The Political Picture – How the Nazis Created a Distinctly Fascist Art

It is not easy to define what it takes to make a ‘distinctly fascist’ artistic style when it is difficult enough to identify what makes fascism itself ‘distinctly fascist’. Stanley G Payne defines fascism as embodying certain, not exclusive, typographical descriptions: anti-liberalism; anti-communism; the creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state; goals of empire or of revolution; the creation of an idealist, voluntarist creed, normally involving the realisation of a new form of modern, self-determined secular culture; emphasis on a romantic and/or mystical aesthetic; extreme stress on masculinity and patriarchy; and national unity.[1]

George L. Mosse argues for fascism as a ‘civil religion’, a non-traditional faith which uses liturgy and symbols to make its belief come alive,[2] and that fascist aesthetics need to be put into this framework. Ulrich Schmid’s explanation is that fascism can be understood as a total work of art where each element fits stylistically and so not only the artistic aesthetic but also styles of behaviour, clothing and even speech are basic manifestations of the fascist reality.[3]

Each pre-Second World War fascist regime sought to create its own particular over-arching aesthetic, incorporating many of the above characteristics, to help shape public attitudes. The Nazi version was all-encompassing: militaristic symbolism and dress; architectural style and embellishment; and all aspects of art: theatre, film, sculpture and painting.

Schmid argues that there is a widespread cliché identifying fascist aesthetics with monumental neo-classicism,[4] and Nazi Germany did largely come to fit this stereotype. However, as demonstrated in Italian and Spanish fascist aesthetic movements, fascism could also experiment with Modernist ideas such as futurism and cubism that had become anathematised in Germany.  The early 20th century had seen Modern art flourish in the USA and Europe, including Germany. However following Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the shame and humiliation associated with its surrender, many Germans, and not only those who supported the NSDAP, turned against anything seen as liberal or foreign.[5] The German population began to look inwards, favouring art that celebrated parochial and provincial life: a new aspiration but ultimately a return to their roots.

Even in the conservative artistic climate of the time, very early Nazi art briefly brushed with elements of modernism: Willy Engelhardt’s 1933 election poster (Figure 1) used a Bauhaus-style building to create a visual metaphor for Hitler’s ‘modern position,[6] while in the same year Goebbels unsuccessfully attempted to integrate what he called ‘Nordic Expressionism’ into the official Nazi art movement. He failed because he was unable to overcome Hitler’s own preference for monumental classicism,[7] the style that would ultimately define Nazi art.

(Figure 1) Willy Engelhardt – Poster for German Elections, ‘Hitler Builds Up’ (1933)

After coming to power in early 1933, the Nazis used the threat of Modernism to ignite the debate over the National Socialist kulturpolitik and how to manage cultural policy.[8] Kurt Karl Eberlein commented: “This [modern] art is still ‘culture’, hence uncomfortable, alien to the people. The fault lies neither with the state nor with the individual, but with that art which is cut off from blood and soil”.[9]  Modern art became associated with chaos and foreign liberalism; a style to be despised; and was labelled with some of Nazism’s favourite pejorative adjectives: ‘degenerate’, ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Jewish’.[10]

Within the favoured style of classicism, Nazi art emphasised several key themes and subjects which broadly accorded with Payne’s typography. The idea of ‘Blut und Boden’ (Blood and Soil), first propounded by 19^th Century agrarian romanticists, and given greater impetus after the First World War by the likes of Shultz-Naumburg and Darré,[11] was a romantic idea both of an idealised re-adoption of rural values and, perhaps more importantly, of a mystical link between the German people and their homeland: of national unity. The romanticism was often emphasised by the use of mythological imagery, almost exclusively Greek and Nordic. The non-mythologised human form was also explored, not only the literal physiology but also as a metaphorical embodiment of health and strength. Militarism and male dominance were prominent themes, as was family life, often depicting strictly defined gender roles.

