New Objectivity - 919

Narrator (m):

The changes to working life, not least the eight-hour day introduced in 1918, made new leisure activities accessible to broader strata of the population. Sports played a central role here. New playing fields were built, and soccer and rugby became occasions for large events. Boxing also experienced an enormous boom, for which Max Schmeling was responsible in Germany. His fights were broadcast live on the radio, and the still-young medium created its first star.

Narrator (f):

The height of enthusiasm for sports was the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936, which were used as propaganda by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party to present a positive image of the Nazi state. The painting Gerhard Keil of Dresden—who at this time was a member of the Reich Chamber of the Fine Arts—provided the appropriate paintings and turned the National Socialist worldview into art.

Narrator (m):

His painting Gymnasts of 1939 illustrates the ideological charge of the athletic male body in a highly suggestive way: the life-size figures run parallel to the monumental columned architecture and directly at the viewers, who are forced by the perspective to look up from below. The seemingly objective and sober depiction turns into heroization and pathos. Keil depicted bodies that had been brought into line and complete uniformity through selection and training. Their nakedness does not reveal any truths but is rather a distorted, racist image and part of the National Socialist self-presentation.