of the ‘eternal German,’” wrote historian George L. Mosse in Masses and
Man(Howard Fertig, 1980 ), and “those who preserve their basic nature
from all contamination with the passage of time.” The Nazis called this
“heroic sacrifice,” and the idealized images of men and boys giving their
lives for the leader were almost as common as the swastika itself. Those
who heroically sacrifice for any nation or ideal pass on their souls for what
is presumed to be a greater good, and are thus afforded the equivalent of
sainthood, with the visual tribute that comes with it.
But from where does the heroic image derive? Clearly, portrayals
in stone of Greek gods and Roman centurions, as well as Renaissance
paintings of noble kings and princes in robes and armor riding upon their
noble steeds gave rise to the paradigm. And official court portraits of
seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century monarchs also
influenced the modern stereotype. Frankly, it does not take a genius to
create a heroic image. A hero is one who rises above the ordinary and must
therefore appear to be extraordinary. Hence, age-old andcontemporary
visual lexicons of heroism are essentially the same the world over, barring
fashionable styles that connote specific periods. Realism is the primary
method, and this approach involves romanticizing and ultimately beatifying
those depicted in such a way that after the warts are removed and the
muscles are fleshed out, what remains is a heroic shell.
Soviet Socialist Realism was, however, more than a shell; it was a
shroud. Instituted in the late 1920 s as reaction to abstract Revolutionary art
that was deemed suspiciously perplexing to the masses, it became the
official language for representation of a system based on a sacrificing
proletariat. Official images—realistic painting or photomontage—showed
an elevated stature and forward-looking visage. At the 1939 New York
World’s Fair, “Joe Worker,” as he was known to Americans—a huge statue
of a laborer with muscular, rolled-up shirt-sleeved left arm raised to the
heavens, holding a red star—stood atop the monolithic Soviet pavilion,
representing the heroism of the state and its people. Inside hung scores of
blemish-free portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and the most
omnipresent of all, the nation’s absolute leader, Joe Stalin. Yet in the annals
of hero depiction, Stalin was clearly outdone by Adolf Hitler, Benito
Mussolini, and later Mao Tse-Tung.
The Führer Principal (or cult of the leader) on which Hitler
fashioned his rule demanded the distribution of a ubiquitous image, though
it varied from firm to benevolent, from statesman to god. In fact, one
poster portrays him as a Nordic knight replete with armor and flag. Hitler
was omnipotent in multi-storied billboards and wallet-sized snapshots.
Borrowing his guise from Imperial Roman history, he made sure his face
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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