How jazz became an act of defiance in Nazi Germany
Key takeaways
- The Nazis denounced jazz music as "degenerate art," despite its widespread popularity in Germany.
- https://p.dw.com/p/5Dg Yl Josephine Baker performing at the opening of her own bar in Berlin in 1928, just a few years before the Nazis would sieze power Image: TT/IMAGOAdvertisement.
- In big cities like Berlin, teeming with speakeasies, cabarets and hedonistic nightlife, a radically new genre of music became immensely popular.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
The Nazis denounced jazz music as "degenerate art," despite its widespread popularity in Germany. Amid crackdowns on freedom of expression, groups of jazz-loving teenagers formed the Swing Youth in rebellion.
https://p.dw.com/p/5Dg Yl Josephine Baker performing at the opening of her own bar in Berlin in 1928, just a few years before the Nazis would sieze power Image: TT/IMAGOAdvertisement. The interwar Weimar Republic period is often referred to as a "Golden Age" of culture and creativity in Germany. It was a time when groundbreaking movements, from Bauhaus architecture and experimental cinema to avant-garde art and theater, flourished against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and extreme political polarization.
In big cities like Berlin, teeming with speakeasies, cabarets and hedonistic nightlife, a radically new genre of music became immensely popular. Jazz, which emerged from African American communities in the Deep South, was first brought to Germany by pioneering artists from the US, London and Paris after World War I.