(Figure 2) Adolf Wissel – ‘Farm Family from Kahlenberg’, (1939)

This division of gender roles is exemplified in Adolf Wissel’s ‘Farm Family from Kahlenberg’ (1939) (Figure 2), a portrait of a seemingly idyllic Aryan family. The father appears behind the rest of the family casting a somewhat detached but domineering eye over his brood, a grandmother knits, children play and, at the centre, the mother comforts the youngest child.  A clear vision of a patriarchy with women subordinated by the prevalent ‘kinder, küche, kirche’ ideology. Adam explains that “If man was shown as the dominator of nature, woman was represented as nature itself”.[12]

Payne identifies romanticism and mythology/mysticism as elements that help develop an idealised creed or culture. Karl Alexander Flügel’s ‘Harvest’ (1938) (Figure 3) depicts the idyllic life of country folk working in a perfect landscape and evokes not only a bountiful land but a hardworking population; echoing the ‘blood and soil’ agrarian ideal. It reflects the same allegorical arcadia seen in Caspar David Friedrich’s works from a century earlier and is representative of a return, in both content and style, to the original neo-classicist landscape painters. Werner Peiner’s ‘German Soil’ (1938) (Figure 4) and Julius Paul Junghanns’ ‘Hard Work’ (1939) (Figure 5) also have a similar romantic focus on the German countryside and the people living there.  Even the titles of the pieces hammer home the Nazi ethos.

(Figure 3) Karl Alexander Flugel – ‘Harvest’, (1938)

(Figure 4) Werner Peiner – ‘German Soil’, (1938)

(Figure 5) Julius Paul Junghanns – ‘Hard Work’, (1939)

In ‘Rewards of Work’ by Gisbert Palmié (1933) (Figure 6) the idealised real world of ‘Harvest’ is extended to introduce elements from mythology. The central Aryan female character bears a superficial similarity to Botticelli’s Venus but she is now surrounded by an idealised agrarian idyll. While echoing classical style, the emphasis has moved from the celebration of a mythological or entitled elite to celebrating rural and pastoral artisans.

(Figure 6) Gisbert Palmié – ‘Rewards of Work’, (1933)

Alfred Rosenberg himself highlighted the importance of Greek mythology to the Nazi aesthetic, saying that “The Nordic artist was always inspired by an ideal of beauty. This is nowhere more evident than in Hellas’s powerful, natural ideal of beauty”.[13] Adolf Ziegler’s works the ‘The Four Elements’ (1937) (Figure 7) and ‘Judgement of Paris’ (1939) (Figure 8) extend the use of mythology still further, being full depictions of ancient Greek myths in a romantic classical style.

(Figure 7) Adolf Ziegler – ‘The Four Elements’, (1937)

(Figure 8) Adolf Ziegler – ‘Judgement of Paris’, (1939)

The communication of values and messages by allegory and metaphor was important but high value was also placed on representations of fitness and wellbeing, as characterising racial purity and superiority, the Aryan ideal. The identification of the naked man with the ideal of classical beauty and heroism was a ubiquitous sentiment in National Socialist art and popular culture. Hubert Wilm stated: “Representation of the perfect beauty of a race steeled in battle and sport, inspired not by antiquity or classicism but by the pulsing life of our present-day events”.[14]

Artists were encouraged by the Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts to attend courses in gymnasiums and sport complexes to improve their life drawing. This helped develop a specific style of drawing, far removed from drawings of ‘real life’, which concentrated on nude studies of virile and sturdy models in strong or sporting poses: every element of the human form needed to impart strength, discipline and force.[15] ‘Sports of the Hellenics’ and ‘Olympia and the German Spirit’ were popular exhibitions aimed at promoting the bond between athleticism and art.  The 1936 Berlin Olympics was an opportunity not only to showcase Germany’s sporting prowess and superiority but also to create art. Leni Riefenstahl’s film ‘Olympia – Feast of Nations’ (1938) fades between shots of ancient sculptures and sports men and women, binding contemporary life with classic forms and traditions.

