The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany
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Overview
Nazi art looting has been the subject of enormous international attention in recent years, and the topic of two history bestsellers, Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum and Lynn Nicholas's The Rape of Europa. But such books leave us wondering: What made thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women decide to put their talents in the service of a brutal and inhuman regime? This question is the starting point for The Faustian Bargain, Jonathan Petropoulos's study of the key figures in the art world of Nazi Germany.
Petropoulos follows the careers of these prominent individuals who like Faust, that German archetype, chose to pursue artistic ends through collaboration with diabolical forces. Readers meet Ernst Buchner, the distinguished museum director and expert on Old Master paintings who "repatriated" the Van Eyck brother's Ghent altarpiece to Germany, and Karl Haberstock, an art dealer who filled German museums with works bought virtually at gunpoint from Jewish collectors. Robert Scholz, the leading art critic in the Third Reich, became an officer in the chief art looting unit in France and Kajetan Muhlmann—a leading art historian—was probably the single most prolific art plunderer in the war (and arguably in history). Finally, there is Arno Breker, a gifted artist who exchanged his modernist style for monumental realism and became Hitler's favorite sculptor. If it is striking that these educated men became part of the Nazi machine, it is more remarkable that most of them rehabilitated their careers and lived comfortably after the war. Petropoulos has discovered a network of these rehabilitated experts that flourished in the postwar period, and he argues that this is a key to the tens of thousands of looted artworks that are still "missing" today.
Based on previously unreleased information and recently declassified documents, The Faustian Bargain is a gripping read about the art world during this period, and a fascinating examination of the intense relationship between culture and politics in the Third Reich.
Synopsis
Nazi art looting has been the subject of enormous international attention in recent years, and the topic of two history bestsellers, Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum and Lynn Nicholas's The Rape of Europa. But such books leave us wondering: What made thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women decide to put their talents in the service of a brutal and inhuman regime? This question is the starting point for The Faustian Bargain, Jonathan Petropoulos's study of the key figures in the art world of Nazi Germany.
Petropoulos follows the careers of these prominent individuals who like Faust, that German archetype, chose to pursue artistic ends through collaboration with diabolical forces. Readers meet Ernst Buchner, the distinguished museum director and expert on Old Master paintings who "repatriated" the Van Eyck brother's Ghent altarpiece to Germany, and Karl Haberstock, an art dealer who filled German museums with works bought virtually at gunpoint from Jewish collectors. Robert Scholz, the leading art critic in the Third Reich, became an officer in the chief art looting unit in France and Kajetan Muhlmann—a leading art historian—was probably the single most prolific art plunderer in the war (and arguably in history). Finally, there is Arno Breker, a gifted artist who exchanged his modernist style for monumental realism and became Hitler's favorite sculptor. If it is striking that these educated men became part of the Nazi machine, it is more remarkable that most of them rehabilitated their careers and lived comfortably after the war. Petropoulos has discovered a network of these rehabilitated experts that flourished in the postwar period, and he argues that this is a key to the tens of thousands of looted artworks that are still "missing" today.
Based on previously unreleased information and recently declassified documents, The Faustian Bargain is a gripping read about the art world during this period, and a fascinating examination of the intense relationship between culture and politics in the Third Reich.
