Customer Reviews

The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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Jonathan Petropoulos, Professor of History at elite Claremont McKenna College, presents an academic subject with a style that reads as a "user-friendly" narrative. He explores the manner in which certain Nazi-era museum directors, art dealers, art journalists and art historians, and, finally, artists, themselves, negotiated the dangerous terrain of Hitler Germany in order to enjoy the benefits of Reich approval. Petropoulos keeps the reader aware of moral, ethical, and legal issues as he paints a damning portrait of opportunists, both talented and not, who sold their souls to the National Socialist devil. In the end, one is left with a sorrow for their choices, and, in all honesty, a realization that the art produced for this regime was weak, coarse, and ultimately foolish.

Rather than producing another dry narrative of events in the artistic world during the Nazi era, the author brings the subject to life by taking a prosopographic approach: comparative biographies of a number of interesting figures in Nazi art (not only artists but critics, museum directors, etc.), following their careers both before and after 1945. A fascinating series of case studies. But I must agree with the previous reviewer that there are problems with editing: "prosopography" is misspelled throughout -- eek!

Jonathan Petropoulos' writings on art and the Third Reich are a real treasure. In "Faustian Bargain," Professor Petropoulos takes on the German artists, art dealers, and art critics who became state-sanctioned under Hitler. This is an unusual, if not solitary, book on subject matters that do not receive close analysis.

The personal conclusions of this reviewer are different than those reached by Petropoulos who is uniformly critical in his portrayals. While some of the art glorified the Nazi leadership, most of it did not. Moreover, the subject matter and style of the art had been present in Germany and popular in the decades preceeding the Third Reich. The Nazis gave it prominent venues and subsidized it; they did not create it. Finally, it is a difficult stretch of logic to draw parallels with the artwork of the period and the brutality of the Nazi regime.

That said, although he does not hold back on his criticism, Professor Petropoulos is not heavy handed, and he allows his readers to render their own judgments. Petropoulos provides his readership with liberal citation to original source material so that the reader is ultimately left to draw his or her own conclusions about the artistic value of the work produced during that time, and the culpability, if any, of artists, art dealers, and art critics in glorifying the Nazi regime.

I've always wondered how I would have reacted had I lived in Germany in the 1930s. As a Jew, as a Lutheran, as a man or a woman, as an intellectual, as a peasant, as a business owner. The author does a fair job covering the members of the art world, artists, dealers, museum directors, critics. He picks one or two of the worst in each group and also a few shaded lighter grey. The only fact I would question is the name of the main Jewish bookdealer in Munich. Wasn't it Emil Hirsch rather than Heinrik Hirsch? Also it's slightly annoying to see some people's birth and death dates in brackets but not all and even more annoying to see a birth date and a questionmark for the death date. Did his editor not get around to filling in the dates?

If you are looking for specific situations in order to know the details or you just want to know the whole story that is known so far, this is a 5 star book. I enjoyed finding out who and how the stolen art disappeared and why it is still being recovered over 65 years later. But I admit that in some chapters I got bored with the details.

P.4 "Part of the project of this book is to understand the various motivations that induced talented and respected professionals in the art world to become accomplices of the Nazi leaders-in most cases, to become art plunderers. These figures in the art world had the opportunity for a Faustian bargain because the Nazi leaders themselves cared so much about culture-the visual arts in particular. The Nazi leaders could not have dominated the artistic sphere or have amassed such collections without the assistance of figures in the art world."

P.7 "Dr. Ernst Buchner served as the General Director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections where he oversaw 15 museums. The 2nd chapter, on art dealers, focuses on Karl Haberstock. The 3rd chapter is dedicated to art critics who served as important mediators between the regime and the public. Art historians are discussed in chapter 4. The final chapter is about the artists (particularly Arno Breker) who collaborated with the leaders. Within each chapter are 3-4 other figures to show this was not a unique situation."

P.10 "This study underscores the extent to which individuals who participated in the criminal programs of the Nazi regime were able to rehabilitate their careers after 1945."

P.14 "Museum directors, while possessing considerable erudition and even international renown, comprised one of the most nazified professions in Germany."

In the late 1930s Jews who were in the art dealing world thought that there would be a place for them under the Nazis.

P.70 "Switzerland served as a kind of satellite to the French market."

P.278 "Subsequent studies have refined our understanding of why the courts were so lenient. Most have stressed the West German's wish to move beyond their painful past in order to focus on rebuilding their country and develop a new sense of collective self-worth."