8/11/2019 Hitler y el poder de la estetica- review.pdf
1/3
THE
HISTORIAN
studying
people's
religious beliefs. He
posits
that not everyone
had
a religious con-
version
in the sixteenth century that
would
make them convinced Protestants. Rather,
he suggests,
it would
be
better
to
analyze the ways in which people were
changed by
the new forms of
religious
worship
that were
imposed from
above.
What were the
politics of
reform
and reformation? How did the politics change the religious
beliefs
and practices of the
majority
of the
English? How
did
the
people, either elite or
common,
negotiate
religious change
and use it for their own purposes? All
of
his ques-
tions are
interesting. At
the beginning
and
end
of each
section
of his book, if
not at
the
beginning and end of each chapter, he informs the
reader
of why the revisionists
(i.e.,
Scarisbrick,
Haigh, and Duffy)
have
it
wrong.
This
reviewer
found
the
format
annoying and
at
times
wondered
if the
author
was simply setting up straw men to
demolish.
Perhaps
he
would
have
served
himself
better to show that
the revisionists
did
not
look
at
the entire
picture,
rather than
repeat
how
wrong
they
were.
Ethan H.
Shagan
is
the first
author
recently
to
emphasize
that
the
Reformation
was
framed by Cromwell, Henry VIII,
and
Edward VI's councils in
terms
not of heresy and
true
belief,
although preachers
may have used that language,
but
in terms
of political
obedience. How
did
the English,
a
people schooled in obedience, react to this change?
The
author
believes that any conservative
reaction and opposition to the
imposition
of
the royal supremacy or reform was doomed
because the
Catholics were
divided
among themselves-e.g., only a small group of
people objected
to
the royal supremacy,
and the Pilgrimage of Grace did not have
unified goals. He then
examines
how
the
people
took part
in,
and
profited from, the dissolution
of
the monasteries
and
chantries
and what
the
latter
did
to their belief in purgatory and intercessory prayer.
The
author does
occasionally say things that led
this
reviewer
to
wonder
if he
understands
some of the religious material.
In
commenting on a parish
protest
over
the
changes
of 1536,
he relates the story
of a
young
man who stuck a piece of pudding
in
a priest's
mouth, rendering him
ritually
unclean and preventing him from per-
forming
his
duties (58).
The
issue is
not
whether the priest
was ritually impure
or
not the
6
nly
instance of ritual impurity
from
medieval religion that
comes
to mind
is
childbirth, and even that
is
open to
discussion-but breaking a fast imposed by
both tradition and
canon
law.
Receiving
communion after breaking
the
fast was
a
mortal
sin.
In
analyzing the
differences
between Catholic
and Protestant
positions
on
the
effect
of the death of
Jesus
on original sin and postbaptismal actual
sin,
the
author
discusses
Catholics
and
venial sin,
but
not
mortal
sin.
Despite such reservations, the
book should be
read
by
anyone interested in the reli-
gious history
of Tudor England.
Xavier University John J. LaRocca
Hitler and
the
Power
of
Aesthetics.
By
Frederic Spotts. (Woodstock
and New
York:
Overlook
Press, 2003. Pp.
xxii, 456. $37.50.)
892
8/11/2019 Hitler y el poder de la estetica- review.pdf
2/3
BOOK
REVIEWS
the
real
legitimation
of his
achievements
as
a
statesman
Hitler,
1973,
p. 528).
Echoing
this
view,
Frederic
Spotts,
a
former
American
career diplomat,
argues
that Hitler
was convinced
that
the ultimate
objective
of
political
effort
should
be
artistic
achievement
(xi).
The
author
relies
primarily
on
published
and
unpublished
sources
that document
Hitler's
comments
on art
and
on the
diaries
and
memoirs
of
Joseph
Goebbels
and
others
from
Hitler's
former
entourage.
For
specialists,
the
book
covers
familiar
terrain.
Still,
the
work
is
valuable
for
both
the
general reader
and
scholars
because it
is the most
comprehensive
and
competent
single-volume
summary
of
Hitler's
artistic
views
and
his attempts
to
implement
them
during
the
Third
Reich.
Spotts
agrees
with
contemporary
observers,
like Albert
Speer, and
biographers,
such
as
Joachim
Fest,
that
Hitler
was interested in
power
only
as
a
means
for
achiev-
ing
his cultural
ambitions
(15).
The
author
concentrates
on Hitler's
efforts to
create
a
culture-state
in
which
Germans
were
to
listen
to music
he
liked, attend
operas
he
loved,
see
paintings
and
sculptures
he
collected
and
admire
the
buildings
he
con-
structed
(401).
Spotts
describes
his taste
in
the
visual
arts
and
music
as reactionary.
However,
in
architecture,
Hitler
was
an
eclectic
functionalist
who
eventually
accepted
modern
technology,
including
skyscrapers.
The
author
recounts
in great
detail
Hitler's
unsuccessful
efforts
to
create quality
Nazi
music, paintings,
and
sculp-
tures.
Hitler
was
able
to denigrate
modern
art and
purge
Jews
from the
artistic
world
in
Germany,
but
he
realized
himself
that the
Nazi
era produced
no
great
painters.
And
even though
he
did less
harm
to music
than he
did to
painting
or
sculpture,
there
was
no
music
revolution
either.
In time,
Hitler hoped
that the
Bayreuth
Wagner
festivals
would
Wagnerize
Germans.
Hitler
failed
to produce
great
Nazi
works
in music
and
the
visual
arts,
but according
to
Spotts,
he had
at least
the
minimal
ability and
the
maximal
power to
construct
the buildings
he wanted
(335). But
his
major
urban
reconstruction
plans
were
not
realized
except,
perhaps,
in
the
Autobahn
(highways),
which the
author
claims
Hitler
saw as
aesthetic
monuments
(386).
Spotts's
discussion
of Hitler's
artistic
tastes and
plans
is illuminating
and
interest-
ing,
but he
does
not offer
a satisfactory
explanation
of how
genocide
and
culture
were
connected
in
Hitler's
mind.
The author
acknowledges
that
Hitler's
two
major
goals
were
racial
genocide
and
the establishment
of
a
state
in
which the
arts
were
supreme
(30).
And
he
notes
that
race
established
an
indivisible link
between
his cultural
and
political
views
(16).
Yet
Spotts maintains
that
racial
genocide
and the
military
dom-
ination
of
Europe
did
not
grow
out of
his aesthetic
ideals
(11).
Still,
the reader
is
left
with
a valuable
discussion
of Hitler's
artistic
visions, and
that, of
course, was
the
author's
primary
goal.
Mississippi
State University
Johnpeter
Horst
Grill
Univer-
893
8/11/2019 Hitler y el poder de la estetica- review.pdf
3/3
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: [Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics]
SOURCE: Historian 66 no4 Wint 2004
WN: 0436002994070
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it
is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in
violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:
http://www.troyst.edu/organization/phialphatheta
Copyright 1982-2004 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.