While the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937 has been studied extensively, its Nazi counterpart has rarely been the central focus of analysis. Ines Schlenker has unearthed a wealth of archival material that sheds new light on the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (GDK) and its role in shaping visual arts in the Third Reich. Rather than repeat the well-worn observation that the arts served as an ideal medium for Nazi propaganda, she considers the annual exhibition as a national marketplace for approved artists.

Schlenker begins by focusing on the site of the GDK, the House of German Art. She explains how the Nazis adapted traditions associated with the Munich Glaspalast to legitimate their new museum as part of Germany's cultural heritage. As the leading venue for the visual arts in Munich, the Glaspalast's destruction by fire in 1931 was widely mourned, yet debates over its rebuilding went unresolved until 1933 when Hitler undertook the project. The House of German Art thus became an early example of Hitler's ability to address failures attributed to the Weimar Republic. More importantly, the museum served to connect National Socialism to Munich artistic traditions which, along with the so-called Munich style, became national models to be emulated and celebrated at the annual GDK. Schlenker's analysis of the tensions and benefits attendant in elevating local practices from Munich to the national level is extremely fine and compelling.

It is through her analysis of the GDK as a national art market, however, that Schlenker really contributes new insights to the field. The German art market never recovered from the Great War, and artists suffered greatly during the Depression. The Third Reich promised economic relief and prosperity to worthy artists, but the Nazis never realized their goal of providing pensions or other social welfare benefits to artists. Instead, as Schlenker details, the Third Reich supported artists primarily through government commissions, awards, professorships, and the GDK annual sales exhibition. The GDK did not simply exhibit the approved style. It identified the approved artists, helped them market their works, and then provided a reliable pool of artists from which the Nazis could award contracts, prizes, and honorary titles. The reputation as a GDK exhibitor made careers and, while certainly a minority, these painters prospered financially and professionally. Schlenker marshals her evidence well to make this argument and illustrates with a case study of the little-remembered painter, Fritz Halberg-Krauss.

Those artists who exhibited routinely at the GDK, securing high prices and winning professional acclaim in the process, became what Schlenker calls court artists for the Third Reich. Through exhibition records, she identifies a core group of 197 artists who exhibited in at least seven of the eight shows. These were the artists patronized by Nazi officials and especially Hitler, the exhibit's leading patron of the arts. For example, in 1938 he purchased more than forty percent of the works sold at the GDK. Hitler's favorite artists commanded stellar prices, and his buying practices sparked dramatic and consistent price increases at the annual exhibition sales. While she is careful to account for other reasons for price increases, Schlenker demonstrates the impact Hitler had on the art market as its premier patron.

Schlenker's tendency to borrow nineteenth-century concepts such as court artist and patron of the arts does, however, lead her astray. She repeatedly argues that “the GDK served as a means of creating a national identity” (p. 226). True, but it was not the national identity of the older variety from the previous century. For Schlenker, National Socialism was at root reactionary and sought to recapture a lost, premodern world. The relationship between modernity, conservatism, and Nazism certainly remains an open question, but Schlenker regards the modernist aspects of the Third Reich mostly as a facade for antimodern goals. As a result, she overlooks the radical, new nature of National Socialism. Indeed, Nazi ideology is largely absent in this work. There is virtually no discussion at all about the racial function of art. Antisemitic policies at the GDK are also barely mentioned; the elimination of Jewish artists from the art market is just briefly noted. Certainly I do not mean to fault Schlenker for not writing a book she never intended to, but her silence with regard to National Socialist ideology and the role of the arts to promote a racial agenda does not serve her well. The GDK, operating as Hitler's salon, did more than reshape German national identity; it promoted a National Socialist identity and in the process, legitimized a racialist imperial mission.

That said, however, there is much to recommend in this work. Schlenker argues persuasively for a new understanding of the centrality of the GDK as a national art market. The details she recovers regarding the House of German Art, the GDK, its artists, and its leading patron are important and noteworthy. The book's appendix lists artists and works exhibited most regularly and detail Hitler's purchases from 1937 through 1944. There are also thirty-six plates of illustrations, some in color, that provide visual support for references in the text. Meticulous notes and a detailed bibliography further demonstrate the scholarship that informs this work. Specialists and graduate students will especially benefit from this work, but it merits attention from all those interested in the Nazis' leading annual art exhibition.