John Heartfield: Göring, der Henker des Dritten Reichs (September 1933)
John Heartfield: Göring, der Henker des Dritten Reichs (September 1933)
Er hat mit seiner Kunst eine ganze Generation beeinflußt – und sogar im Dritten Reich treibt man Propaganda auf seine Art. Man ist sich bei den Henkern im Lande genau darüber im klaren, was für eine unschätzbare Waffe Heartfields Montage ist. Sie wissen welchen Feind sie in dem kleinen, unscheinbaren Johnny haben. Sie hassen ihn wie kaum einen anderen, und wehe, wenn sie seiner habhaft werden!
[He managed to influence a whole generation with his art - even in the Third Reich they used his type of propaganda. The country's henchmen know exactly how powerful a weapon Heartfield's montage is. They know that the small, unimposing Johnny is a formidable enemy. They hate him like almost no other, and woe betide him if they ever get a hold of him! (ed. trans.)]
Oskar Maria Graf in the exile magazine Deutsche Volkszeitung, 1938
A blood-stained Hermann Göring in a butcher's apron is standing in front of the burning Reichstag. This was the September 1933 cover page of the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), which was published by Willi Münzenberg. The newspaper referred to the process against Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe that was just starting. He had been accused of having set fire to the Reichstag. Graphic artist John Heartfield designed the photomontage for the cover page, criticising the persecution of the political opponents of Nazism. Immediately before the fire at the end of February 1933, the Nazi regime accused the communists of having set the fire as part of a conspiracy. The police and SA people used this as an excuse to persecute members of the KPD and SPD and deport them to improvised concentration camps. As the acting interior minister of the state of Prussia, Hermann Göring was at the helm of the persecution, in particular in Berlin.
Many opponents flew abroad, including John Heartfield. From his exile in Prague, he fought against the Nazi regime with numerous collages and graphics for political books and newspapers in exile. The AIZ had also been moved completely to Prague in 1933. Heartfield also used the picture Der Henker [The Executioner] to design the cover of the Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitler-Terror [Brown Book about the Reichstag Fire and Hitler’s Terror], which was published in Paris in 1933.
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