Berlin Dada and the Power of Advertising

Advertising Seizes Control of Life: Berlin Dada and the Power of AdvertisingAuthor(s): Sherwin SimmonsReviewed work(s):Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1999), pp. 121-146Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360686 .

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Advertising Seizes Control of Life: Berlin Dada and the Power of Advertising

Sherwin Simmons

1. Walter Mehring, Das Ketzerbrevier. Ein

Kabarettprogramm (Kurt Wolff Verlag: Munich, 1921), pp. 65-6. The text begins: Die Reklame

bemachtigt sich des Lebens / Am Ausgang abends vor den anatomischen Kabinetts / Die StraBen segeln mit Riesengasometer / The flying brothers / 5% Stromersparnis / Sous les ponts de Paris / Und Fischerin du Kleine / Plakate bunter Wimpeln / PiekaB beim Zauberkonig / Der Mann ohne Nasenknorpel / Schielt nach der / Dame ohne Unterleib / Und das Fraulein lachelt / In 'Steiners Paradiesbett' ( .. ).

2. George Grosz stuck the Kaiser Briquette advertising stamp on the cover of a sketchbook

(no. 34 March 6 - August 5, 1918) and drew the image with color notations on page 7 of the same book. The image also presides over his

portrayal of Germany's hellish state in Germany, a Winter's Tale.

3. Mehring's phrase, 'Der Trompeter von

Sackingen blast Alarm!' satirically connects

Cay's poster with the epic poem, Der Trompeter von Sackingen, published by Josepf Viktor von Scheffel in 1854. Like all of Scheffel's works, its

picturesque portrayal of sixteenth century life around the Black Forest contributed to the volkisch ideology and Heimatkunst aesthetic of

conservative forces in the early twentieth

century. Mehring possibly viewed the poem and Anton von Werner's famous illustrations as part of the ideological structure opposing socialism, because a verse from Der Trompeter- 'For the

big eat the little, and the biggest eat them all; and so the social question is in Nature easily solved.' - was frequently quoted to attribute

perverse qualities to socialism and justify its

suppression. Eda Sagarra, Tradition and Revolution: German Literature and Society 1830-1890 (Basic Books: New York, 1971), p. 262. For discussion of von Scheffel and von Werner in the post-1848 political context, see Peter Paret, Art as History (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1988), pp.133-49; and Jutta Dresch, '" . .. lebendige Gestalten aus alter

Zeit" Anton von Werners Illustrationen der historischen Dichtungen Joseph Victor von

Scheffels', in Dominik Bartmann (ed.), Anton von Werner: Geschichte in Bildern (Deutsches Historisches Museum: Berlin 1993), pp. 33-48.

4. 'Jack the Ripper kutschiert / Nur echt mit dem Totekopf / Durch die Tiefen der Weltstadt!' Mehring, Das Ketzerbrevier, p. 66.

5. The death's head emblem was originally worn only by the Prussian calvary, but then was

adopted by the elite storm troops formed for

I

The phrase in the title above is the first line of a dadaist poem published by Walter Mehring in 1921.1 The poem's second line situates the site of this observation about modern reality as the exit from the Anatomy Cabinet, one of the exhibits of the Panoptikum which was housed in the Kaisergalerie at the

junction of FriedrichstraBe and BehrenstraBe in central Berlin. The same location is portrayed in the upper part of George Grosz's lithograph FriedrichstraJ3e (Fig. 1), and like Grosz's image Mehring's poem evokes the urban experience through a montage of disparate elements. Composed of

phrases and images appropriated from advertising and popular culture, the

poem presents a world of commercial simulacra in which the grotesque wax

figures of the Panoptikum and well-known characters of commercial trademarks and popular entertainment have become the sole actors.

Images, such as an ocean liner of the Hamburg-America Line and an

Alpine scene which advertised a brand of condensed milk, mix with small ads for a sadomasochistic masseuse and erotic pulp novels, thus evoking the lurid world of commerce and vice for which Friedrichstral3e was famous. The

resulting picture of the modern metropolis is one in which desires are shaped through images of commodities, creating what Mehring terms a 'Babel- Berlin,' a hell heated by Kaiser Briquettes (Fig. 2).2 Drawing associative links between the diverse images of the montage, Mehring uses the figure of the detective Nick Carter to express his own discovery of the altered function of art within this world of advertising. He implies that its role is to arrest the