Publishers Weekly
As research director of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Committee on Holocaust Assets, Petropoulos (Art as Politics in the Third Reich) is at the forefront of the efforts to understand the full extent of Nazi plundering of art. (He is also professor of history at Claremont McKenna College in California.) Tirelessly scouring European archives, Petropoulos has compiled an invaluable account of how certain artists profited from the Nazi system. Moreover, he follows the story through the end of the war and describes how these profiteering artists fared after the fall of the Third Reich. Some, like the notorious sculptor Arno Breker, long a favorite of Hitler, amazingly escaped any major penalties or prosecutions. Detailed chapters describe the destinies of German art museum directors, art dealers, art journalists and art historians as well as artists, presenting a far broader picture than any previous study of the true artistic climate during the war years. Not only do we read about vile acts of cowardice and collaboration, but we get hints of the innocuous, everyday faces of the bureaucrats and journalistic hacks who committed crimes against art and humanity. With 69 pages of detailed notes, and an unusually useful and extensive bibliography, this book is sure to be a cornerstone for further studies of art in the Nazi period. Perhaps most impressively, Petropoulos manages to maintain a cool tone while recounting the spoilation of Jewish art collections for the profit of the Reich, a subject that even today raises emotions to fever pitch. This is the sort of book that literary prizes were invented to honor. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
As research director of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Committee on Holocaust Assets, Petropoulos (Art as Politics in the Third Reich) is at the forefront of the efforts to understand the full extent of Nazi plundering of art. (He is also professor of history at Claremont McKenna College in California.) Tirelessly scouring European archives, Petropoulos has compiled an invaluable account of how certain artists profited from the Nazi system. Moreover, he follows the story through the end of the war and describes how these profiteering artists fared after the fall of the Third Reich. Some, like the notorious sculptor Arno Breker, long a favorite of Hitler, amazingly escaped any major penalties or prosecutions. Detailed chapters describe the destinies of German art museum directors, art dealers, art journalists and art historians as well as artists, presenting a far broader picture than any previous study of the true artistic climate during the war years. Not only do we read about vile acts of cowardice and collaboration, but we get hints of the innocuous, everyday faces of the bureaucrats and journalistic hacks who committed crimes against art and humanity. With 69 pages of detailed notes, and an unusually useful and extensive bibliography, this book is sure to be a cornerstone for further studies of art in the Nazi period. Perhaps most impressively, Petropoulos manages to maintain a cool tone while recounting the spoilation of Jewish art collections for the profit of the Reich, a subject that even today raises emotions to fever pitch. This is the sort of book that literary prizes were invented to honor. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|Library Journal
Since the publication of Lynn H. Nicholas's The Rape of Europa (LJ 5/1/94), a number of works have appeared that further document the cultural pillaging that took place during World War II. While books such as Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum (LJ 8/97) have focused on the lost artworks, Petropoulos's study is the first to focus on the Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who made the looting possible. Spotlighting five groups--art museum directors, art dealers, art journalists, art historians, and artists--Petropoulos (history, Claremont McKenna Coll.) carefully and systematically details how each of these groups either directly or indirectly facilitated the theft of countless works of art and legitimized the Nazi regime. By following a number of individuals in each group through their rise in Nazi Germany and in a number of instances their "rehabilitation" in a postwar "de-Nazification" process, Petropoulos shows that justice is too often blind to the truth. Detailed notes document all of the author's allegations, and he supplies an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary materials that reinforce his arguments. Highly recommended for both public and academic collections.--Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\Karen Wyckoff
Tainted by the "blood and soil" nationalism which cakes the pathways toward the countless horrors of the Nazi regime, many of the German art world's brightest minds were employed in the ruthless plundering of European art - seduced by promises of greatness reminiscent of Faust, in metaphorical proportion. The crushing weight of mislaid morality is revealed in the bowed back of European culture, and the heaviness of culpability felt as a devilish hand laid across the nape of each Faustian neck. The Faustian Bargain yields an unflinching look at those who wielded their knowledge and expertise of the arts to assist in plundering millions of works estimated to have been removed or destroyed from both the collections of Jewish families and public museums of Europe. In efforts to "purify" culture, finance the political machine of the Third Reich or inflate personal collections of Nazi officers, former independent members of the contemporary art community symbiotically melded with the Nazi regime.Petropoulos, the Reseach Director for the Presidential Advisory Committee on Holocaust Assets, divides his study neatly between five strata of the art world-the museum directors, art dealers, critics, historians and artisans. His unforced, lucent narrative style fuels the reader onward with the nightmarish sensation of rancid history unfurling, unveiling a mounting cast of characters and effectively allowing a chilling network of baneful accomplices to emerge. More than twenty-five individuals are explored as the oft forgotten underpinnings of this diabolical assault on the humanities. These ordinary people, all of whom bargained for the skewed realization of career goals, enjoyed the dizzying ascension to the ranks of Nazi elite as many became personal acquaintances of Hitler himself. Petropoulos introduces Ernst Buchner for example, a distinguished museum director enticed by Hitler's promise of a massive museum to be built in Linz. Buchner, who "became increasingly immoral with increasing proximity to those with power," was integral in "repatriating" art work, organizing the "Aryanization" of Jewish art dealerships and spearheading art plundering campaigns. After documenting the abhorrent acts of each figure, Petropoulos details their post-war lives; revealing the disturbingly high incidence of acquittals at the denazification trials, and noting the success of the exonerated in reviving their former careers. Though these crimes went largely unpunished, Petropoulos urges through his efforts in The Faustian Bargain, that the passing of time should not similarly erase their guilt.
—Foreword
Ian Buruma
The lesson to be drawn, then, from this depressing tale is not only that men are vile when it comes to money and power. We knew that already. What we don't question enough is the romantic ideal of "living" for art, or science, for those who claim to do so, in all sincerity, are too often excused for failing to see the moral consequences of their idealism.—The Times Literary Supplement