John Heartfield: Montage for the poetry collection Und sie bewegt sich doch! Freie Deutsche Dichtung (1943)
John Heartfield: Montage for the poetry collection Und sie bewegt sich doch! Freie Deutsche Dichtung (1943)
In 1943, the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain published a poetry anthology titled Und sie bewegt sich doch! Freie Deutsche Dichtung. The anthology included works by Wieland Herzfelde, Johannes R. Becher and Bertolt Brecht, among others. The foreword to the anthology was written by the painter Oskar Kokoschka, who had been president of the Free German League of Culture since 1941.
Graphic artist John Heartfield designed the dust jacket of the book. It depicts Adolf Hitler in the shape of a gorilla with a bloody sword and steel helmet squatting on a globe. The title, which is derived from Galileo's famous quote “And yet it moves", implies the exiles' conviction: The world goes on; the barbaric and retrograde Hitler regime will be overcome. The exiles raise their protest at the regime themselves: with their “Free German League” they offer an alternative to Nazism.
Gallery
