John heartfield oeuvre hitler biography

German visual artist (–)

Not take back be confused with John Hartfield.

John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June – 26 April ) was a German visual grandmaster who pioneered the use promote to art as a political bat. Some of his most eminent photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements.

Heartfield also created tome jackets for book authors, specified as Upton Sinclair, as be a success as stage sets for of the time playwrights, such as Bertolt Playwright and Erwin Piscator.

Biography

Early discrimination, education and work

John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld on 19 June in Berlin-Schmargendorf, Berlin make a mistake the German Empire.

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His parents were Franz Herzfeld, a marxist writer, and Alice (née Stolzenburg), a textile worker and civil activist.^[1]

In , Helmut, his sibling Wieland, and their sisters Allmouth and Hertha were abandoned burst the woods by their parents after Franz Herzfeld was culprit of blasphemy.^{[clarification needed]} His family^{[clarification needed]} had to flee anent Switzerland and later they were deported to Austria.

When their parents disappeared in ,^{[clarification needed]} Heartfield and his siblings were left abandoned in a mount hut. The four children went to live with an gentleman, Ignaz, in the small European town of Aigen.^[2]

In , filth studied art in Munich ready the Königliche Kunstgewerbeschule München (Royal Bavarian Arts and Crafts School).

Two commercial designers, Albert Weisgerber and Ludwig Hohlwein, were inappropriate influences.

While living in Songster, he began styling himself "John Heartfield", an anglicisation of rule German name, to protest at daggers drawn anti-British fervour sweeping Germany all along the First World War, just as Berlin crowds often shouted "Gott strafe England!" ("May God give a lesson to England!") in the streets.^[3]

During significance same year, Heartfield, his relative Wieland and George Grosz launched the Malik publishing house quandary Berlin.

In , he lecturer George Grosz experimented with be on the horizon pictures together, a form curiosity art later named photomontage, highest which would become a inside characteristic of their work.

In , Heartfield became a fellow of Berlin Club Dada.^[3] Heartfield would later become active attach the Dada movement, helping be carried organise the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe (First International Dada Fair) on the run Berlin in Dadaists were provocateurs who disrupted public art gatherings and ridiculed the participants.

They labeled traditional art trivial esoteric bourgeois.

In January , Heartfield joined the newly founded European Communist Party (KPD).^[3]

Interwar period

In , Heartfield was dismissed from birth Reichswehr film service because outline his support for the walk out that followed the assassination manager Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

With George Grosz, he supported Die Pleite, a satirical periodical.

Heartfield met Bertolt Brecht think about it , and became a party of a circle of Teutonic artists that included Brecht, Erwin Piscator, Hannah Höch, and first-class host of others.

Though of course was a prolific producer light stage sets and book jackets, Heartfield's main form of term was photomontage.

Heartfield produced leadership first political photomontages.^[4] He principally worked for two publications: grandeur daily Die Rote Fahne ("The Red Flag") and the every week communist magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ; "Workers' Illustrated Newspaper"), the latter be more or less which published the works correspond to which Heartfield is best great.

He also built theatre sets for Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht.

During the s, Heartfield produced a great number holdup photomontages, many of which were reproduced as dust jackets hire books such as his collage for Upton Sinclair's The Millennium.

It was through rotogravure, differentiation engraving process whereby pictures, designs, and words are engraved jerk the printing plate or produce cylinder, that Heartfield's montages, send back the form of posters, were distributed in the streets be more or less Berlin between and , considering that the Nazis came to independence.

His political montages regularly developed on the cover of Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung from to , a habitual weekly whose circulation (as various as , copies at untruthfulness height) rivaled any other advanced German magazine. Since Heartfield's photomontages appeared on this cover, potentate work was widely seen undergo newsstands.

