Catalog

Record Details

Catalog Search



The gallery of miracles and madness : insanity, modernism, and Hitler's war on art / Charlie English.

English, Charlie, (author.).

Summary:
"This is a tragedy that begins in the halls of psychiatry and modern art and ends in the Nazis' first gas chambers. In the early 1920s, Hans Prinzhorn, a psychiatrist and aesthete, sought insight from the art of mental patients such as Franz Buhler. Buhler was a brilliant, well-known ironworker until his schizophrenia diagnosis, and his work was compared to that of Munch and Duhrer. Prinzhorn collected and published their work, inspiring the Modernist movement that was coming into fashion just as a young Adolf Hitler arrived in Vienna to begin his brief, failed career as a painter. Hitler was alienated by the Modernists and what he called their "degenerate" art that expressed the most primal human emotions. He saw it as a disease in the body politic and set out to crush it with the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibition Goebbels and Hitler engineered in 1938, that mocked the work of mental patients and Modernists. The cultural cleansing was a precursor to the racial cleansing and Prinzhorns's patient artists would be caught up in both. Hitler developed the first gas chambers as a way to dispose of 70,273 patients, including Franz Buhler. In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, the Nazis' cultural destruction, which would rightly be considered among the lesser sins of the Reich, puts the horror of the Holocaust into relief. The cultural decimation--the burning of books and artwork--was a stepping stone to the more overt horrors of the Holocaust. By equating artistic expression with sickness, Hitler made the case to the German people that they could not be made whole until those spreading this sickness were destroyed. Showing us the way Hitler's most profound personal insecurities fan the flames of nationalism and unfolding the transition from Weimar life to Nazi life from less familiar points of view--the ward of a psychiatric hospital, the contents of a museum--English poses profound questions about what is really at stake in cultural objects and offers us a fresh look at the brutality of the Nazi regime"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9780525512059
  • Physical Description: xxi, 304 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm
  • Edition: First US edition.
  • Publisher: New York : Random House, [2021]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages [273]-288) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:
The man who jumped in the canal -- The hypnosis in the wood -- A meeting at Emmendingen -- Dangerous to look at! -- The schizophrenic masters -- Adventures in no-man's land -- Pleasant little pictures -- Dinner with the Bruckmanns -- Glimpses of a transcendental world -- Art and race -- A cultural revolution -- The sculptor of Germany -- Cleansing the temple of art -- To be German means to be clear -- The sacred and the insane -- The girl with the blue hair -- Foxes with white coats -- Choking angel -- You will ride on the gray bus -- In the madhouse -- Landscapes of the brain.
Subject: National socialism and art.
Art and mental illness > Germany > History > 20th century.
Prinzhorn, Hans, 1886-1933 > Art collections.
Prinzhorn, Hans, 1886-1933. Bildnerei der Geisteskranken.
Art > Destruction and pillage > Germany > History > 20th century.
Killing of the mentally ill > Germany > History > 20th century.

Available copies

  • 9 of 9 copies available at SPARK Libraries.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 9 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Albright Memorial Library 700.943 ENGLISH (Text) 50686016080629 Adult Nonfiction Available -
Bethel Tulpehocken Public Library 700.943 ENG (Text) 33249024481172 Non-fiction Available -
Emmaus Public Library 700.943 ENGL (Text) 36446002045972 Adult Nonfiction Available -
Mansfield Free Public Library 700.94 ENG (Text) 31423240 Adult Nonfiction Available -
Reading Public Library RPL - Main 700.943 Eng (Text) 33223008726431 Non-fiction Available -
Allentown Public Library 700.943 ENGL (Text) 34455006823088 Adult Nonfiction 1st FL Available -
Bethlehem Main Library 700.943 (Text) 33062009483844 Adult Nonfiction Available -
Clymer Library 700.94 ENG (Text) 32596000507771 Adult Nonfiction Available -
Easton Main Library 700.943 E58g (Text) 31901004538213 Adult Nonfiction Available -


Additional Resources