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| FEATURES | BY JONATHAN ALLEN |
    John Heartfield’s self portrait.  From left, Barbara Cartlidge, Caroline Compton and Milein Cosman-Keller at the unveiling |
PUNKS have a lot to thank World War II artist John Heartfield for. A leading figure of the German avant-garde, he pioneered the art of photomontage that would find one of its most notorious outlets 50 years later when the Sex Pistols pierced Her Majesty’s nose with a safety pin on a record sleeve. And though Heartfield’s manner was every bit as prankish, his was a far more pressing goal. Born Helmut Herzfeld in 1891, he was a Jew living in Berlin as Hitler was coming to power. From his studio shared with fellow founding members of the Berlin Dada group, he produced for the weekly left-wing paper Arbeiter Illustrerte Zeitung elaborate collages of photos, graphics and text that ridiculed Hitler and his violent regime with a remarkable lack of restraint. His brazenness soon landed him in trouble with the regime. Yet for all this bullishness, his time as a refugee staying in Hampstead’s Downshire Hill – where a blue plaque was unveiled to the artist on Thursday – reveals a surprisingly soppy side to Heartfield. Caroline Compton, whose parents Fred and Diana Uhlman took in Heartfield, recalls a story her father told her. “My father gave him two rabbits and the idea was to breed them to eat,” she says. “There was rationing at the time and a desperate shortage of food. But Heartfield couldn’t bring himself to kill them and found himself having to feed an ever-increasing number of rabbits.” Mrs Compton unveiled the blue plaque in Heartfield’s honour at the house – 47 Downshire Hill – where he lodged rent-free between 1938 and 1943. Her father was himself exiled from Germany after defending anti-Nazi protesters as a lawyer before pursuing painting full-time. Diana, her mother, was thoroughly English, the daughter of Tory MP Sir Henry Page Croft. Diana Uhlman was also the secretary of the Artists’ Refugee Committee, providing income, support and shelter to those arriving penniless in Britain. Their home for many years hosted a crowd of left-wing artistic types drawn to what was at the time still London’s most bohemian outpost. The Uhlmans were thrilled to have Heartfield, already a celebrity and feted artist, turn up on their doorstep one day. Mrs Compton says her parents would describe Heartfield as “a very very charming man”. She continues: “My parents were very fond of him, and my father in particular was full of admiration for his work even though his own paintings were absolutely nothing like Heartfield’s – he was a romantic, painting landscapes and cityscapes. Heartfield’s work was very savage.” Though people could talk of little else during the war years, her parents, left-wing like Heartfield, would avoid discussing politics with him. Ms Uhlman adds: “He was a committed communist and totally anti-bourgeois and he would have done anything Stalin told him to do. He was absolutely fanatical,” she says. It was his fanaticism that got him into such trouble in the first place. When still in Germany, he produced works such as ‘I’ve got millions behind me’, which shows a well-fed industrialist handing a wad of cash into Hitler’s saluting hand. These were endlessly reproduced both in the AIZ paper and in posters. Barbara Cartlidge, also present at Thursday’s unveiling, remembers being given handfuls of leaflets bearing Heartfield’s montages as a little girl in Berlin. She says: “I’d be out skipping and playing hopscotch with my friends and we’d secretly paste these anti-Nazi leaflets as we leant casually against the wall. “My older brother was very involved in the campaign, but no one would ever think of us kids doing that. It only caught me about 25 years later the scale of what we were doing.” As Heartfield’s work became more and more widespread and influential his safety was increasingly under threat. He had already stuck his neck out back in the First World War when anti-British sentiment was at its peak: it was then he anglicised his name to show his distaste for the Weimar Republic. In 1933 he was forced to flee Germany to Prague. An exhibition of anti-fascist art he was involved in at the Manes gallery did nothing to prevent weakening diplomatic relations between the two countries. Exhibiting again the following year he drew furious censure from Germany demanding that the offending works be destroyed. The Nazi’s were already in Czechoslovakia by the time Heartfield managed to flee to London in December 1938. Had he been caught, the blacklisted artist would have certainly been sent to a concentration camp. While in Downshire Hill, Heartfield contributed to Lilliput magazine and a very famous cover for Picture Post entitled His Majesty Adolf. He moved to Jacksons Lane in Highgate in 1943, and continued his political work, speaking at rallies and organising anti-Fascist groups. The Uhlmans lost touch when he returned to what was then East Germany in 1950. Mrs Compton says: “My parents had him as a guest free of charge and he never acknowledge that once he’d returned to Germany. “It was ingratitude and my parents were very upset. He was embarrassed to have accepted accommodation in privately owned property for nothing – something that went against his principles.” The ban on Heartfield’s work by Hitler’s regime was lifted and a retrospective exhibition was organised. His impetus vanquished, he was never again to produce work quite as iconic as the 1930s’ photomontages, though he remained very active and travelled widely, lecturing on the technique he pioneered and dabbling in film. Ill health plagued him until his death, aged 77, in 1968. His legacy can be seen in the work of almost every graphic designer since, not to mention Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations and countless punk album covers. Most importantly, Heartfield’s works are a powerful indictment against those who plead ignorance when accounting for Hitler’s rise, saying, “We did not know.” Every brutal detail is there in Heartfield’s montages. |
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