Best-Selling Author Will Discuss Art Collections Of The Nazis
Best-Selling Author Will Discuss Art Collections Of The Nazis
FAIRFIELD â On Wednesday, November 8, at 4 pm, at Fairfield University, the esteemed historian Jonathan Petropoulos, PhD, who has served as consultant for Holocaust victims trying to recover lost artworks, will present a talk and slide presentation entitled âHitler and the Princess: From Nazi-Royal Alliance to Class Warfare.â
The event is part of the universityâs Best-Selling Author Series. It is presented by University College, the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, the Departments of Art History and History, and Congregation Bânai Israel Bridgeport. It will take place in the Barone Campus Center. Tickets are $10; call 203-254-4307 for reservations.
If being a prince were a profession, then German princes would arguably have been the most Nazified group in the Third Reich, even surpassing physicians, says Dr Petropoulos. German princes helped legitimate Hitler and bring him to power. They were rewarded with posts in the regime and economic favors, and helped create a glittering âNazi high societyâ that flourished in the 1930s.
They also helped Nazi leaders amass extraordinary art collections, especially during World War II when German plundering units ravaged the Continent.
But this alliance between the old and new ruling elite broke down amid the strains of war. Dr Petropoulos will explain why these bonds fell apart, and will also discuss myths and cover-up that emerged in the postwar period and have endured to this day.
Dr Petropoulos is the first scholar to have been granted access to a princely familyâs archive from the Third Reich. He is the John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., where he also serves as director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies and the associate director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights.
He has served as a consultant for a number of Holocaust victims trying to recover lost artworks. He wrote the expert report for the plaintiffs in Altmann v. Austria, which resulted in the return of five paintings by Gustav Klimt to the heirs.
He is the author of Art as Politics in the Third Reich (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), and The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2000). His most recent book is Royals and The Reich: The Princess von Hessen in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2006).