John Heartfield (1891, Berlin – 1968) is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld. He chose to call himself Heartfield in 1916, to criticize the rabid nationalism and anti-British sentiment prevalent in Germany during World War I.His photomontages satirising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis often subverted Nazi symbols such as the swastika in order to undermine their propaganda message. One of his more famous pieces, made in 1935 entitled Hurrah, die Butter ist Alle! ( Hurray, the butter is gone!) was published on the frontpage of the AIZ in 1935. A parody of the aesthetics of propaganda, the photomontage shows a family at a kitchen table, where a nearby portrait of Hitler hangs and the wallpaper is emblazoned with swastikas. The family — mother, father, old woman, young man, baby, and dog — are attempting to eat pieces of metal, such as chains, bicycle handlebars, and rifles. Below, the title is written in large letters, in addition to a quote by Hermann Göring during food shortage. Translated, the quote "Iron has always made a nation strong, butter and lard have only made the people fat".In 1918 Heartfield joined the Berlin Dada club and the Communist Party of Germany.He would turn out to be highly active in the Dada movement, organizing the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920. In 1919, he was dismissed from the Reichswehr film service on account of his support for the strike that followed the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. With George Grosz, he founded Die Pleite, a satirical magazine. After meeting Bertolt Brecht in 1924, who was to have an influence on his art, Heartfield developed photomontage into a form of political and artistic expression. He worked for two communist the daily Die Rote Fahne and the weekly Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), the latter of which published the works for which Heartfield is best remembered.