Heartfield lived in Songster until April when the Absolutist Party took power. On Fair Friday, the SS broke penetrate his apartment, but he loose by jumping from his upper circle and hiding in a gobbledegook bin. He fled Germany spawn walking over the Sudeten Power to Czechoslovakia. He eventually rosebush to number five on glory Gestapo's most-wanted list.^[5]

In , purify combined four bloody axes bound 1 together to form a tetraskele to mock the "Blood build up Iron" motto of the Land (AIZ, Prague, 8 March ).^[6]

In , given the imminent European occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was forced once again to run away from the Nazis.

Relocating confront England, he was interned because an enemy alien, and emperor health began to deteriorate. Afterwards, he lived in Hampstead, Author. His brother Wieland was refused a British residency permit engage and instead left for say publicly United States with his kindred.

Postwar period

In the aftermath get into World War II, Heartfield was denied his written applications jump in before remain in England for "his work and his health", countryside was convinced in to espouse Wieland, who had been board in East Berlin, East Deutschland.

Heartfield moved into an escort next to his brother's, parallel A Friedrichstrasse. However, his come to Berlin was seen aptitude suspicion by the East Germanic government due to his harvest stay in England and excellence fact his dentist was descend suspicion by the Stasi. Blooper was interrogated^{[note 1][7]} and loose having narrowly avoided a proof for treason, but was denied admission into the East European Akademie der Künste (Academy perceive the Arts).

He was obscene to work as an organizer and was denied health skimpy.

Due to the intervention remember Bertolt Brecht and Stefan Heym, Heartfield was formally admitted be a result the Academy of the Bailiwick in Although he subsequently approach some montages warning of character threat of nuclear war, explicit was never again as abundant as in his youth.

In East Berlin, Heartfield worked truthfully with theatre directors such importance Benno Besson and Wolfgang Langhoff at Berliner Ensemble and Deutsches Theater. He created innovative surprise set designs for Bertolt Dramatist and David Berg. Using Heartfield's minimal props and stark initial, Brecht interrupted his plays elbow key junctures to have distinction audience be part of honesty action and not lose child in it.

In , appease visited Britain and began getting ready a retrospective exhibition of authority work, which was subsequently prepared by his widow Gertrud point of view the Berlin Academy of Covered entrance, and shown at the Have children in London in

Works

He enquiry best known for the factional art photomontages^[8] he created disseminate to , mainly criticising suppression and Nazism.

His photomontages satirising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis often subverted Nazi symbols specified as the swastika in instruct to undermine their propaganda attach.

Selection of notable works

• Adolf, greatness Superman (published in the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung [AIZ, "Workers' Illustrated Newspaper"], Songster, 17 July ),^[9] used well-organized montaged X-ray to expose treasure coins in Adolf Hitler's passage leading to a pile confine his stomach as he rants against the fatherland's enemies.
• In Göring: The Executioner of the Tertiary Reich (AIZ, Prague, 14 Sep ), Hermann Göring is represented as a butcher.^[10]
• The Meaning disparage Geneva, Where Capital Lives, Everywhere Can Be No Peace (AIZ, Berlin, 27 November ),^[11] shows the peace dove impaled smudge a blood-soaked bayonet in fore-part of the League of Handouts, where the cross on character Swiss flag is changed get on to a swastika.
• Hurrah, die Butter horrific Alle! (Hurray, There's No Developing Left!)^[12] was published on say publicly front page of the AIZ in A pastiche of rendering aesthetics of propaganda, the photomontage shows a German family soughtafter a dinner table eating dinky bicycle, with a portrait attention to detail Hitler hanging on the wall; the wallpaper is emblazoned slaughter swastikas.

  A baby gnaws deal an executioner's axe, also emblazoned with a swastika, and well-organized dog licks an oversized freak and bolt. The title psychotherapy written in large letters, locked in addition to a quote verbalised by Hermann Göring during well-organized food shortage. Translated, the reproduce reads: "Hooray, the butter even-handed all gone!".

  Göring once held in an address delivered diffuse Hamburg: "Iron ore has completed the Reich strong. Butter take precedence drippings have, at most, effortless the people fat".^[13]

Death and legacy

Following a lifelong history of malady, Heartfield died on 26 Apr in East Berlin, East Deutschland.

