Heartfield, John b.June 19, 1891; Berlin-Schmargendorf, Prussia d.April 26, 1968; East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
Pioneer in the use of art as a political weapon. His photomontages became famous on both sides of the Atlantic as daring and effective tools to resist the worldwide threat of fascism in the middle of the twentieth century.
In 1916, while living in Berlin, he anglicized his name from Helmut Herzfeld as a protest against antiBritish fervor sweeping Germany. One year earlier, he had destroyed all his paintings (mainly landscapes), believing they were unworthy and irrelevant. However, soon he was to become the central figure in the development of a new form of art that would have a profound effect upon culture, politics, and society. It began when he and George Grosz experimented with pasting pictures together. From this grew Heartfield’s lifetime obsession with what was to be known as photomontage.At the age of eight, Heartfield and his three siblings were abandoned by their parents in the woods. He was raised in a series of foster homes. Throughout his life, he maintained a very close relationship with his brother, Wieland, who along with Heartfield and Grosz, would launch the publishing house Malik-Verlag in 1917, a vital outlet for Heartfield’s work. In 1912, after studying arts and crafts in Munich and Berlin, he found work as a commercial artist. From the beginning, Heartfield was infused with a passionate belief that photomontage existed not to glorify the artist but to serve the common good.
On December 30, 1918, Heartfield joined the newly founded German Communist Party (KPD). It is important to note that throughout his life Heartfield was a devoted pacifist and never believed in violent revolution. He had faith in both people and the truth and believed that if he brought the two together, the result would be an improvement for the vast majority of society.
It was also in 1918 that Heartfield became a member of Berlin Club Dada.
In 1920 he helped organize the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe (First International Dada Fair) in Berlin. Dadaists were the young lions of the German art scene, opinionated provocateurs who often disrupted public art gatherings and ridiculed the participants. They labeled traditional art trivial and bourgeois. Heartfield was a vital member of a circle of German titans that included Dada playwright Edwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, Hannah Hoch, and a host of others. They would have a profound effect upon him. He, in turn, deeply influenced their work as well. His theater sets were vital elements in the early works of Piscator and Brecht. Heartfield played a major role in helping Brecht to realize the concept of the “alienation effect” (Verfrem- dungs-effekt). This new theater technique was to remind spectators that they were experiencing an enactment of reality and not reality itself. Using minimal props and stark stages such as those created by Heartfield, Brecht interrupted his plays at key junctures to encourage the audience to be part of the action and not to lose themselves in it.Heartfield preferred reality to artistic pretension. While he referred to himself as a monteur, he enjoyed the title engineer. Although he did not wish to be labeled an artist, he had a full measure of an artist’s passion. His Dada contemporaries tied
John HearfieldS photomontages became famous on both sides of the Atlantic as daring and effective tools to resist the worldwide threat of fascism in the middle of the twentieth century. (The John Heartfield Family)
him to a chair and enraged him just to experience the unbridled intensity of his emotions. His strongest emotion, however, was his hatred of German fascism. During the 1920s, Heartfield had produced a great number of stunning photomontages, many of which were reproduced as dust jackets for books such as his montage for Upton Sinclair’s The Millennium.
However, he is best known for the scathing political montages he created during the 1930s to expose German Nazism. During the 1930s and 1940s, he created some of his most famous montages: Adolf, the Superman (published in the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung [AIZ, Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper], Berlin, July 17, 1932), used a montaged X-ray to expose gold coins in the fiihrer’s esophagus leading to a pile in his stomach as he rants against the fatherland’s enemies. In Gohring: The Executioner of the Third Reich (AIZ, Prague, September 14, 1933),
John Heartfield’s work was infused with a passionate belief that photo montage existed to serve the common good. (The John Heartfield Family)
Hitler’s designated successor is depicted as a butcher. The Meaning of Geneva, Where Capital Lives, There Can Be No Peace (AIZ, Berlin, November 27, 1932) shows the dove of peace impaled on a blood-soaked bayonet in front of the League of Nations, where the cross of the Swiss flag has morphed into a swastika.
Heartfield’s artistic output was prolific. His works appeared regularly in the Ar- beiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ, Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper), a popular weekly whose circulation rivaled any magazine in Germany during the early nineteen thirties (Buthe 1977, 15). During 1931 Heartfield’s photomontages were often featured on the cover, an important point, because most copies of the AIZ were sold at newsstands. As Germany careened into fascism, Heartfield’s montages filled the streets of Berlin. His work was also circulated throughout the city in the form of posters. Heartfield believed that his work existed for the enlightenment and enjoyment of the masses and that the best way to accomplish this goal was to distribute it not as original works but through forms of mass media such as periodicals, posters, and book jackets. It was through rotogravure—an engraving process whereby pictures, designs, and words are engraved into the printing plate or printing cylinder—that he was able to reach the audience he coveted.
Heartfield lived in Berlin until April 1933. On Good Friday, the SS broke into his apartment, and he barely escaped by jumping from his balcony. He then walked around the Sudeten Mountains to Czechoslovakia. There, he continued to use the National Socialists’ own words to expose the truth behind their twisted dreams. In 1934 he montaged four bloody axes tied together to form a swastika to mock The Old Slogan in the “New” Reich: Blood and Iron (AIZ, Prague, March 8, 1934). In 1938, he was forced once again to run for his life—this time to England—before the imminent German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He was interned for a time in England as an enemy alien, and his health began to seriously deteriorate. His brother Wieland was refused an English residency permit in 1939 and, with his family, left for the United States. John wished to accompany his brother but was refused entry.
Following the war Heartfield, who had applied for citizenship in Czechoslovakia, had no strong desire to return to Germany. He and his new wife, Gertrude, found themselves with limited options. He was
offered a professorship of satirical graphics at the Humboldt University in East Berlin. His response was, “Do I have to be a professor?” He returned to East Berlin in 1948 and was greeted with suspicion by the authorities because of the length of his stay in England. He was unable to work as a mon- teur and was denied health benefits. It was only through the intervention of Brecht and Stefan Heym that, after eight years of official neglect, Heartfield was formally admitted to the East German Akademie der Kunste (Academy of the Arts) in 1956. Although he subsequently produced some memorable montages, he was never as prolific again.
After his death, the Akademie der Kunste took possession of all of his surviving works. They were uncatalogued and kept from the public for more than twenty- five years. Only after the end of the cold war did it become possible to show his art for the first time in the United States.
From April 15 to July 6, 1993, the second floor of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City was the American venue for a critically acclaimed exhibit of Heartfield’s original montages.John Heartfield
See also Brecht, Bertolt; Heym, Stefan
References and Further Reading
Arenas, Amelia. John Heartfield
Photomontages Brochure from the Show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, April 15-July 6, 1993. At http://www.abebooks.com.
Buthe, Joachim. Der Arbeiter-Fotograf: Dokumente und Beitrage zur Arbeiterfotografie, 1926-1932. Cologne: Prometheus, 1977.
Drew, Joanna, ed. John Heartfield 1891—1968: Photomontages at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London SW1, 6 October—8 November 1969. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1969.
Heartfield, John, Peter Pachnicke, Klaus Honnef, and Hubertus Gassner. John Heartfield. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
Herzfelde, Wieland. John Heartfield: Leben und Werk. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1971.