Curious Callback--Episode #54: True Crime/Fine Art: Otto Dix and the Plot to Kill Hitler (Season 6, Episode 1)

March 1, 2021 Jennifer Dasal

Enjoy this month’s Curious Callback episode, all about a “degenerate” painter much-hated by Hitler and fingered for his near-murder. Did Otto Dix plot to kill Hitler?

This is an episode that originally aired on September 30, 2019.

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Episode Credits

Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Additional editing by Hannah Roberts. Theme music by Alex Davis. Social media assistance by Emily Crockett and Caroline Haller. Additional writing and research by Grace Harlow.

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

Additional music credits

Recommended Reading

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Links and further resources

Moma.org: Otto Dix artist page

Forbes: Why It's Unethical To Go Back In Time And Kill Baby Hitler

The New York Times: An Artist Who Stayed In Hitler's Germany

The Art Story: Otto Dix’s Artworks

Daily Art Magazine: The ‘Degenerate’ World of Otto Dix

Episode Transcript

In 2015, one of the coolest films of the 1980s--or, dare I say it, OF ALL TIME--was being lauded for the 30th anniversary of its release in 1985. That movie was Back to the Future, the Robert Zemeckis-directed, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd-starring film that brought time travel and the DeLorean to the masses, all to a, like, totally bitchin’ Huey Lewis and the News soundtrack. But in connection with this anniversary-- and to link it to “Back to the Future Day,” where Marty McFly arrives at the present time-- October 21, 2015--the New York Times Magazine did something a bit weird and pretty gross. On its Twitter feed, they shared the results of a poll to its masses of hundreds of thousands of followers. The poll asked one simple question, and I quote: “If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” (And, for the record, the majority-- at 42%--said yes. 30% answered no and a final 28% said they weren’t sure.)

Admittedly this isn’t a new question: variations on this morality problem have been floating around for decades and seems to be a popular one with late-night partiers. But it was a funky thing to ask when contemplating the cheery, good-humored film to which it was loosely connected. And as Twitter is wont to do, Twitter went nuts for this. First came the jokey responses: “I’m interested, but do you have any non-baby-killing packages?” or “If this means dress up like a giant baby and kill an adult Hitler, then yes, for private reasons.” And then came the think pieces-- first from the science community, who declared the impossibility of the physics--and metaphysics of time travel, and the grandfather paradox would be in play-- that oft-told theory that if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he has children, you then wouldn’t be born and couldn't have gone back in time and killed your grandfather. As an article in Forbes noted, quote “The same paradox occurs with killing Hitler. If you eliminate baby Führer and prevent the rise of the Nazis, then you create a world where WWII didn't occur, and thus you have no reason to travel back in time. Thus, Hitler survives to adulthood and we're back where we started.” Unquote. And next came the morality think pieces-- why it would be unethical to go back in time and kill baby Hitler when you should instead be attempting to change his environment, for example. Suddenly, a rather silly question became a much bigger one-- but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Hitler still lived to adulthood, nothing will change that. But if the New York Times Magazine poll proves anything, it’s that nearly half of its readers want that kind of retroactive vigilante justice, a revolutionary to come in and wipe out a terrible dictator.

Well, what if I told you that one of the 20th century’s most fascinating painters was once thought to have attempted just that, during his and Hitler’s own lifetime? Naturally we know it didn’t actually work out this way-- but it shows just how powerful-and scary--some politicians think art can be.

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, crazier, or more fun than you can imagine. In season six, we are uncovering the dastardly deeds of several of art history’s famed artists, including their involvement--or participation--in murder most foul. Today’s topic-- did famed German Expressionist painter Otto Dix plot to kill Adolf Hitler? This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was born on December 2, 1891 in Untermhaus, Germany, now a part of the city of Gera in the central German state of Thuringia. His father, Franz, was a mold maker who worked at an iron foundry, and his mother, Louise, worked as a seamstress, though she also wrote poetry. As such, both his parents exposed young Otto to the arts at an early age. And if you’ve listened to ArtCurious episodes in the past, then this next part will sound familiar to you: Otto Dix first began exhibiting an inclination towards the arts while a young boy, in elementary school--and under the keen eye and support of his teachers, he took up drawing. At age 10, he began spending time with his cousin, a painter named Fritz Amann, watching him work and occasionally modeling for his cousin’s compositions, and he was just knocked out by all of it: impressed with the older artist’s work and studio, he determined that he himself would also become a painter. By 1909, at age 18, he enrolled in the Dresden Academy of Arts and Craft-- but at that time, the academy wasn’t a formal art school, but instead focused on a more “craft- oriented” education, aiming more towards the applied arts, or decoration and design for more practical or utilitarian items rather than the quote-unquote “fine” stuff that we’re used to seeing in museums today. I know. I think the delineation between arts and crafts is pretty uncool and the line between the two is blurry today, and I’m thankful for that-- but all of this to say that Dix wasn’t getting what he really wanted at the Dresden Academy. He wanted to paint. Really, really paint. And so, he had to teach himself how to do so.