eye, to trap the gaze. However, it is only following this observation that the forceful seizure of power implied by the poem's first line is most strongly stated: 'The Yellow Peril / And Jewish Guilt for the World War! / Therefore recruit for the Freikorps! / The Trumpeter from Sackingen sounds the Alarm!' Titles of right-wing pamphlets and allusions to Freikorps recruitment posters, such as Alexander M. Cay's design (Fig. 3) for the Eastern Border Defense, convey the right-wing political rhetoric of the time.3 The poem goes on to address not just the way political propaganda had taken control of the streets of Berlin, but also the way an occupying army was

shaping political reality, ending with the lines: 'Jack the Ripper / Only genuine with the death's-head / Cruises the depths of the metropolis.'4 The death's-head as trademark, as guarantee of violent response to resistance, was

painted on Freikorps' military vehicles (Figs 4 and 5) that prowled an urban

jungle of signs.5 Mehring's montage creates a compelling image of life dominated by

trademarks and other commercial imagery, a state of affairs that, as both motif and strategy, was central to Berlin Dada's practice. While Dada's interaction with advertising has been noted many times, the specific character of that

exchange within the historical moment has not been examined.6 The main issue at stake was art's increasingly complex relationship to the mass-produced commodity, two aspects of which, as it had emerged before 1914, have

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 119-146 0 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS



Sherwin Simmons

Fig. 2. Wagon with Kaiser Briquettes advertising sign designed by Julius Gipkins. Photo taken from Seidels Reklame, vol. 1, no. 10, October 1913, p. 320. (Photograph: Kunstbibliothek Berlin.)

Fig. 1. George Grosz: FriedrichstraSe, 1918, (illustration from Ecco Homo), offset lithograph, 26.4 x 17.5 cm. The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Photograph: Los Angeles Country Museum of Art) C 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

recently been studied. One, the increasingly overt commodification of art, has been linked to changing commercial practices within the art world which gave rise to a marketing strategy of 'seeking the signs of authenticity through the denial of commercialism'.7 The second, art's role in marketing mass-produced commodities, has entailed examinations of the theoretical foundation of the Werkbund's efforts to reform culture under industrial capitalism and the new need for artists to provide manufacturers with 'visual signs of distinction, evocative and auratic, signs that would move the customer to choose one

Fig. 3. Alexander M. Cay: poster for the Fig. 3. Alexander M. Cay: poster for the Eastern Border Defense, 1919, color lithograph, 94 x 66 cm. Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University (GE 509).

trench assaults during the war. Robert Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918-1923 (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1952), p. 24. Numerous

press photographs show the use of the Totenkopf on helmets, vehicles and barricades as a type of trademark of the Freikorps. See Die Pleite, vol. 1, no. 5, December 1919, p. 3; and Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 2 Male Bodies:

Psychoanalyzing the White Terror (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1989), pp. 66, 70, 273, and 405.

6. The following publications introduce the issue's importance: Timothy Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada (UMI Research Press: Ann Arbor, 1987), pp. 163-94; Robert Jensen, 'The Avant-Garde and the Trade in Art', Art Journal, vol. 47, no. 4, Winter 1988, pp. 36-7; Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik, High &Low:

122 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999



Advertising Seizes Control of Life

Modern Art and Popular Culture

(Museum of Modern Art: New York City, 1990), pp. 258-60; Beeke Sell Tower, 'Utopia/ Dystopia: Dada-Merika and Dollarica', in Envisioning America:

Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by

George Grosz and his Contemporaries 1915-1933 (Busch-Reisinger Museum: Harvard University,

Cambridge, 1990), pp. 62-7; Rolf Sachsse, 'Mit das Beste auf dem Gebiet der Reklame-

Fotomontage . . . ', in Peter

Pachnicke and Klaus Honnef

(eds.), John Heartfield (Akademie der Kiinste zu Berlin: Berlin, 1991), pp. 266-73; Peter-Klaus Schuster, 'Zur Asthetik des

Alltags: Uber Kunst, Werbung und Geschmack', in Susanne Baumler (ed.), Die Kunst zu

Werben: DasJahrhundert der Reklame

(Miinchner Stadtmuseum: Munich, 1996), pp. 265-75; and Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the

First World War (Yale Unversity Press: New Haven and London, 1996), p. 222.

7. Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Sicle Europe

Fig. 4. George Grosz: Self Portrait (dedicated to Charlie Chaplin), 1919, offset lithograph, 50 x 33 cm. Oeffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel. Kupferstichkabinett. Inv. 1931.12 HA 1996. (Photograph: Martin Buchler). ? 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. (Freikorps tank is seen adjacent to poster column just to right above Grosz's head.)