Amongst the best examples of the human form in Nazi arts were the sculptures of Arno Breker whose works echoed the works of classical Greece and Rome. Paintings such as Ivo Saliger’s ‘Diana’s Rest’ (1940) (Figure 9) depict the human form as athletic and wholesome. Many paintings are romanticised in their visualisations of humanity: Leopold Schmutzler’s ‘Farm Girls Returning from the Fields’ (1937) (Figure 10) and Oskar Martin-Amorbach’s ‘The Sower’ (1937) (Figure 11) show hard-working, healthy and active characters embracing their everyday tasks.

(Figure 9) Ivo Saliger – ‘Dianas Rest’, (1940)

(Figure 10) Leopold Schmutzler – ‘Farm Girls Returning From the Fields’, (1937)

(Figure 11) Oskar Martin-Amorbach – ‘The Sower’, (1937)

The German population became idolised in statuary and on canvas. As with much fascist art the images did not necessarily represent reality but an idealised, even exaggerated version of it. All authoritarian regimes wish to inspire and reinforce feelings in their populations: in this case the message was that, under the NSDAP, the German people were healthy and strong: past, present and future. The naked human form held no fear for the Nazis, provided it was attractive, healthy, and Aryan.

This concept of a fit, healthy people sat well with the idea of eugenics promoted by the Nazis. Ziegler’s ‘Judgement of Paris’ (1939) (Figure 8), while a representation of an episode from Greek mythology, can also be interpreted as a narrative for this eugenics sentiment. The mythical tale of Paris picking the most beautiful from three goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, reflects the high value placed on Aryanism and human aesthetics in real life as well as in art. Judgement of the goddesses based on their beauty is a visualisation of the selection of partners in Germany. Again, art is being used to subtly influence German culture and thinking.

Health and strength, along with masculinity and patriarchy, were also glorified through militarism in art.  Women were subordinate; men in comparison were expected to support and defend their country. The ‘warrior’ became a key figure, embodying persistence, victory and a fierce jingoism. Militarism also gave a visual representation of the Nazi philosophy that there existed a perpetual ‘struggle’ between races which could only be solved by armed conflict: the superior race being the victor.

Conrad Hommel’s ‘The Leader and Commander in Chief of the Army’ (1940) (Figure 12) highlights this respect for the ‘warrior’. The full length portrait of a uniformed Hitler standing in a powerful pose does not endear the subject to a viewer, it is intended to emphasise strength and develop emotions of respect, admiration and gratefulness: this is a leader fighting for Germany and her ideals in difficult times.  Emil Scheibe’s painting ‘Hitler at the Front’ (1942) (Figure 13) similarly shows Hitler as a military leader; supporting his soldiers; willing them to victory.

(Figure 12) Conrad Hommel – ‘The Leader and Commander In Chief Of The Army’, (1940)

(Figure 13) Emil Scheibe – ‘Hitler at the Front’, (1943)

Mosse’s ‘civic religion’ concept also informs Nazi aesthetics and artwork. Whilst paintings tended to be devoid of overt references to traditional religions (other than anti-Semitic messages), they often used similar styles and methods to historical religious artworks. Symbolism and iconography were popular, as well as the use of triptychs and friezes. The repeated use of the hakenkreuz, eagle and totenkopf in paintings, as well as throughout wider society, echoed the cross or the nimbus of traditional religious symbolism. All of this helped create a quasi-religious aesthetic.

Arthur Kampf’s ‘Der 30 Januar 1933’ (1939) (Figure 14), commemorating the Nazi seizure of power, emphasises Swastika emblazoned flags and the Nazi salute alongside the triumphant scenes of marching SA Brownshirts beneath the Brandenburg Gate. This conveys and reinforces so many fascist messages.

(Figure 14) Arthur Kampf – ‘Nazi Seizure of Power’, (1938)

(Figure 15) Hans Schmitz-Wiedenbruck – ‘Workers, Soldiers, Farmer’, (1940)

Hans Schmitz-Wieden’s triptych ‘Workers, Soldiers, Farmer’ (1940) (Figure 15) also brings together several of the key artistic motifs and messages of the Third Reich. The larger centre panel shows representatives of the three branches of the military whilst, either side, are miners and a farmer at work. The triptych format echoes religious works, as does the iconography of the Swastika, but the clear message is that, while all activities are important, they are there to support the most important: those fighting for the Reich.

