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2/10/2002

Staging the Third Reich

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown

Williams College Museum of Art to Host
''Staging the Third Reich: A Symposium on Art as Politics''
Thursday, October 3-Saturday, October 5, at the Williams College Museum of Art

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will host ''Staging the Third Reich: A Symposium on Art as Politics'' from Thursday, October 3 through Saturday, October 5, in conjunction with the exhibition Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler¹s Early Years in Vienna 1906-1913. During the symposium, leading scholars and writers will offer their insights into the central importance of the arts and stagecraft to Hitler and the artistic impulses at work in the Third Reich. As Peter Viereck observed in Metapolitics, the aesthetic ambitions of Hitler and the Nazi party elite were "originally far deeper than their political ambitions and were integral parts of their personalities."

Celebrated author Brigitte Hamann, whose book Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship inspired the exhibition, will deliver the keynote address Thursday, October 3, at 7 p.m. Hitler¹s Vienna is the acclaimed book that traces the artistic and political influences that Hitler experienced while living in Vienna as a young man. Hamann¹s address will take place in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall in the Bernhard Music Center, Williams College.

On Friday, October 4 at 2 p.m., three influential scholars in the field of history and cultural studies will each present papers based on recent research into the topic of staging the Third Reich. Manuela Hoelterhoff will present ³Hitler¹s Summer Seasons.² Hoelterhoff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose forthcoming book, also called Hitler¹s Summer Seasons, examines Hitler¹s devotion to opera. Jonathan Petropoulos will present ³Kunst über Alles? The Importance of Art for Understanding Adolf Hitler.² Petropoulos is the John Croul Chair in European History, Claremont McKenna College, and the author of Art as Politics in the Third Reich and The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. James E. Young will deliver a talk titled ³The Choreography of Nazi Power and the Aesthetics of Redemption.² Young is Professor and Chair, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust and At Memory¹s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. Following these presentations, Deborah Rothschild, curator of Prelude to a Nightmare, will moderate an open discussion among the participants. The presentations will take place in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall in the Bernhard Music Center, Williams College. A reception will follow at 5 p.m. at the museum.

To complete the program, on Saturday, October 5, German author Peter Roos will perform, for the first time in English, a chapter from his book Loving Hitler: A Novel of Sickness. ³Eva Braun and Me² offers a provocative fictional rumination about the life of Hitler¹s mistress. Roos ³resurrects² Eva Braun as an eighty-year-old woman who somehow escaped death. While she has experienced all of the facets of postwar life, she can never disassociate herself from the Führer, ³for he was her youth and her love.² This performance will begin at 8 p.m. in Goodrich Hall, Williams College.

All symposium events are free and open to the public. Advanced registration is not required, although seating for all events is limited. WCMA¹s exhibition Prelude to a Nightmare continues through October 27, 2002.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Jonathan Cannon, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178 WCMA@williams.edu
Williams College Museum of Art
15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2 MA 01267, Williamstown 413.597.2429

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