Degenerate Art Exhibit [Entartete Kunst] in Munich, 1937
Creator(s)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
Biographical History
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.
Scope and Content
Sequence of outtakes. INTs of the 1937 Munich exhibition of "Degenerate Art" [Entartete Kunst] in the Archaeological Institute, not far from the house of German Art. Visitors inside the exhibition are seen looking at art in Room 3, including Otto Dix's "War Cripples" on the north wall (CU). Paintings and sculptures located on the west and south walls of Room 3 are also shown. Views of visitors and the art exhibited are to some extent different from that seen on Nazi Germany reels at the Library of Congress.
Note(s)
Detailed preservation notes from the film lab are available in Film and Video department files. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives. This entire reel contains deep emulsion scratches, also known as "wavy positive scribe" that detract from the viewing of this print, and were done to prevent people from copying the footage without permission. Similar material exists in the Julien Bryan Collection at the Library of Congress. See USHMM Film ID 951, Story RG-60.2668 for a more complete version of this footage. Bryan filmed in Germany in 1937 for the March of Time, but retained certain material and rights. He donated this part of the collection to the Library of Congress. Some film shot at the same time appears in the March of Time release, "Inside Nazi Germany." See Raymond Fielding's chapter on this title, in the book "The March of Time 1935-1951."
Subjects
- BUILDINGS
- MUSEUMS
- PROPAGANDA (NAZI)
- SCULPTURES
- ART (DEGENERATE)
- WORLD WAR I
- WOMEN
- SIGNS/POSTERS
- PROPAGANDA
- ART
- ARTISTS
- DADA
- PAINTINGS
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- GERMANY
- CIVILIANS
- GERMANS
Places
- Munich, Germany
Genre
- Outtakes.
- Film