Page 35 - Studio International - October1968

Right During the light of night (19 May 1933).
Heartfield's comment on the Reichstag fire
and the events following it: 'Hitler's decree to
preserve the State', the outlawing of the
Communists and the assumption of absolute power
by the National Socialists.
Far right Goering the butcher (14 September 1933).
In that portentous year President Hindenburg
(in January) foolishly offered the Chancellorship
to Hitler, believing it to be a means of
controlling the Nazis. A month later, the Reichstag
was set on fire.

Right Don't worry—he's a vegetarian (7 May 1936).
Bonnet, France's Foreign Minister to the
French cockerel. This was included in the
photomontages which appeared in Lilliput,
April 1939.
Far right This is the 'Heil' they bring (published in
1936 in the Illustrated Worker). A reference
to the use of German planes in the Spanish Civil
War. 'Heil', the vocal accompaniment to the
Hitler salute, means light, salvation.

ed populace. Heartfield continued his work as an exile in Prague work. It contains the most comprehensive text and illustrative
until 1938 when, with the Gestapo closing in, he fled to England again, material available on Heartfield. And through these efforts, enough
where he lived till 1950. Here, curiously, he did not produce anti- of his work exists again to allow the organization of a retrospective
Nazi photomontages which would have been incalculably effective exhibition. Now, unfortunately, through politics, this exhibition
as war propaganda. His brilliance in that medium was, however, which has already been held in Sweden, will not come to the country
momentarily acknowledged by the British magazine Lilliput, which which gave him refuge.
reproduced, in 1939, several of his earlier montages. Later that year
also, a picture of 1932 called Kaiser Adolf, in which the Führer
1 Encouraged by the Kaiser and the militarists, patriotic Germans would
ludicrously sports the plumage dear to Wilhelm II, was used as the
at the time greet each other with the words, 'Gott strafe England' (God
cover for the new weekly Picture Post.3 punish England). To demonstrate his antipathy for such fine sentiments,
For almost thirty years Heartfield was neglected in the West, and Helmut Hertzfelde anglicized his name to John Heartfield, and despite the
only recently has interest in this master of montage been revived. court's refusal to legalize the change he retained it from that day on.
Since by its very nature his work lent itself to reproduction, examples 2 The cinema was influential on Heartfield's photomontages. From 1916 till
1919 he worked with Berlin film companies, once serving as special effects
of his pictures painstakingly gathered together from old newspapers,
advisor to the government-sponsored U.F.A. In recent years he had again
magazines and posters, plus some surviving originals, made it possi- been active in film production.
ble, in 1962, for his brother to produce a monograph on his life and Both magazines were issued by the same publisher.
3