Time of the Gods

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Summary

While working on his Hercules Concept, director Lutz Dammbeck began to study the life and work of the German sculptor Arno Breker (1900-91). How could a highly talented sculptor who had met French ...

While working on his Hercules Concept, director Lutz Dammbeck began to study the life and work of the German sculptor Arno Breker (1900-91). How could a highly talented sculptor who had met French avant-garde artists in Paris in the 1920s, and whose works were first labeled as “degenerate art” become one of Adolf Hitler’s and Albert Speer’s preferred sculptors and protégé? In trying to find an answer, Dammbeck met with contemporaries and friends of Breker, including writers Roger Peyrefitte and Ernst Jünger, the West German art collector Peter Ludwig and the former decathlete Gustav Stührk, who posed as Breker’s model for a Nazi-commissioned sculpture in 1936. The film explores what transformations in power and politics do to art, how fascist symbols can regain their aesthetic innocence, and ponders how much opportunism can be found in “pure” art. It also explores questions of ethics and aesthetics and makes a valuable contribution to discussions of art and power.

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