Art As Politics in the Third Reich

by Petropoulos, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780807848098
• ISBN10: 0807848093
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

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, Goring, 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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii	(2)
A Note on Names, Titles, and Abbreviations	xv	(2)
Abbreviations and Acronyms	xvii
Introduction	3	(16)
PART I. ADMINISTERING ART The Competition for Cultural Control	19	(160)
Chapter 1. The Establishment of the National Socialist Cultural Bureaucracy, 1933-1936	19	(32)
Chapter 2. Degenerate Art and State Interventionism, 1936-1938	51	(24)
Chapter 3. From Confiscation to Aryanization: The Radicalization of Cultural Policy, 1938-1939	75	(25)
Chapter 4. Art and Avarice Abroad: The Advent of Nazi Plundering in Poland, the Baltic States, and the South Tyrol, 1939-1940	100	(23)
Chapter 5. Occupation and Exploitation, 1940-1943	123	(28)
Chapter 6. The Contraction of the Cultural Bureaucracy, 1943-1945	151	(28)
PART II. COLLECTING ART The Certification of an Elite	179	(129)
Chapter 7. An Overview of the Leaders' Collections and Methods of Acquisition	179	(62)
Adolf Hitler	181	(6)
Hermann Goring	187	(8)
Joseph Goebbels	195	(6)
Joachim von Ribbentrop	201	(11)
Heinrich Himmler	212	(8)
Baldur von Schirach	220	(6)
Hans Frank	226	(4)
Robert Ley	230	(3)
Albert Speer	233	(4)
Martin Bormann	237	(2)
Arthur Seyss-Inquart	239	(1)
Josef Burckel	239	(2)
Chapter 8. Art Collecting as a Reflection of the National Socialist Leaders' Worldviews	241	(21)
Chapter 9. Art Collecting and Interpersonal Relations among the National Socialist Elite	262	(25)
Chapter 10. Art Collecting, Luxury, and the National Socialist Elite's Conception of Status	287	(21)
Conclusion	308	(6)
Appendix: Organizational Charts and Glossary of Key Figures	314	(9)
Notes	323	(62)
Bibliography	385	(32)
Index	417