Today Haus der Kunst is one of the most renowned international locations for positions in
modern and contemporary art. At the same time the House contains reminders of the disastrous
combination of art politics and propaganda in the Third Reich. Designed in 1933 by Hitler's
favourite architect Paul Ludwig Troost to present German art Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House
of German Art) was the first showcase monumental project arising from Nazi propaganda that
became a backdrop used effectively by the National Socialist rulers for their self-staging in
the media. Until 1944 this was where the annual exhibitions of the art favoured by Hitler were
held. While artists such as Arno Breker Josef Thorak and Adolf Ziegler and their oversized
paintings and sculptures glorified the blood and soil cult propagated by the National
Socialists the works of today's classical modernism and their creators such as Oskar Kokoschka
Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee were vilified as degenerate and pilloried.