The creation and veneration of martyrs to the cause also existed in the Nazi ‘religion’: the ultimate example being Horst Wessel, an SA Sturmführer killed in 1930. Most famously commemorated by the “Horst Wessel-Lied” which became the NSDAP anthem, effectively Germany’s joint national anthem, his image became ubiquitous in photographs, posters and more physical memorials.

Developing a fascist aesthetic to support a political philosophy demands that it is widely disseminated. The Nazis created museums and galleries; various art magazines such as ‘Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich’ were published; miniaturisations of famous paintings appeared on stamps, cigarette cards and postcards; films such as Riefenstahl’s were praised internationally; statues placed in parks and town squares; the swastika was everywhere. 1937 saw the first ‘Great German Art Exhibition’, where works by painters and sculptors such as Wissel and Breker were displayed alongside those of original neo-classical painters like Casper David Friedrich, defining a continuum of what was distinctly ‘German art’. These exhibitions drew vast crowds which would praise the art not just stylistically but also for its content.

Having created the means of disseminating their favoured aesthetic, the Nazi regime accentuated that aesthetic by denigrating and banning that which did not fit: artworks they called ‘Entartete Kunst’ (degenerate art) which included work by communists, Jews, foreign artists and other undesirables. Otto Dix, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst were all excluded: even Max Liebermann, the president of the Prussian Academy of Arts, was denounced by the far right in the 1930s. This was not entirely down to the content of his art, which focused mainly on the peasantry and the working class, but because of his “indebtedness to foreign models, his internationalism, [and] his rejection of ideology in art”.[16]  The ‘Degenerate Art Exhibition’ was mounted in 1937 to contrast with and identify a clear divide between the acceptable fascist, German art of the ‘Great German Art Exhibition’ and unacceptable ‘degenerate’ art.

Compared to the fascist art of Italy and the Socialist art of Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany’s art demonstrated its own rather conservative, traditionalist individuality. Italian fascist art embraced elements of modernism such as futurism and took a progressive approach. Soviet art also toyed with Modern styles such as cubism and impressionism and, while it favoured Socialist and Heroic realism as generic styles, it was less restrictive and critical of other artistic movements. Nazi art on the other hand had regressed to a neo-classical style popular a century earlier whilst at the same time excluding, even banning, other artistic styles. Katya Mandoki argues that the art of the NSDAP was unique because of six substitutions: “the substitution of religion by the instrumentalisation of art; the substitution of art by propaganda; the substitution of propaganda by indoctrination; the substitution of culture by monumentalism; the substitution of politics by aesthetics; and the substitution of the aesthetic by terror”.[17]

Within its unique conservative style Nazi art was purposeful, with content chosen less for aesthetic appeal and more for usefulness in the ‘bigger political picture’.  It achieved much in terms of embodying and communicating the wider fascist ethos of the NSDAP: reinforcing its back-story of a pure race and a country with both a mystical past and a great future, a ‘thousand-year Reich’, that would be delivered if the people believed in the ‘quasi-religious’ values of Nazism – military and moral strength together with an intolerance of weakness, liberal values and, above all, the evils and degeneracy of communism and Judaism. It is interesting that the art created was so distinct and clear in its message, such a quintessential fascist aesthetic, that almost seventy years later the material is still something of a taboo with many authors putting disclaimers in their work when discussing Nazi art, seeking to avoid condoning the content.