Otto Dix taught himself how to paint by studying Old masterworks from the Dutch, Italian, and German traditions-- taking in everything from the Italian Renaissance to Dutch and Flemish Baroque art and beyond, absorbing their methods and techniques of paint layering, color theory, and perspective. He also valued the work of the Post-Impressionists, particularly Vincent Van Gogh, after he saw an exhibition of Van Gogh’s works in 1913. Young Otto was drawn to Van Gogh’s luminous, colorful brushstrokes. But the work that had the longest-lasting effect on Dix’s own works of art was done by the German Expressionists of the Die Brücke group, based in Dresden since 1905. Die Brücke, or The Bridge Group, originally consisted of famed painters like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde, and Max Pechstein, among others. Like their French semi-counterparts, the Fauves, they loved the use of arbitrary and unnatural colors to heighten the emotion of a scene, as well as the influence of non-Western arts, then identified with the now-pejorative term “primitivism.” But unlike the Fauves, Die Brücke’s images could be stark and disturbing, even violent, focusing less on the natural world and more on the corruption and alienation of the urban environment at the dawn of the 20th century. This was huge to Otto-- and this dark and unvarnished look at life would become a hallmark for him as his career progressed and one that seemed almost inevitable after the dawn of World War I.

When World War I erupted in 1914, Dix, like many others, eagerly volunteered for service and was drafted into a field artillery regiment, eventually becoming a machine gunner on the frontlines of battles in France. And what he saw there was horrendous-- fighting so brutal, so gruesome, that he could no longer comprehend the reasons for it. He was wounded in the line of duty several times, too, which did nothing to further encourage his early enthusiasm for the war effort. The only consolation he had was his art, which he kept up while away at war. I total, he would create approximately 600 drawings and gouaches, a type of opaque watercolor, portraying the brutality of his experiences in the war. In this way, he was very similar to many of the combat artists of World War II, which we discussed in Episode #23, during our second season.

After the war, Otto Dix was determined more than ever to return to Dresden to complete his artistic education, and as the decades progressed, he remained ever devoted to experimentation and adoption of new styles of work. Many of his paintings from the 1920s, for example, synthesize his interest in knowledge in multiple modes all at once: Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and more, all anchored with the layered-paint techniques gleaned from his beloved Old Masters. But his interest in depicting the realities of the world as he knew it remained at the forefront, bolstered by his wartime experiences. This determination placed him in good company with other artists who thought and worked similarly, and often with a political bent in mind-- together, this group would rally under the name of a new movement called Neue Sachlichkeit, which roughly translates to “the New Objectivity.” No more of the obsession of that expressionistic form and color. Now, it was all about a lack of sentimentality and a new devotion to realism, even if Neue Sachlichkeit works aren’t realist the same way a Courbet painting is, for example. In fact, it’s kinda hard to pinpoint a real through-line between the works of the various Neue Sachlichkeit artists, who included not only Otto Dix but also Max Beckmann and George Grosz, among others. There’s no identifiable single style, a formal connection between these artists-- instead, it was their intention to objectively represent the truth of their times that links them. The so-called Weimar Republic-- the name given to the German state during the postwar period until 1933-- was a messy time, fueled by hyperinflation and food shortages and laws that were little policed. Neue Sachlichkeit artists obsessed over the Weimar republic’s political and social turmoil, the corruption endemic to bureaucracy, and the alienation that endemic to the urban landscape.

Not that it was all bad. The cities in which these artists dwelled were also pushing the boundaries of tradition and freedom, and some of Dix’s most famous works stem from this fruitful, strange period. Take, for example, one of his most famous works, a portrait of the journalist Sylvia von Harden, from 1926. Legend has it that Dix chased von Harden down the street demanding that she sit for a portrait, exclaiming, “I must paint you! You are representative of an entire epoch!” She relented, of course, and the resulting work is unforgettable. Von Harden sits in an imagined cafe table in a garishly pink room, holding a cigarette in one hand and practically clawing at her own red-and-black-checked dress with the other. She grimaces, baring her teeth, and wearing a monocle, a strange affect, as she stares into the distance. She’s pale and dons a nice dark lip color, but also sports a short, boyish hairdo, and her long nose and rolling nylons do nothing to enhance her appeal from a traditional standpoint. But maybe that was the whole reason to paint her-- she’s both man and woman, androgynous and fascinating, both enticing and strange. She’s the Weimar Republic itself, free and uninhibited and straying from tradition, but also unnerving and unappealing-- she’s also an art historical icon, and Bob Fosse even planted a little tribute to her in his classic 1972 film Cabaret. And it was exactly this painting, and others from this time period, that would ultimately get Otto Dix-- and a lot of his fellow artists-- in a lot of trouble.