Fig. 5. Willy Romer: photograph of tank in front of the Eden Hotel on Kurfurstenstrale, headquarters of the Garde-Kavallerie-Schutzen- Division, 1919. (Photograph: Willy R6mer, Agentur fOr Bilder zur Zeitgeschichte, Berlin.)

product over another'.8 These pre-war developments figured in the eventual

growth of what Jean Baudrillard has described as a world of simulacra, and

Mehring's image of life dominated by the circulation of advertising certainly anticipates aspects of his theories. However, unlike Baudrillard's substantiation of a 'hyper-reality' composed of referentless simulacra that defy critique, Mehring turned brandnames and slogans into poetic conceits, creating a

literary montage intended to sow chaos within and encourage resistance to an

economic-political order that was still negotiating its relationship with the mass media and advertising. Mehring and the circle around the Malik Verlag believed that real socio-political entities were increasingly embodied and mobilized through visual signs, a practice that intensified during the war and

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 123



Sherwin Simmons

revolution.9 This article will examine Berlin Dada's effort to understand and

respond to this emerging practice, an effort crucial to Dada's viability as social and artistic critique.

II

If Mehring's vision of a commodity world was, in part, anticipatory, its link to 'The World of Posters', an essay published by Karl Kraus in 1909, also made it

retrospective. Kraus, like Mehring, imagined a world in which the question 'Is there life beyond the posters?' could be seriously voiced with critical intent.'0 His essay ridiculed efforts to create cultural values in commercial products through 'artistic posters'. However, simultaneously with the essay's publication, Karl Ernst Osthaus formed the German Museum for Art in Commerce and Industry in Hagen to collect such commercial art and to circulate exhibitions in the hope of encouraging its growth.11 Shortly after one of these exhibitions entitled 'Art in the Service of the Businessman' opened in

Munich, the architect Adolf Loos, a close colleague of Kraus, gave a lecture to the Verein der Kunst in Berlin in which he derided the exhibition's concept because 'whoever knows that it is the duty of art to lead people further and

further, higher and higher, to make them godlike, experiences the

amalgamation of material purpose with art as a desecration of the greatest goddess'.12 Loos's declaration of art's sacred role clearly states an important but little recognized topos of early expressionism - the anxious denial of any relationship between art and commerce.3

'Art in the Service of the Businessman', the exhibition that vexed Loos so, was held in the Old City Hall from 10 to 24 April 1910 under sponsorship of the Munich Alliance for Applied Art. Paul Neu's exhibition poster (Fig. 6) was itself an example of the new posters, packaging and printed matter that served

mna2uuV uua

4 lO VF

wc%cw F

(Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1994), p. 10.

8. Frederic J. Schwartz, 'Commodity Signs: Peter Behrens, the AEG, and the Trademark', Journal of Design History, vol. 9, no. 3, Fall

1996, p. 170. Also see Schwartz, The Werkbund.

9. For discussion of the swastika's relationship to the trademark and corporate logo, see Malcolm Quinn, The Swastika: Constructing the

Symbol (Routledge: London and New York, 1994).

10. Karl Kraus, 'Die Welt der Plakate', Die

Fackel, vol. 11, no. X, 31 December 1907,

pp. 19-24. For a fuller discussion of the essay's content and context, see Sherwin Simmons, 'Kitsch oder Kunst? Kokoschka's Der Sturm & Commerce in Art', The Print Collector's

Newsletter, vol. 23, no. 5, November-December

1992, pp. 161-7.

11. The Deutsches Museum fur Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe was founded on 10

August 1909. For information, see Herta Hesse-

Frielinghaus (ed.), Karl Ernst Osthaus. Leben und

Werk (Bongers: Recklinghausen, 1971), pp. 259-339. The Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld and the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in

Hagen recently organized a comprehensive exhibition entitled Das Schdne und der Alltag: Deutsches Museum fur Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe

which ran at both museums from 28 September 1997 to 18 January 1998.

12. The lecture was published as Adolf Loos, 'Ueber Architektur', Der Sturm, vol. 1, no. 42, 15 December 1910, p. 334.

13. For further discussion of this, see Simmons, 'Kitsch oder Kunst?'

Fig. 6. Paul Neu: poster for Art in the Service of the Businessman, exhibition from the German

Museum for Art in Commerce and Industry in Munich's Old City Hall from April 10-24, 1910, colour

lithograph, 50 x 64 cm. Stadtmuseum, Munich. (Photograph: Wolfgang Pulfer.)





