arts in exile

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• 27 November 1936

  Art criticism is banned
  Following orders by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels the art criticism usual until then is banned and replaced by the Art Report (Kunstbericht). Only so-called “art editors” who write with “the sincerity of heart and the ethos of the National Socialists” in line with Goebbel’s orders are allowed to write such reports.
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  Honory doctorate certificate of Thomas Mann, University of Bonn, 1919

  Universitätsarchiv Bonn, courtesy of Frido Mann

  2 December 1936

  Writer Thomas Mann is stripped of German citizenship along with his honorary doctorate from Bonn University.
  Before that, Thomas Mann, after quite a long period of restraint in political matters, publicly expresses his renunciation of Nazi Germany in the Neue Züricher Zeitung. His brother Heinrich Mann and his son Klaus Mann have already been expatriated.
• 26 January 1937

  The German press is instructed not to publish reports on the exiled writer Thomas Mann.
• 8 February 1937

  The police in Prague ban Lion Feuchtwanger from public speaking. In so doing they hope to prevent a campaign by the Nazis.
• 26 February 1937

  The exile film Pygmalion by German director Ludwig Berger premieres in the Netherlands. 
• 1937

  George Grosz, defamed by the Nazis as a "degenerate" artist, receives a Guggenheim Fellowship in the US.
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  Portrait of Pope Pius XI

  Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-01279, photographer: Pahl, Georg

  14 March 1937

  Pope Pius XI issues the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge 
  In this public circular letter to the Catholic bishops in Germany, Pius XI sharply criticises the Nazi regime. The Nazis react with repressive measures against the clergy.
• 20 April 1937

  Literary competition of the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom
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  Diffamatory poster showing "degenerate artists". It shows works of the artists Ludwig Gies, Kurt Schwitters, Emil Nolde, Eugen Hoffmann and Otto Dix, September 1937.

  Bundesarchiv, Bild: Plak 003-009-065, graphic designer: not stated

  30 Juni 1937

  As part of a campaign against "degenerate art", Joseph Goebbels orders the confiscation of around 12,000 prints and 5,000 paintings and sculptures from 101 museums.
• July 1937

  Czechoslovakia has accepted 9,000 refugees from Germany to date.