That’s coming up next, right after this break.

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a radical shift across the arts--and life in general-- had begun to take place. Visually-speaking, artists were less enthused about presenting the world realistically and naturalistically, and moved, like Otto Dix did, towards more abstraction, expression, and towards psychological and intimate portraits. The painting of Sylvia von Harden is this perfect example-- God knows she didn’t actually walk down the street looking like that, with that scary monster hand and bulbous knees. Otto Dix heightened her appearance to allow for us to have a more emotional experience. It was exciting, new, and dangerous-- and it became more appealing and more popular to audiences in the 1920s and 1930s, as more audiences began to be exposed to such works, and as institutions throughout the world began showing and collecting works by such experimenters as Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, and more. To some, these artists and their works were edgy. But to others, they were radical. And radical wasn’t always good.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler rose to power when he was appointed German chancellor, and he immediately declared war on what he called “cultural degeneracy.” Anything that was deemed “too modern” was effectively destroyed-- books and paintings were burned, artists and musicians fired from their positions, museums parted from some of their prize collections. Under Hitler’s orders over the next few years, over 20,000 works of art were removed from state-owned museums throughout Germany-- essentially dismantling much of these collections and re-hanging and curating around a more social-realist style of art, one that Hitler himself found much more favorable. It was propaganda and censorship at its aesthetic height, intended to reveal modern artists as “incompetents, cheats, and madmen….chatterboxes, dilettantes and art swindlers,” according to Hitler himself. These artists, and their works, were degenerate, he said, calling them works that quote, “Degenerate art was defined as works that "insult German feeling, or destroy or confuse natural form or simply reveal an absence of adequate manual and artistic skill.” Unquote. And the best way to prove this stated inferiority? By having an art exhibition that made this “degeneracy” perfectly clear, naturally.

To be fair, the show that would become known as the “Degenerate Art Exhibition” was an afterthought. Hitler had originally declared a wish to hold a show about great German Art--the kind of art that Hitler and his cronies would actually enjoy and promote. But when the jury showed the results of the call to artists to Hitler, he hated it-- it wasn’t very good, to be honest. And so, to partially save face as a member of the jury, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda suggested an exhibition of the “bad stuff” alongside “the good stuff.” And thus, the Great German Exhibition and the Degenerate Art Exhibition were produced concurrently, open to the public from July through November of 1937.

This is one of those big moments in art history of the 20th century, a huge show that became a sensation. In the first six weeks after the exhibition opened in Munich, over one million people crowded into the dark, dense galleries to view the nearly 700 works of art meant to quote “educate” the public on the art of decay and as cultural documents of the decadent work of Bolsheviks and Jews,” unquote. Insanely harsh criticisms were lobbed onto works by everyone from Georg Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, and, of course, Otto Dix, and some non-German artists were also brought into the fold as arbiters of degeneracy, such as Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Marc Chagall. It was a convenient way to link any modern artist to the arbitrary enemy list-- if you were Jewish, you were out. If you were French, you were out. Gay? A woman? Disabled? Gone, gone, gone. Those artists were seen as genetically inferior and mentally incompetent, and all of society’s supposed ills could be placed directly on their shoulders. And Otto Dix, who had eight of his artworks confiscated and then presented in the Degenerate Art Exhibition, was a big culprit.

Admittedly, the 1930s hadn’t been going well for Otto Dix, especially once Hitler came to power in 1933. Under Hitler’s orders to remove anyone considered “culturally degenerate” from positions of power or influence, Dix lost his job as a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he had been working since 1927, and though he tried to keep under the radar, his socially-conscious and critical subject matter--along with that oh-so-treacherous modernist style-- ruffled fascist feathers. The Nazis forbade him to exhibit his works in Germany, and they ultimately confiscated approximately 260 of his works, calling them “immoral.” Hitler, of course, hated his work, as he did the other members of Neue Sachlichkeit, and targeted him as one of the baddies to keep an eye upon. So Dix became part of that infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition, and legend has it that when Hitler himself first gazed upon one of Dix’s works at the Degenerate show, he said, quote, “It is a pity one cannot lock up people like that.” unquote. That was bad enough. But two years later, Otto Dix got fingered for something even worse: an assassination attempt on Hitler himself.

