were realised by architects like Troost, Giessler and Speer.

  Masur comments that ‘sketch designs of this kind were often accurately drawn and not infrequently accompanied by precise details and calculations.’ (Masur, Hitler, caption to sketch 30 facing page 69). The precision of the proportions, and their specified detail, is also referred to by Spotts: ‘Hitler’s sketch of a party standard, specifying its precise measurements.’ (caption, page 50).

  Hitler had wished since the autumn of 1907 to become an architect, or at least to work in an architect’s office. His architectural drawings of Munich buildings were done at speed, to sell in volume. They were of shops, like the Zehme hat shop in Munich’s main Marien Square, as well as of public buildings. Hitler sold them for fifteen to twenty-five marks each, sometimes to the owner of the shop. [37] They were 28.5 x 38 cms (Spotts page 138) i.e. not postcards. A tinted pencil drawing of the Alter Hof is reproduced facing page 21 in München -Haupstadt der Bewegung. It is of very high quality indeed. The proportions are self-evidently perfect, or near perfect.

  Hitler earned 100 marks a month from them – a bank-clerk earned 70 marks a month at the time, so, again, as in Vienna, Hitler was making a decent living from drawing[38]. His ‘best-seller’ was the Registry Office. He would station himself outside, and sell his copy of the building to couples emerging, after the marriage ceremony. Given that couples appeared roughly every half hour, this implies, first, that he could draw the building quickly, and almost certainly that not all the drawings were done on the spot. Some were done from memory in his room. In other cases, he was almost certainly copying his own copies – as confirmed by his landlord in Munich, the tailor Josef Popp.

  Masur says that Hitler was ‘able to draw them [buildings in Vienna and Munich] from memory, in photographic detail. One result of this practice was his ability to reel off the dimensions of famous bridges, towers, gateways and facades, a fact confirmed not only by Speer but by men such as [the sculptor] Arno Breker.’ (Masur, Hitler, page 56).

  As well as watercolours and architectural drawings, Hitler produced a third kind of artwork, often overlooked as insignificant. These were his cartoons and doodles. Mention has already been made of the cartoon of his teacher, done when he was eleven. Henni Hoffmann/ von Schirach describes Hitler drawing a cartoon, relaxed at his favourite restaurant, the Ostaria Bavaria. It is worth quoting this at length, for the insight it offers into Hitler’s psyche, expressed through drawing. Note, also, that his adjutant, Wilhelm Brückner, carried drawing-materials at all times, so they were instantly on hand:

  ‘He ordered tomato soup, dumplings, Fachinger mineral water and watched what people at other tables were ordering. He’d just flown back from Berlin and told everybody about Hugenburg[39], who he’d just had a meeting with. “Well, the fellow looks just like a cat with a pair of boots on. Look! Like this …” He turned a menu round and Brückner passed him a pencil – he never carried pencils or money on him. He drew a fierce male cat with Hugenburg’s face, gave him black boots, and kitted him out with a small dagger.’ (von Schirach, page 180, my translation).

  In another book, Frauen um Hitler, von Schirach reproduces a cartoon Hitler did of Eva Braun. When the long suffering Eva protested about the rendering of her nose, von Schirach quotes Hitler as replying ‘Oh no! I can’t change that. Your nose is just like that.’ Von Schirach reproduces a photograph of Eva Braun below the cartoon, which shows the degree of distortion in Hitler’s cartoon-drawing. It is considerable.[40]

  Hitler doodled compulsively, certainly throughout his adult life and possibly earlier. Spotts reproduces a selection of doodled faces on page 126, and Masur (Hitler) at figure 29, facing page 69. One of the drawings in the Masur selection looks like Wallenstein again, the general Hitler drew when he was eleven. Rather revealingly, Masur refers to the doodles as Cubist, and certainly, had they been done by anybody else, they would have been candidates for the so-called Degenerate Art Exhibition, rather than its Manichean obverse.

  In February 1987, BBC television in England showed a programme called The Foolish Wise Ones, about Savant Syndrome. Here is a definition of Savant Syndrome by an expert in the field, Darrold A Treffert: ‘Savant Syndrome is an exceedingly rare condition in which persons with serious mental handicaps … have spectacular islands of ability …’[41]. The ‘islands of ability’ are by no means always connected with drawing. Artist-savants are quite a small subset of the total population of people with Savant Syndrome.