14. For a sampling of art exhibition posters, see

Magdalena M. Moeller, Kommt, sehet die Kunst: Friihe Kunstausstellungen (Harenburg: Dortmund, 1984). For the heraldic device, see Alfred Grenser, Zunft-Wappen und Handwerker-lnsignien: Eine Heraldik der Kiinste und Gewerbe (1889; reprint, Dr. Martin Sandig: Niederwalluf bei

Wiesbaden, 1971), pp. 59-60; and F. H.

Ehmcke, Wahrzeichen, Warenzeichen (Werbedienst GMBH: Berlin, 1921), p. 6.

15. Berthold Hinz, Diirers Gloria. Kunst, Kultur, Konsum (Kunstbibliothek: Berlin 1971).

16. For Klinger's designs of 1909 and 1910, see Mitteilungen des Vereins deutscher

Reklamefachleute (MVDR), no. 24, December

1911, pp. 9 and 16. The 1910 design also won the competition, but a design by Kallmorgen was substituted for execution. Mitteilungen des Vereins der Plakatfreunde (MVP), vol. 1, no. 2, 1910, p. 40; and MVP, vol. 1, no. 3, 1910, p. 68.

17. Grenser, Zunft-Wappen, p. 49.

18. Examples include Bruno Paul's poster (1904) and trademark (ca. 1908) for the

Vereinigte Werkstatten and Erich Liidke's

poster for the 'Second German Hansa-Day' meeting which was sponsored by the Hansa- Bund fur Gewerbe, Handel und Industrie and held in Berlin's Admiralspalast on 17 November 1912.

19. For information about the Modere Galerie and its exhibitions, see Karl-Heinz Meissner, 'Der Handel mit Kunst in Miinchen 1500-1945' and Mario-Andreas von Liittichau, 'Die Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg und der Blaue Reiter' in Robert Walser and Bernhard Wittenbrink

(eds.), 'ohne Auftrag': Zur Geschichte des Kunsthandels (Walser and Wittenbrink Verlag: Munich, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 44-57 and 117-29.

20. MVP, vol. 1, no. 3, 1910, p. 70.

21. Conservative critics began to charge in the 1880s that German art was being adversely influenced by a fashionable and feminized French modernism and the attacks intensified around 1910. See Beth Irwin Lewis, 'Kunstfiir Alle: Das Volk als Forderer der Kunst', in Ekkehard Mai and Peter Paret (eds.), Sammler, Stifter und Museen: Kunstfdrderung in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Bohlau: Cologne, 1993), pp. 186-201.

22. Hinz, Diirers Gloria, p. 39.

23. Mario-Andreas von Liittichau, 'Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon', in Eberhard Roters

(ed.), Stationen der Moderne: Die bedeutenden

Kunstausstellungen des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Berlinische Galerie: Berlin, 1988), pp. 130-53.

24. Wilhelm von Bode, 'Die "Neue Kunst"', Der Kunstfreund, vol. 1, no. 1, October 1913,

p. 13. A preview of the article appeared in Vossische Zeitung, 30 September 1913, Evening

commerce. Like the Sachplakate, or object posters developed by Lucian Bernhard, it depends on a simplified image which subtly engages the viewer's

space and directs attention to the brandname or, as here, the exhibition's title. Unlike previous art exhibition posters which employed complex allegorical imagery, Neu reduced art's representation to the heraldic device of three shields that became associated with artists' guilds during the fourteenth century.

14 In the nineteenth century the device was linked to numerous artist organizations and became the emblem of the Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstgenossenschaft with its

founding in 1856.'5 However, only in 1909 when Julius Klinger won a

competition to design the poster for the Grof3e Berliner Kunstausstellung, were other attributes stripped away to allow the emblem to stand alone.16 Neu placed it on the sail of a ship whose bow cuts the waves in the foreground, apparently outdistancing three ships on the horizon. While such drama is absent from most

object posters, here it appropriately expressed the advantage that would come to the businessman (or country) who allied art with commerce, for a sailing ship was featured on the coats of arms of some merchant guilds and Hanseatic League cities. 17 Like other posters and trademarks of the period, the image looked to the

past for a model of the wealth and power that could come through international trade and the alliance with art.18

