Anti-Modernism and Anti-Urbanism as Ideological Foundations of Urban Exhibitions of Slovak Culture and Art in the Nazi and Fascist “New Europe”

This article is a contribution to research on the cultural diplomacy of Nazi Germany on the periphery of Axis Europe. It focuses primarily on an analysis of the ideological assumptions underlying the organization of exhibitions about Slovakia and Slovak art in German cities in 1942. It assesses the thesis that the discourses of anti-modernism and anti-urbanism were the basis for the presentation of Slovak realities and culture. Interactions between the Nazi center and the Slovak periphery were characterized by an emphasis on the authenticity of folk culture and art, which implied a contrast between the “pure” countryside and the “decadent” city. This research shows that the decisive actors in this discourse were not domestic but “foreign” Germans, that is, members of the German-speaking minorities of Central and Southeastern Europe, who wanted to make up for their sense that their development lagged behind that of the Reich by emphasizing the originality and authenticity of the periphery, which they also projected onto local non-German-speaking majority cultures.