A magazine like Jugend was never going to survive Nazi Germany. A monthly art periodical created in Munich in the late 19th century, it featured many Art Nouveau artists on its cover, and effectively launched the art movement in Germany. They called it Jugendstil, literally “youth style” in German. This period of art and design is still known as Jugendstil after the magazine, a word used by graphic designers and collectors in Germany today. The magazine however, as fabulous as it was, is long buried.
Jugend published its last issue in 1940. While its pages had been turned largely into propaganda for the Nazi party after 1933, Jugend was actually more of a problem for the Nazis than anything else. The magazine nurtured many surrealist artists who of course would later became troublesome for Hitler in is quest to stamp out what he called “degenerate art”. Unfortunately for the German art world, many of these artists given a spotlight by Jugend were silenced during the war.
You can find scanned editions ofJugend at the University of Heidelberg’s digital archive, but I found most of mine in this Flickr pool.
