Modernist Neo‐classicism and Antiquity in the Political Religion of Nazism: Adolf Hitler as Poietes of the Third Reich 1

Abstract The debate surrounding the relation between Hitler’s interest in architectural neo‐classicism and his reception of antiquity has often proceeded from the assumption of a deep nostalgia for a (deeply mythicised) classical ‘Aryan’ past and an instinctive drive to use anti‐modernist art for solely propagandistic ends. Whereas some have attempted to invert this causal relationship, the present study situates Hitler’s artistic passion within his ‘biopolitical’ vision of the new Germany, cleansed of all that was deemed degenerate (entartet) and unassimilable within the national community (gemeinschaftsunfähig). Through an analysis of the Third Reich’s vast civic building programmes, which takes into account Hitler’s personal discourse on the ancient past, we will show how both elements, that is Hitler’s ‘modernised’ neo‐classicism and his view on antiquity, can be seen as essentially complementary, and integral to his political programme. We will do so by firstly presenting an overview of the most typical examples of Hitler and Nazism’s use of an idiosyncratic version of neo‐classically inspired civic architecture. After this we will focus on the Führer’s ‘artistic’ persona, both in the sense of his love for the arts, especially those referring to the formal language of antiquity, as in the sense of his biopolitical conception of Nazi life as a ‘work of art in progress’. Finally, Hitler’s vision of artistic renaissance is located within a discourse of racial renewal which embraced the past and future within a this‐worldly ‘eternity’.