1. Stanley G. Payne, ‘Fascism as a ‘Generic’ Concept’ in Aristotle A. Kallis, The Fascism Reader (2003), p. 84-85
2. George L. Mosse, ‘Fascist Aesthetics and Society: Some Considerations’ in Journal of Contemporary History (1996), Vol. 31, No. 2, p. 245-246
3. Ulrich Schmid, ‘Style versus Ideology: Towards a Conceptualisation of Fascist Aesthetics’ in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions (June, 2005), Vol. 6, No. 1, p. 128
4. Ibid, p. 129
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
7. Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (1996), p. 19
8. Kurt Karl Eberlein, Was ist deutsch in der deutschen Kunst? (Verlag E. A. Seemann,1933) referenced in George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture (1966), p. 165
9. Peter Adam, The Art of the Third Reich (1992), p. 35
10. Ibid, p. 29
11. Ibid, p. 150
12. Ibid, p. 24
13. Ibid, p. 64
14. Ibid, p. 179
15. Peter Paret, German Encounters With Modernism 1840-1945 (2001), p. 200
16. Katya Mandoki, ‘Terror and Aesthetics: Nazi strategies for mass organisation’ in Renaissance and Modern Studies (1999), Vol. 42, No. 1, p. 65

Artefacts in the Ashes – 9/11’s Impact on Cultural Heritage

“I had just finished saying the 8.30 mass at St. Michael’s in Brooklyn. The pager went off and said that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the Trade Center. I called the emergency operations centre and said I was responding, and I left for the Trade Center … when the second plane hit, I was still in Brooklyn. I was trying to get through the tunnel on Hamilton Avenue. We saw the plane but I never saw it hit. I remember saying to myself, boy, that guy is awful low in the pattern. I remember saying something really stupid like, you know, did he come down to see what happened with the first one? It never dawned on me that he was heading for the other tower, but that’s where it was headed.”

– Testimony of Father John Delendick (1)

“Perhaps it is because I see my own mortality in the collapse of the bridge, not in the death of the woman. We expect people to die. We count on our own lives to end…The bridge [however] was built to outlive us…it transcended our individual destiny. A dead woman is one of us – but the bridge is all of us”

– Slavenka Drakulic, 1993 (2)

The Twin Towers

As American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the World Trade Center towers on 11 September 2001 they left behind not only human bodies and twisted steel: nearly 3000 people lost their lives and over 6000 were injured but the cultural heritage of New York City, if not the wider Western world, was also severely compromised. Not only had the buildings themselves, iconic elements of the visual fabric that is the Manhatten skyline been destroyed but also the many artworks and private collections they held. As the skyscrapers collapsed they crushed or, as John Berman puts it, “perhaps atomised”, almost everything within (3). A Library of Congress information bulletin produced two years after the attack highlights that, whilst being “overwhelmed by the loss of human life on September 11th, few Americans realise that the terrorist attacks also destroyed an important segment of America’s cultural and historical legacy.” (4)

Designed by Minoru Yamasaki and completed in 1973, the two tall, grey oblongs still dominated the Manhatten skyline in 2001. Had the Twin Towers been half the height they might have been unremarkable, possibly even bland, but their absurd size meant that they loomed over the rest of New York. Their construction had coincided with the end of the Brutalist architectural era and so the towers were explicitly aesthetically ‘of their time’.

Saul Wenegrat, the former art director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, when describing the area said “The World Trade Center was not just a collection of buildings … it incorporated the creative energies of a lot of magnificent people” (5).  Leslie E. Robertson,  the lead engineer on the World Trade Center project, reflected on their construction – “The two towers were the first structures outside of the military and nuclear industries designed to resist the impact of a jet airliner, the Boeing 707. It was assumed that the jetliner would be lost in the fog, seeking to land at JFK or at Newark. To the best of our knowledge, little was known about the effects of a fire from such an aircraft, and no designs were prepared for the circumstance.” (6) But he explains, with feelings of guilt and sorrow, that the WTC engineering was of its time and the prospect of a terrorist attack such as 9/11 could never have been anticipated.

The Twin Towers played a massive role in the tourism of NYC; they sought to represent the economic success of America or, with classic American grandiloquence, the world. When the buildings were designed, 1% of the budget was designated for artworks and heritage with specific spaces to draw people into the area (7):  while iconic in design the buildings were unique in their content.