Benefit, however, came to artists as well as businessmen, as artists founded a new profession, commercial art, which was recognized as an important modern

phenomenon, but whose existence posed questions about its relationship to fine art that disturbed Loos. These questions may have also surfaced in a change in the exhibition's venue. The site was initially announced as Heinrich Thannhauser's Moderne Galerie, one of Germany's most prestigious galleries for modern art, and had the exhibition been held there, it would have followed the first exhibition of Kandinsky's Neue Kiinstlervereinigung Miinchen by only a few months.19 The reason for the change to the Old City Hall is not clear, but a notice about the exhibition praised its setting beneath the old banners of the

city's guilds.20 Certainly the presence of commercial art in a private gallery would have countered efforts by avant-garde artists and dealers to deny the commercial side of their activity which was often attacked by opponents who associated avant-garde art with fashion.21 The new private dealer felt the need to maintain the division which had opened between the fine and applied arts in the eighteenth century, while the new advertising artist wanted to revive and modernize the old emblems of the guilds and crafts.22

The tensions between avant-garde and advertising art were clearly revealed in discussions surrounding two important exhibitions of recent achievements in the respective areas: the Herbstsalon in Berlin and the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Herwarth Walden, the owner of Der Sturm journal and gallery, organized the First German Autumn Salon which ran through December 1913 and included 366 works by 90 artists, the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of modern art to date.23 An extensive, carefully planned publicity campaign caused Wilhelm von Bode, the director of museums in Prussia, to

express dismay over the way the 'sandwich men' of Der Blaue Reiter used

advertising to gain the financial support of rich, female art enthusiasts.24 Other commentators complained that art was demeaned by the process and that Walden was simply promoting current artistic fashion for his own financial

gain.25 Statements included in the exhibition catalogue, in contrast, claimed that the new art was concerned only with spiritual matters, with Franz Marc

writing that because of the artists' 'self-chosen isolation from the offers that the world makes to us', they had discovered 'the equation to extract the

abstractly oriented spirits from life, without desire, purpose, and




Sherwin Simmons

restriction'.26 Art that served life was displayed at the German Werkbund

Exhibition that opened in May of 1914 in Cologne. Osthaus was responsible for organizing an actual shopping street, as well as sections in the Main Hall devoted to 'Art in Commerce', 'Selected Pieces from the Past and Present', and 'Pioneers and Guides to a New German Art of Manufacture'.27 The latter

section, popularly known as the 'Twelve Apostles', consisted of works by twelve artists 'who, whether they were originally painters, sculptors, or

architects, have worked in and promoted the new German art of manufacture almost exclusively since the beginning of the movement'. Julius Meier-Graefe made reference to their popular title in his response to the Werkbund exhibition which expressed disgust at recent trends in German art: 'Today "artists" are no longer apostles as previously, but business people, and really clever ones. Thanks to industry they rake in clinking coins. One no longer needs to make the effort to celebrate them as cultural heroes, culture has

extraordinarily little to do with their activities, at least culture that is worth

being called such.' Meier-Graefe's comments reflected the growing confusion within the established categories of fine and applied art, a confusion that he extended to recent expressionist paintings by adding, 'It's droll how

expressionist and cubist paintings fit perfectly into this "apartment art".'28 Artists were caught in this confusion which created questions about career

paths and had consequences for economic and professional success. Doubts and ironic observations about negotiation of these problems found expression in humor magazines, since illustrators pursued careers that often crossed

professional boundaries. An essay by Edmund Edel, 'The Contemporary Artist's Earthly Pilgrimage', that appeared in Lustige Bldtter satirically traced the path of a young artist and described in the following way the moment when economic necessity forced him to abandon his idealistic vision of a

painting career:

The man was thrown into the huge mortar of Berlin. He dips his brush into the pulp of nerves

(marvelous term). He howled about his crushed luck in tones of a madman on red, green and blue surfaces. (Almost epic, isn't it?) He threw the remainder of his artistic talent on the poster column for shoe polish and rot gut schnaps, against stomach-ache and podagra, for sterilized cow manure and antificimotol . . . Industry made love to Mrs. Art and paid her. (Boo, how

indecent) . . . Hurrah, one laughs about the gentlemen, colleagues from 'high' art ... Hurrah, we produce ads and execute commissions. Hurrah, we belong to the apparatus of Berlin, like the subway, cars, and depositories of large banks. (Hurrah, we even have a bank account. - My darling, what more do you want?)29

edition. I have addressed the advertising campaign and response in a study of August Macke's display window paintings, a portion of which was presented in a paper 'Expressionism in the Discourse of Fashion', delivered in the session 'Art and Patronage in Germany 1870-1945', Association of Art Historians

Conference, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 4-6 April 1997.

