Petropoulos begins by tracing the evolution of official aesthetic policy, from the purges of museum staff and academics labeled as 'undesirable' in 1933 to the confiscation of Jewish-owned artworks in the late 1930s and the organized plundering of art from occupied areas during the war. He then reconstructs the collections of a dozen prominent Nazi officials—including Hitler, Gšring, Goebbels, Himmler, Speer, and Ribbentrop—and argues that their private holdings defined their relationships to one another within the Nazi hierarchy in addition to reflecting their racist and nationalist beliefs. According to Petropoulos, art collecting offered the political elite a way to achieve legitimacy and social standing, thereby providing a common cultural language for the leaders of the Third Reich.
Jonathan Petropoulos is the John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. Previously, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1990), where he also had an appointment as a Lecturer in History. He began working on the subject of Nazi art looting and restitution in 1983, when he commenced my graduate work in history and art history. He is the author of _Art as Politics in the Third Reich_ (University of North Carolina Press, 1996); _The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany_ (Oxford University Press, 2000); and _Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany_ (Oxford University Press, 2006); as well as co-editor of a number of volumes, including _A User's Guide to German Cultural Studies_ (University of Michigan Press, 1997), and _Gray Zones: Amibuity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath_ (Berghahn Books, 2005). He has also helped organize art exhibitions, including _Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991_ and appeared in a number of films, including _Rape of Europa_ (2006).
From 1998 to 2000, he served as Research Director for Art and Cultural Property on the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, where he helped draft the report, Restitution and Plunder: The U.S. and Holocaust Victims' Assets (2001). In this capacity as Research Director, he supervised a staff of researchers who combed archives in the United States and Europe in order to understand better how representatives of the U.S. government (including the Armed Forces) handled the assets of Holocaust victims both during and after the war. As Research Director, he provided expert testimony to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in the U.K. House of Commons and to the Banking and Finance Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
He has served as an expert witness in a number of cases where Holocaust victims have tried to recover lost artworks. This includes Altmann v. Austria, which involved five paintings by Gustav Klimt claimed by Maria Altmann and other family members. Mrs. Altmann was born and raised in Vienna and her family had its art collections seized after the Anschluss.
He lives with his family in Claremont, California.
