Gregory Maertz

Professor

St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Ph.D., 1988, Harvard University, Comparative Literature1986-88, Ruprecht-Karls-Universtät Heidelberg, Germanistisches SeminarA.M., 1984, Harvard University, English and American Literature and LanguageA.M., 1983, Harvard University, Comparative LiteratureB.A., 1981, Northwestern University, Comparative Literature

Gregory Maertz’s scholarship and teaching are divided between Romanticism (theory, poetry, fiction) and Fascism Studies, in particular the visual arts of the Third Reich and intersections between Modernism and National Socialist cultural production. His major publications seek to elucidate his discovery of nearly 10,000 works of art produced in Nazi Germany and the previously hidden archives of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst.

Professor Maertz has recently become active as a curator of museum exhibitions focusing on the “lost” official Modernist art of the Third Reich, the recovery of which and restoration to the twentieth-century canon is the focus of his research. The first of these exhibitions, Kunst und Propaganda im Streit der Nationen 1930-1945 [Art and Propaganda in the Conflict of Nations] opened at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin in January 2007. In 2015 his exhibition, Kunst I Kamp [Art in Battle], opens at KODE in Bergen, Norway.

Major honorific grants have supported Professor Maertz’s research in the visual arts, including NEH, IAS, ACLS, CASVA, National Humanities Center, and Gerda Henkel Foundation fellowships. At St. John’s he has been recognized as a finalist for Student Government Teacher of the Year (1998) and received multiple Faculty Recognition Awards, Summer Research Grants, and Seed Grants.

Invited Lectures (selected)

“Nostalgia for the Future: Anticipatory Representation in Nazi Art,” German Department and the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, October 6, 2011.

“German Artists in Occupied Norway,” University of Bergen, Norway, November 22, 2010.

“Making Radioactive Art Safe: The De-Nazification of Cultural Collaborators in West Germany,” German Department, Duke University, October 21, 2010.

“Modernism and Nazi Art,” University of Northampton, United Kingdom, March 18, 2010.

“Nostalgia for the Future: Modernism and Nazi Art,” Public Lecture, National Humanities Center, January 14, 2010.

“The American Confiscation of German Art in Post-War Germany,” Triangle Seminar for Jewish Studies, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, May 11, 2009.

“House of Art: A Cultural History of Nazi Germany,” Social Science Research Seminar, Wake Forest University, April 20, 2009.

“Nostalgia for the Future: Tradition and Modernism in German Art, 1933-1945,” Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University, March 18, 2009.

“Nazi Art in Museums?” The Sought Foundation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, February 15, 2008.

“The Invisible Museum: Unearthing the Lost Modernist Art of the Third Reich,” Deutsches Historisches Museum, February 28, 2007.

“The Invisible Museum: The Secret Postwar History of Nazi Art,” Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University, October 11, 2006.

“Hitler’s List and the Real Canon of Nazi Art,” English Department Colloquium, Rutgers University, September 20, 2006.

Conference Papers (selected)

Keynote Speaker, “Modernist Art in the Service of Nazi Culture: Baldur von Schirach and the Junge Deutsche Kunst Exhibition of 1943,” Conference on Ideologues of the Extreme Right, Past and Present , Teeside Univeristy, United Kingdom, July 4, 2013.

Keynote Speaker, “Nazi Modernism and the Mobilization of Christian Artists in the Third Reich,” Conference on Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse , University of Bergen, Norway, July 19, 2012.

“The German War Art Collection as a Challenge to Traditional Art History,” College Art Association Convention, Los Angeles, February 22, 2012.

Keynote Speaker, “Symposium on Visualizing and Exhibiting Fascism,” Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, United Kingdom, March 19, 2010.

Keynote Speaker, “Symposium on Political Fascism and Cultural Modernity,” University of Konstanz, Germany, November 14, 2009.

“Nazi Art in Museums? Canonization and Controversy,” German Studies Association Annual Conference, St. Paul, Minnesota, October 5, 2009.

“Controlling the Legacy of Nazi Culture: Official U.S. Art Seizures in Occupied Germany,” College Art Association Annual Conference, Dallas, February 23, 2008.

Keynote Speaker, “ The Wehrmacht and Official Modernism in the Third Reich,” German Department Graduate Student Conference, Rutgers University, February 23, 2007.

“Hitler’s List: New Canonical Documents,” Modernism-Fascism-Postmodernism Symposium, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, September 21, 2006.

“The U.S. Army’s Program of Art Confiscation and Repression, 1946-2005,” Deutsches Historisches Museum Symposium, Berlin, March 4, 2006.

“The Troost Achive: Rare Artifacts in the Collection of the Wolfsonian-FIU,” The Wolfsonian Tenth Anniversary Workshop, the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, December 10, 2005.

“Sequestration and Repression: The U.S. Army’s German War Art Collection,” Modernist Studies Association, Chicago, November 5, 2005.

“When Art is Not Art: Nazi Art and Post-War Politics,” College Art Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, February 2005.

“Secret Archives and Hidden Artifacts: The U.S. Army's German War Art Collection,” American Historical Association, Seattle, January 2005.

“ Wort aus Stein : Architecture as Political Ideology in Albert Speer’s Reich Chancellery,” Society of Architectural Historians, Providence, Rhode Island, April 16, 2004.

Books: Visual Studies

Modernism and Nazi Painting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, under contract).

Nazi Art: An Anthology of Images, Texts, and Documents (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, under contract).

The Last Taboo: The Rehabilitation of Nazi Artists in Postwar Germany (London: Continuum, under contract).

The Invisible Museum: Unearthing the Lost Modernist Art of the Third Reich (in preparation).

House of Art: A Cultural History of Nazi Germany (in preparation).

Books: Literary Studies

A new translation, Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Gregory Maertz (Peterborough: Broadview Editions, under contract).

A critical edition, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, ed. Gregory Maertz (Peterborough: Broadview Editions, 2004). Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature , ed. Gregory Maertz (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998).

EXHIBITIONS

Curator, “The World of Tomorrow: European and American Paintings at the 1939 World’s Fair” (in preparation).

Curator, “Nostalgia for the Future: Tradition and Modernism in German Art, 1930-1945” (in preparation)

Curator, “Art and Non-Art in German-Occupied Norway,” Bergen Art Museum, Bergen, Norway (opening 2014).

Contributing curator, “Kunst und Propaganda im Streit der Nationen 1930-1945,” Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (January 27-April 29, 2007).

Articles in Books and Exhibition Catalogues (selected)

“The Last Taboo: The Rehabilitation of Nazi Artists in Post-War Germany,” Art and Artistic Life during the Two World Wars , ed. Giedré Jankeviciuté and Laime Lauckaité (Vilnius: Lithuanian Cultural Research Institute, 2012), pp. 387-411.

“Making Radioactive Art Safe: The De-Nazification of Cultural Collaborators in Post-War Germany,” Art and Shame, ed. Martha Hollander (Ashgate, under review).

“The Romantic Idealization of the Artist,” Romantic Prose Fiction, ed. Gerald Gillespie with Manfred Engel and Bernhard Dieterle (Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXIII) (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008), pp. 135-158.

“The German War Art Collection,” Kunst und Propaganda im Streit der Nationen 1930-1945, ed. Hans-Jörg Czech and Nikola Doll (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2007), pp. 238-245.

“Die Sammlung deutscher Kriegskunst der US-Armee: Kunst im NS-Staat und Nachkriegspolitik,” Kunst und Propaganda in der Wehrmacht: Gemälde und Grafiken aus dem Russlandkrieg, ed. Veit Veltzke (Kerber Verlag, 2005), pp. 10-16.

“Exhibiting Nazi Artifacts and Challenging Traditional Museum Culture: A Conversation with Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.,”Acts of Possession: Collecting in America, ed. Leah Dilworth (Rutgers UP, 2003), pp. 267-285.

“Reviewing Kant’s Early Reception in Britain: The Leading Role of Henry Crabb Robinson,” Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature, ed. Gregory Maertz (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 209-226.

“Generic Diversity and the Romantic Travel Novel: Godwin’s St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century,” Narrative Ironies, ed. Raymond A. Prier and Gerald Gillespie (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 267-282.

Articles in Journals (selected)

Articles on “Nazi Modernism” and “Fascist Modernism” in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism , edited by Isabel Wünsche (forthcoming).

“Nostalgia for the Future: Proleptic Representation in Adolf Hitler’s Collection of
Contemporary German Art,” (in progress).

“Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich: The Last Modernist Art Exhibition in Nazi Germany,” (in progress).

“Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, and Cultural Collaboration in Nazi Germany,” (in progress).

“The Wehrmacht’s Combat Artists and Official Modernism in Nazi Germany,” (in progress).

“The Munich Secession and the Arts Establishment in Nazi Germany,” (in progress).

“The Invisible Museum: Unearthing the Lost Modernist Art of the Third Reich,” Modernism/modernity: Special Fascism Issue, Volume XV: 1 (January 2008): 63-85.

“The Invisible Museum: The Secret Postwar History of Nazi Art,” Center 23 (National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, D.C. 2003): 96-100.

“Carlyle's Mediation of Goethe in its European Context,” Scottish Literary Journal 24: 2 (1997): 59-78.

“The Importation of German and Dissenting Voices in British Culture: Thomas Holcroft and the Godwin Circle,” 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, Vol. III (1997): 271-300.

“Carlyle’s Critique of Goethe: Literature and the Cult of Personality,” Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XXIX (1996): 205-226.

“German Paradigms and American Cultural Institutions: The Mediation of German Literature in New England,”The European Legacy, Vol. I, No. 3 (1996): 1064-1070.

“Generic Fusion and Appropriation in Godwin’s St. Leon,” European Romantic Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 1995): 214-229.

“The Eclipse of the Text in Carlyle's Critical Discourse,” The Victorian Newsletter, Vol. 87 (Spring 1995): 14-20.

“Family Resemblances: Intertextual Dialogue between Father and Daughter Novelists in Godwin’s St. Leon and Shelley’s Frankenstein,” University of Mississippi Studies in English, New Series, Volumes XI-XII (1993-95): 303-320.

“To Criticize the Critic: George Saintsbury on Goethe,” Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring 1994): 115-131.

“Elective Affinities: Tolstoy and Schopenhauer,” Wiener Slawistisches Jahrbuch, Vol. 40 (1994): 53-62.

“Henry Crabb Robinson's 1802-03 Translations of Goethe’s Lyric Poems and Epigrams,” Michigan Germanic Studies, Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring 1993): 19-45.

Undergraduate Courses

ENG 2300 Introduction to Literary Criticism and Theory
ENG 3230 Nineteenth-Century Novel
ENG 3240 Romantic Literature
ENG 3250 Victorian Literature
ENG 3260 Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century
ENG 3530 The Gothic
ENG 3690 The Holocaust
ENG 4130 Defining the Self

Graduate Courses

ENG 100 Modern Critical Theories
ENG 110 Introduction to the Profession
ENG 520 The Nineteenth-Century Novel
ENG 775 Revolution and Romanticism
ENG 836 Modernism and the Fascist Aesthetic
ENG 861 Art and Propaganda