Page 34 - Studio International - October1968

Blood and Iron—the old importance to Dada; not merely for symbolic reasons having to do
motto in the New Germany
with art and anti-art but, more practical, having to do with the
(8 March 1934).
importance of spontaneity and immediacy of expression when fabri-
cating their montages. But after the image was constructed, Heart-
field spared no effort in pasting up and working over the montage
with brush and air-brush. These, used with considerable finesse, were
essential in imparting to the paradox the utmost uniformity in
transition from one fragment to the next, the most rational space and
the maximum logic of light and shade. Original photomontages by
Heartfield (few of which now exist) are marvellous for their technical
cunning and fastidious execution.
When the Berlin Dadaists described photomontage as a revolution-
ary activity, they meant revolutionary not only as a picture-making
process, but as a vehicle for political propaganda too. The declara-
tion of Henri van de Velde and others that the 'engineer' stood at
the forefront of modern society and modern art, and the programme
and activities of Russian Constructivism, must have had a strong
appeal for the photomontagists of Berlin, for they thought of them-
selves as engineers, assemblers of pictures, factory production
imagists. Hence the meaning of the well-known painting by George
Grosz, with its judiciously placed snippets of photographs. It is called
both The Engineer and The Photo-monteur Heartfield.
Hymn of the eternal Heartfield's polemical photomontages, those images of his we know
yesterdays—We pray for the
bomb's might best, were not made for exhibition as unique works of art, but for
(12 April 1934). reproduction in newspapers and magazines. The precise dates which
usually accompany the captions indicate the times of publication.
Superimposed upon the images there is often a paragraph or two of
text and these, plus the captions, are essential if the precise and more
subtle meanings of the pictures are to be understood. Sometimes the
same photomontages appear at a later date, the captions and even
the images altered to conform to a new context. In the hectic first
flush of Dada magazines in Berlin from 1917, the titles were changed
with astounding rapidity. For at that time in Germany it was
illegal to initiate a periodical without official sanction. By investing
in one which was becoming defunct, the name could be changed and
the magazine issued under the Dada banner. As soon as an inter-
diction was placed on it, as was often the case, it would appear with
another name. Thus, the plethora of weeklies or monthlies were for
the most part one or two publishing units : New Youth in 1917 changed
to Deadly Earnest, Bankruptcy, The Rose-coloured Spectacles (its escutcheon
a toilet seat!), Adversary, The Pill (in quite another contraceptive
sense), The Cudgel, and among yet others, Germany Must Perish.
The defeat of Germany in the war was a mighty blow to the national
ego, and with civil war a threat, and the economy utterly chaotic
Metamorphosis: Ebert, (not to mention the reparations demanded in Versailles through the
Hindenburg, Hitler
vindictive 'War-guilt' clause), a great wave of cynicism swept over
(16 August 1934).
the country in the immediate post-war years. The economic respite
A comment on the collusion
at the end of the war due to heavy financial investment from America was short lived, for
between the military High the Wall Street crash in 1929 brought down with it the economies
Command and moderate of many other countries. When money ceased to flow into Germany,
Socialists like Ebert, which and unemployment rose from three million in 1930 to seven million
kept Hindenburg (who
in January 1933 made two years later, the old wounds to national pride were rubbed raw,
providing fresh impetus to Hitler and his propagandist, Joseph
Hitler Chancellor) in power.
Goebbels. Through terrorism and the most brazen political machina-
tions, culminating in the infamous Reichstag fire of February 27
1933, Hitler succeeded, less than a month later, in becoming
absolute dictator of Germany.
Each significant event in the rise of the Third Reich was ruthlessly
marked by Heartfield in his photomontages. But then he had to flee
for his life. So with the Gestapo literally banging on his front door,
he made his escape leaving behind twenty years' work to be consumed
in the bonfires of the New Order. Heartfield described the book-
burning of that period. It was not just the Nazis who put the torch
to forbidden literature, for each night, from the rooftops of Berlin,
curled the tell-tale plumes of smoke from the chimneys of a frighten-