The WTC is known to have held works by artists including Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Roy Lichtenstein, Paul Klee, Auguste Rodin, and Le Courbusier (8). The global securities and financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald had its New York headquarters there. Its founder, B. Gerald Cantor, was a renowned private collector of works of art by Rodin, a passion continued after his death by the firm which displayed works in a 4000-square-foot gallery on the 105th floor of the North Tower: proudly described as its “museum in the sky” (9) and which held casts of Rodin’s ‘Hand of God’, ‘the Kiss’, ‘the Thinker’, and the ‘Burghers of Calais’. There were libraries and archives: notable collections included the Helen Keller, with first editions of her books, photographs and correspondence; Broadway Theatre Archive’s 35,000 photographs; the entire Port Authority Archives; as well as 40,000 Jacques Lowe negatives documenting the presidency of JFK (10). In the subterranean rooms beneath the towers was a collection of important archaeological artefacts from African burial grounds to 19th Century social archives. Then there was the unknown content, held in private collections or safety deposit boxes throughout the complex.

Most cultural heritage sites have positive connotations, celebrating the peaks of civilisation and history. However the 20th Century saw an increased interest in traumatic and difficult heritage. In 1997 UNESCO listed both Auschwitz and the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome as World Heritage sites (11), representing a shift away from the normally celebratory to a more memory based focus. A 2002 ICOMOS conference explored the “nuanced meaning and memory of [traumatic] heritage places … resonat[ing] with strong emotional themes of tragedy, injustice, endurance and sometimes redemption” (12). Difficult or traumatic heritage is now best defined by Macdonald as “a past that is recognised as a meaningful in the present but that is also contested and awkward for public reconciliation with a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity” (13).

What motivates groups to attack buildings? In the 1960s Michael Moorcock coined the term ‘urbicide’ to describe violence or destruction of a built environment. Whilst his reference at the time was fictional it has now become associated with the resettling of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the devastating of Sarajevo.

Buildings have consistently been targets for cathartic destruction, be it political, religious, anarchic or ideological. They are mostly targeted for what they symbolise rather than the intrinsic nature of the structure or contents. However Robert Bevan argues that there is something about skyscrapers that suggests “man’s over reaching hubris”, that they are naturally vulnerable, citing the Tower of Babel and the Towering Inferno as examples (14). In some instances the buildings are secondary targets or collateral damage. As Rebecca Knuth argues, the cultural losses resulting from strategic Allied bombing of German cities during World War Two, whilst not the primary target, led to a feeling of the culpability amongst the nations who attained victory as a result of these egregious attacks (15).

Regardless of the motive or the means, the destruction of architecture and other cultural heritage is an emotive subject although, as Teresa Stoppani argues, “the symbolic role of architecture is not erased by the disaster, but reconfirmed and emphasised by negation.” (16)

The Stari Most

The example of the destruction of the Stari Most bridge highlights an important element of ‘urbicide’ when constructing a framework for assessing the loss of the WTC. When the Bosnian-Croat army destroyed the Stari Most in November 1993, the local city of Mostar lost not only an integral piece of infrastructure but also a key example of Ottoman and Bosnian cultural heritage (17). Croatian write Slavenka Drakulic later wrote about her feelings: juxtaposing a photograph of the empty space left between the banks of the Neretva and a photograph of a Bosnian woman with her throat cut, she posed the question ‘Why do I feel more pain looking at the image of the destroyed bridge than the image of the woman?’ (18) Her answer is that the woman represented only one person, the bridge represented every citizen: the communal feeling of attachment to heritage can outweigh the more personal human aspects. With the Twin Towers, the sheer loss of life often overshadows the loss cultural heritage but in reality people often connected more with the attack on the building than the attack on the humans inside. The building was targeted by Al-Qaeda for what it represented.

