Cover and illustrations for Kurt Tucholsky, 'Germany, Germany above All'
Original title: Cover and illustrations for Kurt Tucholsky, 'Germany, Germany above All'
Date: 1929
Art Form: Painting
Heartfield personifies Germany in the cover image of the book Germany, Germany above All, as a composite figure: judicial and military costumes define his body, his face is statesman, nationalist, military, and bourgeois combined - as indicated by the loose joule below the chin and mustache, the red and white colors of the German Socialist Democratic Party, the military hat, and bourgeois top hat. Additionally, the words Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, written in fraktur script, spill out of the figure's mouth, suggesting he is merrily singing the national anthem. The back cover reinforces the alliance between social and military orders by juxtaposing the police's baton and the military sword. This montaged-cover together with the montaged images inside this picture book aptly characterizes how Heartfield's work was deeply immersed in a dialogue with the cultural crisis of the late Weimar Republic.
Kurt Tucholsky authored the book Germany, Germany above All, and Heartfield designed its cover in 1929. This picture book trenchantly criticized right-wing nationalism, the military, the democratic system, and capitalism. The book is considered to be just as much about the role of photography in society as it is about the political situation in the Weimar Republic. It deftly captures the so-called optimism of Weimar visual culture as well as its abrupt interruption by fascism in the 1930s. Tucholsky's and even Heartfield's ambivalence towards photography mirrors the dilemma of the times: the critique and frustration with photojournalism and its association with urban modernity, and at the same time, the critical tool it had become in the hands of such artists like John Heartfield.
