Alfons Zeileis 1930-1945
Once again, Alfons Zeileis' artistic activity collapsed. There are only two paintings in his estate from 1931 to 1933 inclusive. The world economic crisis was possibly only one reason for this slump in productivity. During this time, his wife Elisabeth received an inheritance. With this money as a basis and with an additional loan, the Zeileis couple bought a plot of land in Hambach near the Green wonder and built a house there.
In 1932, daughter Anneliese joined the 1st grade of the Grammer school where her father was an art teacher. Alfons Zeileis joined the NSDAP in 1932 because he believed their economic promises in particular. The principal of the grammar school later wrote: "Professor Alfons Zeileis joined the NSDAP on March 1, 1932. I am convinced that it was idealism that prompted him to take this step. Even if Mr. Zeileis was guided by a great error, I still respect his attitude much more than that of the countless opportunists who joined the party in the spring of 1933 because they wanted to secure themselves."
According to NSDAP circular no. 49/36 dated April 1, 1936, civil servants who left the party could expect to be removed from office. For Alfons Zeileis, this would have meant the loss of his house, which was mortgaged, and the economic ruin of his family. With the National Socialists' seizure of power, all organisations were brought into line. The APK was dissolved and integrated into the Reichskammer Kunst (RKK). "The official building and art ethos of the Third Reich aimed for monumentality, classicism and craftsmanship. All insecurity on earth was to be eliminated for all time through the hierarchical order of ideas, things and people.
The authoritarian Führer principle applied in the one, single party and all its branches, in every authority and private firm made up of "Gefolgschaftsführer" and "followers", in every club and in every tenement barracks." "The Nazi style was a means to an end - namely, to a visual realisation of the authoritarian ideas of the party hierarchy and the leadership class, which, as the guardians of the Reich myth and racial unity, of the will to achieve and military power, wanted to prepare and guarantee the domination of the peoples of Europe.
Gigantomania and brutal form, splendour of material and figural volume were to demonstratively substantiate the omnipotence inwardly and outwardly. The staging was total, its style totalitarian". (from Reinhardt Müller Mehlis, Art in the Third Reich)
In his speech at the opening of the House of German Art, Adolf Hitler spoke:
"Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism and so on have nothing to do with our German people. For all these terms are neither old nor are they modern, but they are simply the stilted stammerings of people to whom God has denied the grace of a truly artistic talent and given instead the gift of babbling or deception."
Paintings by all the renowned German Expressionists, the painters of "Brücke" and "Blauer Reiter", Chagall and Max Beckmann were removed from German museums.
Alfons Zeileis was now also a member of the RKK, a lanky man of fragile health who had not survived his first year in the First World War heroically, but had ended up in hospital. A painter whose pictures were rather impressionistic or expressionistic, in any case not heroic, monumental or totalitarian. Fortunately, as a teacher he was not dependent on the sale of paintings as was the case with his freelance colleagues.
Some only became really successful after the seizure of power, such as his APK colleague Emil "Elk" Eber, from whom Adolf Hitler himself acquired some pictures.
Alfons Zeileis painted now and then after the National Socialists seized power. One of his favourite motifs was his daughter Anneliese. He also began to work on studies and paintings of the crucifixion of Christ and other Christian motifs. In the records there are now again pictures of excursions. Apparently the family had settled into the new house.
On 31 January 1939, Alfons Zeileis was appointed professor. On 1 September 1939, Adolf Hitler unleashed the great war that was to become the Second World War. In 1940, daughter Anneliese graduated from high school and went to the Reich Labour Service. Her boyfriend did not return from the war.
On 29 March 1941, Alfons Zeileis entered three oil paintings and two watercolours in the major German art exhibition of 1941 at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich (New Glass Palace), which was to open at the beginning of July 1941. What prompted him to do so is unknown. He heard nothing for a long time.
On 10 December 1941, the painter Alfons Zeileis in Hambach received a letter from Mr Hoffmann of the Reich Chamber of Culture / Reich Chamber of Fine Arts with the following text:
"Pursuant to § 1 of the Order on the Distribution of Inferior Art Products of 1 October 1940 ( Völk. Beobachter No. 283 p.9 of 9 October 1940 ), I order that the sale, distribution and reproduction of products of painting, sculpture and graphic art or their reproductions by you require my permission.
After a part of your products has been submitted to the committee for the assessment of inferior art products, I prohibit the sale, distribution and reproduction of your pictures with immediate effect in accordance with § 2 para. 1 of the order:
Game of the skies
Early spring day
which I will have secured by the police authority in accordance with section 2(3) of the said order.
At the same time, in accordance with Section 2 (2) of the said order, I make it a condition that in future all your products, before you transmit them to the public, shall be submitted to the aforementioned committee."
The two pictures were destroyed. Alfons Zeileis received the empty frames back.
The news must have been very upsetting for Alfons Zeileis. It is unknown whether this shock contributed to it or whether his health, which was already under attack, caused problems. According to documents, Alfons Zeileis was ill from 18 August 1942 and was released from duty until 1 January 1943.
His mother died on 22.11.1942. Between 1941 and the end of the war, only five paintings by Alfons Zeileis can be found in his estate. According to daughter Anneliese, Alfons Zeileis painted the pictures again later. One of the paintings had the title Resurrection. The destroyed painting had the less Christian title Early Spring Day for the exhibition.
On 7 May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally. Now everything had to be better. Did it really have to?