News reports from the time touched briefly on the loss of artwork but the scale of the attack, with thousands of people missing, overshadowed a search for paper artefacts. Jane Stapleton, managing director of the AON Huntington T. Block insurance agency”, said that “we’re not going to comment on [the loss of art] at this point…it’s way too soon” (19). Christopher Santarelli of The Blaze depicts a bleak scene for the cultural heritage contained within the WTC, saying that “in some cases, the inventories were destroyed along with the records … [and] a decade later dozens of agencies and archivists say they’re still not completely sure what they lost or found, leaving them without much of a guide to piece together missing history.” (20)

To compound this, while some splinters and fragments have been recovered there are suggestions that pieces which had miraculously survived the impact, fire, and plummet were then stolen from the wreckage. The Cantor Fitzgerald copy of ‘the Thinker’ is still missing (21), presumably taken by an opportunistic looter aware of the value of the find and the benefits of stealing from such a chaotic environment.

Whilst much of the discourse in this paper has been concerned with arguing that it was primarily the tangible heritage that was affected by the September 11th attacks, there is another side to the story. Laurajane Smith puts forward the premise that ‘heritage’ is not a physical ‘thing’, it is not a ‘site’, building or other material object. Rather heritage is what goes on at these sites, and while this does not mean that a sense of physical place is not important, the physical place or ‘site’ is not the full story of what heritage may be (22). Perhaps the intangible heritage of the towers, the lives and activities both of survivors and those who died felt an impact as well.

Thomas Elsaesser questions how to represent the unrepresentable? (23) Dealing with traumatic heritage is a difficult area and The WTC suffered problems in coming to terms with the trauma: should it be a symbol of defiance in the face of terror? should it commemorate those lost or attempt to move on? to rebuild or conserve? Traumatic heritage sites are about creating meaning, and any memorial or monument should organise memory. “A site of trauma embodies the dead buried there, yet the interpretive story transcends the moment, capturing the unity and spirit of New Yorkers, and the diversity of victims, workers, families, and volunteers” (24).

Would it ever have been possible to restore the WTC, and if would it have been a suitable undertaking?  In most cases when assessing neglected or damaged cultural heritage there are three possible courses of action: restoration, conservation or inaction. However the Twin Towers and their contents were not neglected, nor were they damaged in the normal sense – they had been violently obliterated.  This called for a different course of action – memorialisation.

This is precisely what America did, in much the same way as the Croation reconstruction of the Stari Most. The creation of the One World Trade Center acts as both a memorial and as a functioning building – a way of commemorating whilst showing that life goes on.  The best preserved piece of recovered artwork – ‘The Sphere’ by Fritz Koenig – was also restored and now sits as a memorial to the day the Twin Towers fell.

A most important feature of the destruction of the WTC is that it is not only traumatic heritage, it is now lost heritage – irrecoverable and irretrievable. “The Cantor Fitzgerald bond trading firm and its chairman Howard W. Lutnick, have refused to discuss in any depth the loss of its art collection. What did any of that matter when 695 of the company’s 960 employees (including Mr Lutnick’s brother) working in the building perished in the collapse?” (25). Bevan posits though that the destruction of ‘physical fabric’ is just as immensely demoralising as the loss of human lives (26). The WTC was a tangible structure and, arguably, that was the target just as much as the workers inside.

Before September 11th the Twin Towers represented the cultural heritage of financial workers, Manhattan, New York, America, the West, and all those which supported any of those ideals. Following its destruction and subsequent memorialisation, the cultural heritage was changed from a celebration to a tribute to the resilience of these values. The structure may have been destroyed but the principles associated with it live on. A quotation from John Berman of ABC News best summarises the contemporary cultural heritage of the WTC – “The art and the buildings were meant to last forever. Now…it will be as a reminder of one of history’s most horrifying events”. (27)

Ginny Dawe-Woodings, BA History

References:

(1) World Trade Center Task Force Interview with Father John Delendick (Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins), 6th December 2001

(2) Slavenka Drakulic, ‘Falling Down: A Mostar Bridge Elegy’, The New Republic (December 1993), p. 14-15 referenced in Martin Coward, ‘Against anthropocentrism: the destruction of the built environment as a distinct form of political violence’ in Review of International Studies (British International Studies Association, July 2006), Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 419-420

