We have learned so far that the Völkischer Beobachter vigorously promoted the notion that great cultural figures in the Western tradition were of Germanic origins, politically engaged, grounded in the Volk, and, especially, anti-Semitic – going as far in this last respect as to claim that in their work and lives, these masters had indeed prefigured Hitler’s goals of seeking out and combating the Jew in all branches of cultural and artistic life. In this chapter, we will hear what the paper’s contributors said about significant cultural figures who were actually Jewish, and, as such, embodied the worst Nazi fears. To the Völkischer Beobachter, these creators represented the treacherous threat of Jews who had insinuated themselves into German culture and then worked to undermine it.

One problem Nazi cultural critics faced, of course, was that the presence and influence of Jewish artists, writers, and composers in the Western tradition was indisputable. In an effort to come to terms with this fact, Nazi cultural critics resorted to tactics of racial stereotyping that echoed many of the themes of cultural anti-Semitism that predecessors such as Richard Wagner and Houston Stewart Chamberlain had percolated in the second half of the nineteenth century – as filtered through Hitler’s own interpretations. And among these themes, the most useful for its ability to explain away the fact that Jews had assimilated the German tradition of Bildung was the assertion that, lacking their own culture, Jewish artists functioned as little more than cynical, opportunistic imitators of their supposed superiors. As Hitler explained: