Gregory Maertz

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.