Editing John Heartfield (section)

===Interwar period===

In 1919, Heartfield was dismissed from the [[Reichswehr]] film service because of his support for the strike that followed the assassination of [[Karl Liebknecht]] and [[Rosa Luxemburg]]. With [[George Grosz]], he founded ''[[Die Pleite]]'', a satirical magazine.

Heartfield met [[Bertolt Brecht]] in 1924, and became a member of a circle of German artists that included Brecht, [[Erwin Piscator]], [[Hannah Höch]], and a host of others.

Though he was a prolific producer of stage sets and book jackets, Heartfield's main form of expression was photomontage. Heartfield produced the first political photomontages.<ref>"Heartfield in Context" by [[Maud Lavin]], February 1985</ref> He mainly worked for two publications: the daily ''[[Die Rote Fahne]]'' ("The Red Flag") and the weekly [[communist]] magazine ''[[Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung]]'' (''AIZ''; "Workers' Illustrated Newspaper"), the latter of which published the works for which Heartfield is best remembered. He also built theatre sets for [[Erwin Piscator]] and Bertolt Brecht.

During the 1920s, Heartfield produced a great number of photomontages, many of which were reproduced as dust jackets for books such as his montage for Upton Sinclair's ''The Millennium''.

It was through [[rotogravure]], an engraving process whereby pictures, designs, and words are engraved into the printing plate or printing cylinder, that Heartfield's montages, in the form of posters, were distributed in the streets of Berlin between 1932 and 1933, when the Nazis came to power.

His political montages regularly appeared on the cover of ''Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung'' from 1930 to 1938, a popular weekly whose circulation (as many as 500,000 copies at its height) rivaled any other contemporary German magazine. Since Heartfield's photomontages appeared on this cover, his work was widely seen at newsstands.

Heartfield lived in Berlin until April 1933 when the [[Nazi Party]] took power. On [[Good Friday]], the [[SS]] broke into his apartment, but he escaped by jumping from his [[balcony]] and hiding in a trash bin. He fled Germany by walking over the [[Sudeten Mountains]] to [[Czechoslovakia]]. He eventually rose to number five on the [[Gestapo]]'s most-wanted list.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/heartfield-books-articles/david-king-book-heartfield|title=Heartfield's Escape From Nazi Germany|work=John Heartfield Exhibition|access-date=8 January 2017}}{{Dead link|date=June 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

In 1934, he combined four bloody axes tied together to form a swastika to mock the "Blood and Iron" motto of the Reich (''AIZ'', Prague, 8 March 1934).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-art-posters/heartfield-posters-aiz/blood-and-iron|title=John Heartfield Art Poster Blood and Iron|work=John Heartfield Exhibition|access-date=12 August 2015|archive-date=6 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306055520/http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-art-posters/heartfield-posters-aiz/blood-and-iron|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 1938, given the imminent [[German occupation of Czechoslovakia]], he was forced once again to flee from the Nazis. Relocating to England, he was interned as an enemy alien, and his health began to deteriorate. Afterward, he lived in [[Hampstead]], London. His brother Wieland was refused a British residency permit in 1939 and instead left for the United States with his family.