Wieland Herzfelde ( Herzfeld; 11 April 1896 – 23 November 1988) was a German publisher and writer. He is particularly known for his links with German

avant-garde art The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or 'vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical D ...

and

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

thought, and was the brother of the

photo montage Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final image ...

artist

John Heartfield John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. ...

, with whom he often worked.

Life

Herzfelde was born in

Weggis Weggis is a municipality in the district of Lucerne in the canton of Lucerne in Switzerland. It forms part of the northern shore of Lake Lucerne. The official language is German. History In about 800 the monastery of Pfäfers acquired the court o ...

. His parents were Franz Held (whose surname was an abbreviation of his original name Herzfeld), an

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...

writer, and political activist Alice Stolzenberg. Orphaned since 1899, in 1914 he followed his older brother Helmut, later known as John Heartfield, to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. In 1916, he founded the artistic journal '' Neue Jugend'', and the following year started the publishing house Malik-Verlag, known for its works on art and Marxism. Towards the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he briefly worked on propaganda films for the German government.Zervigón, Andrés Mario. "A 'Political Struwwelpeter'? John Heartfield's Early Film Animation and the Crisis of Photographic Representation." ''New German Critique'', Summer 2009, Issue 107, p5-51 After the war, he continued his publishing activities and also founded an art gallery, ''Grosz-Galerie'', and a bookshop, as well as helping to organize the

First International Dada Fair The First International Dada Fair took place in Berlin in 1920. It was Grosz, Heartfield and Hausmann. It was to become the most famous of all Berlin Dada's exploits. It featured almost 200 works by artists including Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Hannah Höc ...

in 1920, which included works by Hans Arp,

Max Ernst Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...

Georg Scholz Georg Scholz (October 10, 1890 – November 27, 1945) was a German painter, member of the New Objectivity movement. Scholz was born in Wolfenbüttel and had his artistic training at the Karlsruhe Academy, where his teachers included Hans ...

, Johannes Theodor Baargeld, and

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George ...

. Following

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

's rise to power, he fled to

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

in 1933, later moving to London, and in 1939 to the USA where he published works by exiled German writers. In 1949 he returned to what was by then

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

, becoming a professor of literature at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

; he also wrote poetry and fiction, and worked as a translator. He died in 1988 and was buried in the

Dorotheenstadt cemetery The Dorotheenstadt Cemetery, officially the Cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder Parishes, is a landmarked Protestant burial ground located in the Berlin district of Mitte which dates to the late 18th century. The entrance to the ...

in Berlin.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Herzfelde, Wieland 1896 births 1988 deaths People from Lucerne-Land District 20th-century German poets German publishers (people) Dada 20th-century German translators German male poets Academic staff of Leipzig University Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany 20th-century German male writers German male non-fiction writers