  One part of the programme showed an autistic artist-savant called Stephen Wiltshire.

  Stephen drew, from memory, an architectural sketch of London’s St Pancras Station, which he had visited for the first time hours before. The sketch was perfect in detail and proportion. He dashed it off in minutes, while the cameras kept rolling.

  Darrold A Treffert wrote this about Stephen:

  ‘Stephen concentrates almost exclusively on architecture. He provides exact, literal renditions of any buildings, no matter how complex, and in fact he seems to prefer the especially intricate. He views buildings in person, or from a photograph, and retains an exquisitely precise and detailed image for later recall and drawing ... Like other artist-savants, Stephen’s work depicts exactly what he sees without embellishment, stylization or interpretation (my emphasis) … and he draws swiftly, beginning anywhere on the page. … He has a remarkable memory … He speaks of wanting to be an architect and some day designing his own buildings.’ (ibid pp194-5)

  Now, here, for comparison, is Ernst Hanfstaengl describing Hitler drawing: ‘Hitler was quite carried away and started sketching on the back of a menu card from memory, a drawing of the Palace of Westminster. This was the sort of parlour trick he could pull off at a moment’s notice, and the drawing was perfectly accurate. It was no more than an architect’s elevation, but all the details and proportions were correct, and he had obviously carried them round in his mind from reading old copies of Spamer’s or Meyer’s encyclopaedias I had often noticed at his flat.’[42]

  That is a classic description of an autistic artist-savant drawing a picture. As is this, below, down to the time taken to draw the picture. Doctors Horst and Hendren report in Savant Abilities in a Child with Autism[43] that a case they studied, savant NS, took ‘approximately ten minutes’ to complete drawings.

  ‘…on one occasion he [Hitler] pulled his little trick of drawing public buildings he had seen illustrated. In ten minutes he had sketched the Opera, Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower and in fact they were perfectly well done.’ (Hanfstaengl page 156, my emphasis.)

  Another contemporary, Prince Schaumburg-Lippe, also gives an account of Hitler drawing. If anything, this account is even closer to autistic artist-savant behaviour than Hanfstaengl’s:

  ‘… he [Hitler] asks for a pencil and then goes at it. Bending over, he rapidly sketches the Munich street network with large, bold strokes and then puts in his buildings. Every now and then he sits back in his chair so as to be able to check the accuracy of the sketches from a greater distance. He is completely absorbed. Building after building arises for us to see. No carelessness, no, the dimensions are absolutely accurate. He has no ruler to work with. He sees only proportions. Everything has its proper place … And then he cites the essential statistics. He knows them all. He backs them up. (Spotts page 332, my emphasis passim).

  It is time to pull together the various hints I have given, toward a view that Hitler was an autistic artist-savant.

  -They draw buildings, or urban landscapes with no figures in them.

  -They draw fr
om memory, using eidetic (photographic) memory, or eidetic imagery – i.e they picture the building in detail in their minds. This exceptional feat of memory is accompanied in all cases by exceptional rote memory and recall of detail.

  -The proportions of the buildings they draw are perfect.

  -They draw quickly – typically finishing a sketch in under ten minutes.

  -They start with the background and then fill in the object itself.

  -They draw frequently, repeating the same subject over and over again for hours.

  -Although savants have difficulty drawing people, they are good at cartoon renditions of people they have previously seen.

  -Savants often begin drawing a peripheral element of a scene and use colour only to fill in defined areas.

  -Savant artists prefer subjects with pronounced linear perspective.

  All of these aspects of savant drawing seem to me to be present in Hitler’s works, as I have tried to show throughout this essay. Savant NS, the case studied by doctors Horst and Hendren, also had repetitive motor mannerisms, such as flapping his hands up and down, which reminded me of Hitler’s fly-swatting version of the acknowledging, or reply, part of the Nazi salute.

  Hitler’s exceptional rote memory, especially for the details of cars and ships, is frequently reported by admiring acolytes, like Hoffmann and Speer. Here is a reminiscence of Hitler that combines memory and drawing:

  ‘At an earlier stage in his life he had carefully studied the plans of Vienna and Paris, and he revealed an amazing memory for these. In Vienna, he admired the architectural complex of the Ringstrasse, with its great buildings, the Rathaus, the Parliament, the Concert Hall or the Hofburg and the twin museums. He could draw this part of the city in correct proportions … (my emphasis passim)’[44]