![]() ![]() This sense of historical continuity with a German medieval military order is visually articulated in the illustrations that follow Scholz’s one-page essay that also amplifies this theme, starting with a photograph of the Magdeburg Rider, the oldest German equestrian statue (c.1240), representing Otto the Great, who unified German tribes into a single kingdom. An imperial Eagle sculpture (known in German as a Reichsadler) by Breker ‘greets’ the reader on the opening page, accompanied by a short extract of a January 1943 speech by Hitler in which he compared the mission of German soldiers fighting on the Eastern front to that of the Teutonic knights. ![]() The particular issue of Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich that inspired the title of Kiefer’s 1969 book opens and closes with photographs of works by Arno Breker, Hitler’s favoured sculptor. The translation symboles heroïques also appears as a caption for the photographs in For Jean Genet, indicating the connections between these book projects. The French translation in parentheses (‘ symboles heroïques’) on the cover of Kiefer’s Heroic Symbols book points both to the artist’s keen interest in the French language and to the fact that a French edition of this Nazi magazine was published in France during the German occupation. The same design of an imperial eagle bearing a swastika wrapped in an oak wreath, connected to a burning torch and the helmeted head of Athena/Minerva, was also the logo of the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibition), which was staged eight times from 1937 to 1944 in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich. The cover design since the first issue in January 1937, when the magazine was known as Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (in English The Art of the Third Reich the title was amended in 1939), was by Richard Klein, an artist of high standing in the National Socialist regime who was on the advisory board of the journal and who specialised in producing Nazi emblems, medals, trophies, stamps and all manner of ‘heroic symbols’. This was the official National Socialist arts magazine, edited by Alfred Rosenberg (and from 1943 with Scholz as Chief Editor), copies of which were owned by Kiefer’s father (figs.2 and 3). The title Heroic Symbols (fig.1) is derived from an article by the Nazi art theorist Robert Scholz that was published in the February 1943 issue of Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich (in English Art in the German Reich). ![]() The photographs in the ARTIST ROOMS collection owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland relate to both the Heroic Symbols and For Jean Genet books. There is a further version of the project that is divided into Heroic Symbols I and Heroic Symbols II. For instance, versions of Heroic Symbols can be found in the Würth Collection, Künzelsau, and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, as well as in private collections. Each book is unique: they were not published in an edition, although a few iterations do exist. Slightly different photographs of the Occupations performance were utilised in each of the two books. ![]() Both are particularly large, measuring more than two feet in height, and they possess a ‘low art’ appearance – crudely bound and akin to scrapbooks in the way that they juxtapose original photographs and small watercolours with found images taken from Nazi magazines. Some of the provocative Heroic Symbols photographs that Anselm Kiefer created to document his 1969 Occupations performance while a student at Karlsruhe were incorporated into two closely related artist books produced later that year: Heroic Symbols (Heroische Sinnbilder) and For Jean Genet (Für Jean Genet). ![]()
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