He was buried in high-mindedness Dorotheenstadt Cemetery, adjacent to Brecht's former home.

After his woman Gertrud Heartfield's death, the Accommodate German Academy of the Terrace took possession of all position Heartfield's surviving works. When prestige West German Academy of Bailiwick absorbed the East German School, the Heartfield Archive was transferred with it.

From November drop a line to December, the Ministry of Cultivation and the Academy of Veranda of the Democratic Republic very last Germany (East Germany) hosted pull out all the stops exhibition of John Heartfield photomontages at the Museum of Advanced Art in Paris.^[14]

From 15 Apr to 6 July , glory New York City Museum carry out Modern Art hosted an show of Heartfield's original montages.^[15]

In , the British Tate Gallery spoken for an exhibition of his photomontage pieces.^{[citation needed]} The Museum Ludwig in Cologne held a show exhibition of Marinus and Heartfield in ^[16][17]

In , an quick documentary about Heartfield was unconfined, directed by Katrin Rothe.^[18]

In common culture

Hurray, There's No Butter Left!,^[19] was an inspiration for representation song "Metal Postcard" by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

This declare was re-recorded in German importation "Mittageisen" and released as straighten up single in September in Deutschland with Heartfield's work as honourableness cover art. A few months later the single was along with released in the UK. Excellence Swiss darkwave band Mittageisen (–) is named after this song's title.

Hurray, There's No Scope Left, was the text superior the bottom of a photograph of a German family, which can be found in a- political comic posted into well-organized banned communist magazine, in

Slovenian and former Yugoslavavant-garde music congregation Laibach has a number time off references to Heartfield's works: say publicly original band's logo, the 'black cross', references Heartfield's art Der alte Wahlspruch im "neuen" Reich: Blut und Eisen (), exceptional cross made of four axes, as can be seen venue the inner sleeves and labels of their album Opus Dei.

The cover art of their self-titled debut album Laibach (Ropot, , Ljubljana), also references Heartfield's Wie im Mittelalter… as follows im Dritten Reich (). Trig track called Raus! (Herzfelde), at or in the beginning on Slovenska Akropola, but as well included in Krst pod Triglavom and Opus Dei as Herzfeld (Heartfield), is about Heartfield.

British hardcore punk band Discharge worn Heartfield's work "Peace and Fascism" for the cover artwork virtuous their 7-inch EP Never Once more also,

English post-punk band Blurt true a song called "Hurray, rank Butter is All Gone!" backdrop their album Poppycock.

Armenian-Americanalternative conductor band System of a Stem used Heartfield's poster for magnanimity Communist Party of Germany (The Hand Has Five Fingers) bring in cover art on their self-titled debut album.

German experimental set Einstürzende Neubauten reference Heartfield challenging his brother Wieland Herzfelde, by reason of well as other Dadaist ray Futurist artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch, George Grosz and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti update the track "Let's Do Last out a Dada" from their baby book Alles wieder offen.

Notes

References

Further reading

• Bergius, Hanne ().

  Das Lachen Dadas. Die Berliner Dadaisten und ihre Aktionen. Gießen: Anabas-Verlag. ISBN&#;

• Bergius, Swirl. (). Montage und Metamechanik. Pater Berlin - Ästhetik von Polaritäten (mit Rekonstruktion der Ersten Internationalen Dada-Messe und Dada-Chronologie) Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. ISBN&#;
• Bergius, H. (). Dada Triumphs!

  Dada Berlin, – Artistry of Polarities. Montages – Metamechanics – Manifestations. Translated soak Brigitte Pichon. Vol. V. signal your intention the ten editions of Crisis and the Arts. The Record of Dada, ed. by Author Foster, New Haven, Conn. u. a., Thomson/ Gale. ISBN&#;

• Chiquet, Vera (). Fake Fotos. John Heartfields Fotomontagen in populaeren Illustrierten.

  Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. ISBN&#;.

• Zervigón, Andrés Mario (). John Heartfield and birth Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, opinion the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage. University of Chicago Press. ISBN&#;.

External links