Art As Politics in the Third Reich (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The supervision of visual arts in the Third Reich received scant notice during the period that directly followed the "seizure of power" and only gradually..." (more)
Key Phrases: plundering bureaucracy, total war measures, cultural bureaucracy, Third Reich, South Tyrol, Albert Speer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A masterpiece of ”real• historiography based on extensive research in primary sources concerning National Socialist Art policy throughout the globe.

Contemporary Austrian Studies

This work is a commendable embodiment of years of diligent research.

German Studies Review

This is a thoroughly researched and extremely useful work.

Contemporary Sociology

An excellent source of information about art theft and destruction by the self-styled cultural elite of Nazi Germany.

American Historical Review

A must in the library of anyone who writes, thinks, wonders and puzzles about the years between 1933 and 1945.

Trans-Atlantic Dialogue: Newsletter of the American Council on Germany

Product Description

The political elite of Nazi Germany perceived itself as a cultural elite as well. In Art as Politics in the Third Reich, Jonathan Petropoulos explores the elite's cultural aspirations by examining both the formulation of a national aesthetic policy and the content of the private art collections held by high-ranking Nazis. He demonstrates that these leaders manipulated public policy and their own collecting patterns to articulate fundamental tenets of Nazi ideology.

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (February 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807848093
• ISBN-13: 978-0807848098
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #382,828 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Massive Work of Scholarship with Many Nuggets of Surprise, July 7, 2000

By	glitzqueen (United States) - See all my reviews

As the author notes, this work began as a doctoral dissertion at Harvard, and that quality of research is apparent on virtually every page. It fairly bristles with little-known facts, including quite a few significant details found nowhere else in the growing body of literature on the Nazi looting machine. In its field, "Art as Politics in the Third Reich" is the greatest eye-opener since Lynn Nicholas produced the first of them, her masterful "The Rape of Europa." Though not as stylishly written as hers, it's very readable and extremely well-organized.