Early life, education and work John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld on 19 June 1891 in
Berlin-Schmargendorf, Berlin under the
German Empire. His parents were
Franz Herzfeld, a socialist writer, and Alice (née Stolzenburg), a textile worker and political activist. Franz Herzfeld was accused of blasphemy in 1895. The family had to flee to
Switzerland, and later they were deported to
Austria. Their parents disappeared in unclear circumstances in 1899, and died in mental hopitals a decade later, he in 1908, she in 1911. Heartfield and his siblings
Wieland, Lotte and Hertha were left abandoned in a mountain hut. The four children went to live with Ignaz Varnschein, Mayor of
Aigen,
Salzburg, and his wife Clara, his uncle
Joseph Herzfeld being the legal guardian. He apprenticed as a bookseller in Wiesbaden in 1905, then studied art in
Munich 1908-1911 at the
Königliche Kunstgewerbeschule München (Royal Bavarian Arts and Crafts School) before transferring in 1912 to the
Charlottenburg School of Arts and Crafts. Two commercial designers,
Albert Weisgerber and
Ludwig Hohlwein, were early influences. While living in Berlin, he was drafted in 1914, but got discharged by feigning a nervous disorder. He began styling himself "John Heartfield", an
anglicisation of his German name, to protest against
anti-British fervour sweeping Germany during the
First World War, when Berlin crowds often shouted "
Gott strafe England!" ("May God punish England!") in the streets. In 1916, he and George Grosz experimented with pasting pictures together, a form of art later named
photomontage, and which would become a central characteristic of their work. In 1917, Heartfield became a member of
Berlin Club Dada. He mainly worked for two publications: the daily
Die Rote Fahne ("The Red Flag") and the weekly
communist magazine
Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (
AIZ; "Workers' Illustrated Newspaper"), the latter of which published the works for which Heartfield is best remembered. He also built theatre sets for
Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht. During the 1920s, Heartfield produced a great number of photomontages, many of which were reproduced as dust jackets for books such as his montage for Upton Sinclair's
The Millennium. It was through
rotogravure, an engraving process whereby pictures, designs, and words are engraved into the printing plate or printing cylinder, that Heartfield's montages, in the form of posters, were distributed in the streets of Berlin between 1932 and 1933, when the Nazis came to power. His political montages regularly appeared on the cover of
Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung from 1930 to 1938, a popular weekly whose circulation (as many as 500,000 copies at its height) rivaled any other contemporary German magazine. Since Heartfield's photomontages appeared on this cover, his work was widely seen at newsstands. Heartfield lived in Berlin until April 1933 when the
Nazi Party took power. On
Good Friday, the
SS broke into his apartment, but he escaped by jumping from his
balcony and hiding in a trash bin. He fled Germany by walking over the
Sudeten Mountains to
Czechoslovakia. He eventually rose to number five on the
Gestapo's most-wanted list. In 1934, he combined four bloody axes tied together to form a swastika to mock the "Blood and Iron" motto of the Reich (
AIZ, Prague, 8 March 1934). In 1938, given the imminent
German occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was forced once again to flee from the Nazis. Relocating to England, he was interned as an enemy alien, and his health began to deteriorate. Afterward, he lived in
Hampstead, London. His brother Wieland was refused a British residency permit in 1939 and instead left for the United States with his family.
Postwar period In the aftermath of
World War II, Heartfield was denied his written applications to remain in England for "his work and his health", and was convinced in 1950 to join Wieland, who had been living in
East Berlin,
East Germany. Heartfield moved into an apartment next to his brother's, at 129A Friedrichstrasse. However, his return to Berlin was seen with suspicion by the East German government due to his 11-year stay in England and the fact his dentist was under suspicion by the
Stasi. He was interrogated and released having narrowly avoided a trial for
treason, but was denied admission into the East German Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts). He was forbidden to work as an artist and was denied health benefits. Due to the intervention of
Bertolt Brecht and
Stefan Heym, Heartfield was formally admitted to the Academy of the Arts in 1956. Although he subsequently produced some montages warning of the threat of nuclear war, he was never again as prolific as in his youth. In
East Berlin, Heartfield worked closely with theatre directors such as
Benno Besson and
Wolfgang Langhoff at
Berliner Ensemble and
Deutsches Theater. He created innovative stage set designs for Bertolt Brecht and David Berg. Using Heartfield's minimal props and stark stages, Brecht interrupted his plays at key junctures to have the audience be part of the action and not lose themselves in it. In 1967, he visited Britain and began preparing a retrospective exhibition of his work, which was subsequently completed by his widow Gertrud and the
Berlin Academy of Arts, and shown at the ICA in London in 1969. ==Works==