(3) John Berman, ‘Millions in Artwork Destroyed at WTC’, ABC News, 23rd December [Unknown Year], (www.abcnews.go.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(4) Donna Urschel, ‘Lives and Treasures Taken, 9/11 Attacks Destroys Cultural and Historical Artifacts’, The Library of Congress Information Bulletin, November 2002, Vol. 61, No. 11 (www.loc.gov, accessed 10th January 2014)

(5) John Berman, ‘Millions in Artwork Destroyed at WTC’, ABC News, 23rd December [Unknown Year], (www.abcnews.go.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(6) Leslie E. Robertson, ‘Reflections on the World Trade Center’ in The Bridge (National Academy of Sciences, 2002), Vol. 32, No. 1, p. 7

(7) John Berman, ‘Millions in Artwork Destroyed at WTC’, ABC News, 23rd December [Unknown Year], (www.abcnews.go.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(8) Donna Urschel, ‘Lives and Treasures Taken, 9/11 Attacks Destroys Cultural and Historical Artifacts’, The Library of Congress Information Bulletin, November 2002, Vol. 61, No. 11 (www.loc.gov, accessed 10th January 2014)

(9) Maev Kennedy, ‘Rodin treasures destroyed with ‘museum in the sky’, The Guardian, 21st September 2001, (www.theguardian.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(10) Donna Urschel, ‘Lives and Treasures Taken, 9/11 Attacks Destroys Cultural and Historical Artifacts’, The Library of Congress Information Bulletin, November 2002, Vol. 61, No. 11 (www.loc.gov, accessed 10th January 2014)

(11) William Logan, Kier Reeves, Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘difficult heritage’ , (Routledge, 2009), p. 3

(12) William Logan, Kier Reeves, Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘difficult heritage’ , (Routledge, 2009), p. 3

(13) Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage, Negotiation the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (Routledge, 2009), p. 1

(14) Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (Cromwell Press, 2006), p. 61

(15) Rebecca Knuth ‘To Extremists, Books are Trojan Horses’, History News Network (hnn.us/article/29272 accessed 16th November 2013)

(16) Teresa Stoppani, ‘The Architecture of Disaster’ in Space and Culture (2012), Vol. 15, No. 2, p. 135

(17) Martin Coward, ‘Against anthropocentrism: the destruction of the built environment as a distinct form of political violence’ in Review of International Studies (British International Studies Association, July 2006), Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 419-420

(18) Slavenka Drakulic, ‘Falling Down: A Mostar Bridge Elegy’, The New Republic (December 1993), p. 14-15 referenced in Martin Coward, ‘Against anthropocentrism: the destruction of the built environment as a distinct form of political violence’ in Review of International Studies (British International Studies Association, July 2006), Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 419-420

(19) Kelly Divine Thomas, ‘Aftershocks’, ARTnews, 11th January 2001, (www.artnews.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(20) Christopher Santarelli, ‘Thousands of Records, Irreplacable Historical Documents and Art Still Missing From 9/11’, The Blaze, 30th July 2011, (www.theblaze.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(21) Dan Barry and William K. Rashbaum, ‘Born of Hell, Lost After Inferno; Rodin Work From Trade Center Survived, and Vanished’, The New York Times, 20th May 2002, (www.nytimes.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(22) Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (Routledge, 2006), p. 44

(23) Karen Randell, ‘Speaking the Unspeakable: Invisibility and Trauma after 9/11’, Graham Coulter-Smith, Maurice Owen, Art in the Age of Terrorism (Paul Holbert Publishing, 2005), p. 196

(24) Setha M. Low, ‘Lessons from Imagining the World Trade Center Site: An Examination of Public Space and Culture’ in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, (American Anthropological Association, 2002), Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 401

(25) Dan Barry and William K. Rashbaum, ‘Born of Hell, Lost After Inferno; Rodin Work From Trade Center Survived, and Vanished’, The New York Times, 20th May 2002, (www.nytimes.com, accessed 1st February 2014)

(26) Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (Cromwell Press, 2006), p. 66

(27) John Berman, ‘Millions in Artwork Destroyed at WTC’, ABC News, 23rd December [Unknown Year], (www.abcnews.go.com, accessed 1st February 2014)