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The Archive of the Avant-Garde (ADA) boasts an extensive collection of magazines, including Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (The Workers Pictorial Newspaper). Originally published in Berlin, AIZ was a bestseller during the Weimar Republic and served as a crucial platform for the Communist Party. It featured incisive photojournalism that sharply criticized the rising tide of National Socialism. After Hitler came to power in 1933, AIZ continued its publication in Prague.

The cover image Durch Licht zur Nacht (Through Light to Night) shows one of the first photomontages that visual artist John Heartfield created for AIZ while in exile in Prague. A co-founder of Berlin Dadaism, Heartfield, along with contemporaries like George Grosz and Hannah Höch, had been experimenting with photomontage since the 1910s—a technique in which multiple photographs are combined to produce composite images. Heartfield used his art to actively oppose the political events unfolding in Nazi Germany. The issue of AIZ featuring Heartfield’s photomontage coincided with the infamous book burning at Berlin’s Opernplatz on May 10, 1933. The cover depicts minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels standing in front of the Reichstag on fire, his index finger raised.

John Heartfield’s 1928 poster design titled 5 Finger hat die Hand. Mit 5 packst du den Feind (5 Fingers Has the Hand. With These 5 Grab the Enemy) promoted List 5 representing the Communist Party in the Reichstag elections. Having joined the party when it was founded in 1918, Heartfield was responding to the Nazi Party, which had begun using the swastika at its first party congress or rally on January 28, 1923. Heartfield’s poster featured photographs of workers’ hands, enhancing the expressive power of the grasping hand by lengthening the fingers and repositioning the thumb.

Text: Friederike Fast, Associate Researcher and Curator