On November 8, 1939, Hitler was visiting a Munich beer hall, a location he attended every year, to give a rousing political speech about Germany’s progress in the early days of World War Two and about the incompetence of the country’s enemies. Thirteen minutes into the speech, something huge happened-- a bomb exploded in the beer hall, causing a huge amount of damage, innumerable injuries, and eight deaths. The beer hall’s ceiling completely collapsed right at the spot where hit had been standing. But he was no longer there because, according to reports, Hitler had cut his speech shorter than usual, eager to head back to Berlin and carry on with his wartime missions and planning. So Hitler survived, and in the process, a huge manhunt was underway to find the culprit. And one of the people immediately suspected of the crime was Otto Dix.

Dix, as the Nazis assured themselves, was lethal, unstable, and, given the fact that they had robbed him of his livelihood, obviously pissed about his life under Nazi rule. So it was assumed that he had a very, very good reason to want to kill Hitler. And so Dix was arrested almost immediately, questioned and placed in jail. It seemed like Otto Dix was done for, that his life was effectually over, following this attempt on Hitler’s life. But two weeks later, he was released after the real perpetrator of the explosion had been captured at the Swiss border, alongside ample proof of his involvement. The real would-be assassin was a 36-year-old carpenter named Georg Elser, an incredible character in his own right. And his planning for this attempt was a year in the making, according to the interrogation transcripts that surfaced in the 1960s. After experimenting with various explosives in his hometown of Swabia in Southern Germany-while working at an armaments firm, which provided a good cover story-- Elser began working at the beer hall where Hitler made his annual pilgrimage. And this is fascinating-- as the beer hall prepared to close for the night, Elser would hide himself away, and after the last workers and patrons had left for the evening, he would sneak out and work all night in order to carve out the right space for the bomb’s placement under the hall’s stage. And so it went, for a year, until all of his preparations missed Hitler by a mere 13 minutes.

In the transcripts of the Nazi interrogations of Georg Elser, Elser admitted-- and the Nazis confirmed-- that he had acted alone. He wasn’t part of a bigger group of assassins, and had no accomplices, though, for a while, Otto Dix was assumed to be connected to him. But why? Really, it appears that it was nothing more than a case of “rounding up the usual suspects,” of blaming an individual, or the type of person, you think would be guilty of such a crime. Hitler despised Otto Dix, and his knowing quote from the Degenerate Show--about wanting to lock up someone like Dix--makes it all too clear that this was a simple act of hatred and prejudice. The Nazis had the chance to arrest Dix not because he had planned the assassination attempt, but because they could, and it was a great opportunity to get rid of an assumed enemy, one whose fascinating paintings and drawings were viewed as pointed modernist threats to the Fuhrer’s goals. Dix had no plans to kill Hitler, and wasn’t involved whatsoever in Elser’s failed attempt, but the chance to hold him under lock and key, even if for two weeks instead of in perpetuity, was probably viewed as a good scare tactic, at the very least. But it didn’t work. Throughout the war- even before his arrest-- Dix did something amazing. He stayed in Germany, and kept painting. Sure, he toned things down a bit so that he didn’t outright provoke Hitler’s continued ire, but he didn’t leave Germany, didn’t become a part of that huge exiled brain trust of creatives and intellectuals who escaped fascism for Great Britain or the United States or beyond. And even at the height of World War II, when it looked like things were dire, he didn’t budge. He was conscripted into joining the Nazi’s Volksstrum (or the People’s militia), and he ended up being captured by the French and became a prisoner of war. Even during this time-- he continued to find ways to paint and sketch. After his release in 1946, he did something incredible. He returned to Germany, his messy, war-torn home, and painted again. How ballsy, how unflinching, how modern. How very Otto Dix.

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Grace Harlow. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com, and social media help is by Emily Crockett and Natalie Broyhill. Our production and editorial services are provided by Kaboonki. Video. Content. Ideas. Learn more at K-A-B-double O-N-K-I dot com. Additional editing help is by Hannah Roberts. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. please visit Anchorlightraleigh.com.

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. We’re a fully independent podcast, and we rely on sponsors and donations to keep us going, so if you enjoy this show and have the means, please consider giving $10 to help this show, and thank you for your kindness. And if you don’t have money to give, that’s okay! You can help our show as well by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen-- believe me, it makes a huge difference and helps new listeners tune in. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod.

Check back in two weeks as we continue to explore the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in the true crime realm of art history.