ABSTRACT
Son of the socialist poet, dramatist and prose-writer Franz Herzfeld, who wrote under the name of Franz Held, Wieland Herzfeld (later calling himself Herzfelde) and his brother Helmut, who in 1916 changed his name to John Heartfield in protest against the antiBritish hate campaign, were abandoned by their parents in a mountain hut near Salzburg, taken in by the village Bürgermeister, settled in Wiesbaden and from there moved to Berlin. Bitterly opposed to the war, the brothers collaborated with Georg Grosz in satirical attacks against the established order. Wieland Herzfelde bought the rights to a defunct school magazine Neue Jugend in 1916; in the following year it was issued by Malik-Verlag (the name was borrowed from the story Malik by Else Lasker-Schüler) and became famous for publishing the work of Grosz and the writing of many left-wing novelists for whom Heartfield designed the book-jackets: his photomontage technique became a formidable weapon in his hands. Wieland Herzfelde also edited the avant-garde journals Jedermann sein eigener Fuβball, of which only one number appeared (15 February 1919), Die Pleite, and also the portfolios of Georg Grosz’s lithographs. Wieland Herzfelde also participated in the antics of the Berlin Dadaists. During the Third Reich the brothers lived in exile: Wieland fled to America in 1939 and Heartfield lived in London from 1939 to 1950. Wieland’s poems and stories were published later under the title Unterwegs. Blätter aus fünfzig Jahren (1961); this collection contains the autobiography Immergrün. Merkwürdige Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen eines fröhlichen Waisenknaben. After the Second World War the brothers returned to Germany and settled in East Berlin. Wieland Herzfelde was also active as an editor, particularly of the work of Tolstoi.
