22 Facts About John Heartfield

John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld on 19 June 1891 in Berlin-Schmargendorf, Berlin under the German Empire.

John Heartfield's parents were Franz Herzfeld, a socialist writer, and Alice, a textile worker and political activist.

John Heartfield's family had to flee to Switzerland and later they were deported to Austria.

In 1917, John Heartfield became a member of Berlin Club Dada.

In January 1918, John Heartfield joined the newly founded German Communist Party.

In 1919, John Heartfield was dismissed from the Reichswehr film service because of his support for the strike that followed the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

John Heartfield met Bertolt Brecht in 1924, and became a member of a circle of German artists that included Brecht, Erwin Piscator, Hannah Hoch, and a host of others.

John Heartfield mainly worked for two publications: the daily Die Rote Fahne and the weekly communist magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, the latter of which published the works for which Heartfield is best remembered.

John Heartfield built theatre sets for Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht.

Since John Heartfield's photomontages appeared on this cover, his work was widely seen at newsstands.

John Heartfield lived in Berlin until April 1933 when the Nazi Party took power.

John Heartfield fled Germany by walking over the Sudeten Mountains to Czechoslovakia.

John Heartfield eventually rose to number five on the Gestapo's most-wanted list.

John Heartfield moved into an apartment next to his brother's, at 129A Friedrichstrasse.

John Heartfield was interrogated and released having narrowly avoided a trial for treason, but was denied admission into the East German Akademie der Kunste.

John Heartfield was forbidden to work as an artist and was denied health benefits.

In East Berlin, John Heartfield worked closely with theatre directors such as Benno Besson and Wolfgang Langhoff at Berliner Ensemble and Deutsches Theater.

John Heartfield created innovative stage set designs for Bertolt Brecht and David Berg.

John Heartfield is best known for the 240 political art photomontages he created from 1930 to 1938, mainly criticising fascism and Nazism.

John Heartfield's photomontages satirising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis often subverted Nazi symbols such as the swastika in order to undermine their propaganda message.

John Heartfield was buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery, adjacent to Brecht's former home.

In 2023, an animated documentary about John Heartfield was released, directed by Katrin Rothe.