Research on the art market remains partitioned along disciplinary lines, despite repeated and genuine calls for more collaborative and interdisciplinary perspectives. The distinct characteristics of art markets are one of the reasons, but equally responsible are different methodologies, deeply entrenched in the respective disciplines. These range from provenance research in art history to quantitative analysis in economics. Especially when it comes to the history of Nazi-occupied Europe’s art market, this makes it difficult for researchers to address important questions about evolving business practices, market architecture, economic developments, and the role specific historical actors played within the complex network of businesses, collectors, art objects, and the violent dictatorship during the 1930s and 1940s.

Sophia Barth-Coorssen’s biography of the German art dealer and businessman Alois Miedl (1903–1970) represents an ambitious and impressive attempt to bridge art history, contemporary history, and biographical research. Based on her dissertation, the book goes far beyond a reconstruction of Miedl’s art acquisitions or a conventional narrative biography. Miedl was one of the leading art dealers in Nazi Germany and arguably the most influential dealer in the occupied Netherlands (12; 169–171). For Barth-Coorssen, he exemplifies a new type of art dealer that emerged under National Socialism: a »layman« (429), driven primarily by profit rather than connoisseurship. The book argues that understanding Miedl’s success and influence requires a close examination of his broader business ventures – ranging from finance to resource extraction – and how they shaped his approach to the art market. This biography thus traces how Miedl transferred legal and illegal business practices from other sectors into art dealing as a new field he had begun to operate in.

Miedl’s success resulted from multiple interdependencies: the increasingly capitalist art market, Nazi Germany’s systematic plundering of art in occupied territories, and Miedl’s extensive networks within Germany, which allowed him to position himself as a central market actor. He employed illicit practices such as deception, blackmail, bribery, straw-man transactions, and other unethical strategies to gain access to artworks and collections, while running parallel non-art related businesses in a similar manner. Barth-Coorssen convincingly shows that Miedl anticipated the needs of the regime and presented himself as a reliable entrepreneur, enabling him to pursue his own economic goals while satisfying demands by the regime. His illicit and opaque practices predated the occupation of the Netherlands in 1940: Miedl continued many of them from before 1933 and into the postwar period (83–84). He transferred these practices to the art market, rather than developing them specifically for it. His methods and networks were adaptable rather than tied to a specific political regime; they even helped him to conceal his involvement with National Socialism after 1945. Miedl’s business success thus emerged from the alignment of personal agency, economic experiences, and shifting systemic conditions.

Barth-Coorssen presents Miedl as a complex figure: a global businessman, art dealer, and criminal entrepreneur. Drawing on an extraordinary range of primary sources, she carefully reconstructs how he organized, adapted, and concealed his business activities. This focus is reflected in the book’s structure, which prioritizes economic ventures over personal life events. The introduction outlines both Miedl’s historical significance and the challenges of researching him, given the fragmented, dispersed, and often deliberately misleading nature of his records (11–19). After a brief biographical overview, the book traces his early collaboration with banker Johannes Witzig in 1925, a relationship crucial to the development of his licit and illicit entrepreneurial skills (39–40).

Subsequent chapters examine the expansion of Miedl’s businesses in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as well as his growing international reach after 1933. The most extensive section, chapter seven, focuses on his activities in the Dutch art market during the occupation. Across 29 subchapters, Barth-Coorssen reconstructs Miedl’s art acquisitions, his networking and relationship with Nazi elites such as Hermann Göring, and his involvement in illicit and black-market activities. She links detailed empirical findings to broader art market trends while addressing gaps in the archival documentation. Importantly, she investigates Miedl’s personal responsibility in cases of unlawful and immoral art acquisition, deconstructing his postwar self-portrayal as hesitant to cooperate with the regime. Chapter seven is therefore the heart of the book and each subsection offers a rich and elaborate account of Miedl’s far reaching activities. Chapters eight and nine examine the postwar period, showing the continuity of his economic dealings and his personal lifestyle through his De-Nazification proceedings and legal disputes from the 1950s right until his death in 1970 (438).

The book demonstrates how Alois Miedl profited from both the Nazi regime and the restructuring of the modern art market during the 1930s and 1940s. It also shows how deeply he was entangled in the regime’s unlawful art acquisitions, giving many examples reconstructed from a close examination of primary source material. Its core arguments – particularly regarding the transfer of capitalist and illicit business practices into the art market – are convincingly developed and open new avenues for dialogue between economic history and art history. Other claims, however, would have benefited from more thorough argumentation. The characterization of the book as an »actor-based global history« (org.: »akteurszentrierte Globalisierungsgeschichte«, 13) is not sufficiently connected to the existing global history scholarship, and the assertion that Miedl was a trailblazer of a capitalist art market would have benefited from a much deeper engagement with the historiography of capitalism and a broader approach to the shifting characteristics of the twentieth century-economy of art.

Barth-Coorssen has written an important and meticulously researched biography of a central figure in the German and European art market of the 1940s. Her research draws upon an exceptional body of primary sources from archives located in Germany, the US, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, France, and the UK. While Barth-Coorssen’s work makes a significant contribution to the study of the Nazi art market and its economic history, it also showcases the value of interdisciplinary approaches, and how art and economic history could benefit from each other’s perspectives. While the book does not read like a traditional narrative biography, it is the first comprehensive account of Miedl’s life, as an international and widely connected entrepreneur. Future research on Alois Miedl, his acquisitions, business partners, political connections, and his role in the art market can thus draw on this impressive study as a starting point.