25. Alois Essigmann, 'Drehstrome im

Kunstbetrieb', Die Gegenwart, vol. 43, no. 10, 7 March 1914, 156-57; and Josef August Beringer, 'Deutsche Kunstnote', Siiddeutsche

Monatshefte, vol. 11, November 1913, pp. 198-208. Walden's motives were defended in Adolf Behne, 'Der Herbstsalon', Die

Gegenwart, vol. 42, no. 42, 18 October 1913, pp. 668-9.

26. Herwarth Walden, 'Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon: Vorrede' and Franz Marc, 'Vorwort der Aussteller', Der Sturm, vol. 4, no.

180-1, October 1913, p. 106.

27. Wulf Herzogenrath, Dirk Teuber and

Angelika Thiekotter (eds.), Der westdeutsche

Impuls 1900-1914: Die Deutsche Wekbund-

Ausstellung Coln 1914 (Kolnischer Kunstverein:

Cologne, 1984).

28. Julius Meier-Graefe, 'Kunstbummel', Frankfurter Zeitung, 21 July 1914, 1st Morning edition.

29. Edmund Edel, 'Kinstlers Erdenwallen von heute. Aphorismen des Weltschmerzes', Lustige Blitter, vol. 25, no. 1, 4 January 1911, pp. 29-30.

30. For comments about Heartfield's

advertising background, see Wieland Herzfelde, John Heartfield: Leben und Werk (VEB Verlag der Kunst: Dresden, 1970), pp. 9-12; and Stefan

Heym, 'Der tolle-Heartfield', Wochenpost, vol. 8, June 1961, p. 16.

The artist opened an advertising agency on LeipzigerstraBe staffed by assistants and grew rich while consulting every morning by telephone from his villa in Grunewald. However, Edel ended the story of material success by having the artist advise his sons, on his deathbed, to become shoemakers.

III

Many of the artists affiliated with Berlin Dada began their careers within the

shifting terrain, humorously described by Edel, between traditional, avant-

garde and advertising art. Helmut Herzfeld, better known as John Heartfield, participated as a young man in advertising design and slogan competitions sponsored by companies like Maggi, the soup seasoning manufacturer, and later studied applied graphic art at the Royal Bavarian School of Applied Arts in Munich. Following his initial education he worked as a designer for a firm in Mannheim30 before coming to Berlin in 1913 to study with Ernst Neumann, who held the first academic chair for advertising art at the newly reorganized





31. For Neumann's career, see Paul Westheim, 'Ernst Neumann, ein Reklamekiinstler und

Padagoge', MVDR, no. 12a, 1910, pp. 9-14; and Julius Klinger, 'Ernst Neumann', MVDR, no. 29, 1912, pp. 3-4.

32. 'Ein Lehrstuhl fur Graphik und Reklamekunst', MVDR, no. 46, November 1913, p. 389; and Hans Reimann, 'John Heartfield', Das Stachelschwein, vol. 4 , June 1927, p. 37.

33. Radio interview in 1966 with Heartfield in Berlin, as cited in Pachnicke and Honnef, John Heartfield, p. 391. Neumann designed the body work for two cars and a truck exhibited in the

Transportation Hall and then published an article about his approach to vehicle design. 'Die Architektur der Fahrzeuge', Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes 1914, pp. 48-54.

34. Heartfield was likely influenced by Neumann's reconception of artists' roles, such as the opinions expressed in the latter's

response to an accusation by Alfred Braun, a former designer in Neumann's advertising firm, that he had taken credit for a poster designed by Braun. See 'Industriekiinstler und ihre Gehilfen', Das Plakat, vol. 11, no. 9, September 1920, p. 440. Neumann described himself as an

Industriegraphiker and wrote that the new

profession of industrial graphic art had changed the relationship between hand and concept in art as artists had taken on assistants and

employed industrial processes. This division of labor led to increased anonymity and in reaction, Neumann said, artists developed an obsessive vanity about authorship and personal touch. Neumann believed those working in

advertising art must realize that they were part of an industrial process which dictated many of the decisions. Traditional notions of authorship based on the previous mode of production were therefore outdated, because the hand execution of the design ready for printing was only part of the technology of reproduction. The head of the

design firm who gained the commission, developed the concept, and dictated the

technological processes to be employed was as much the creator of the final product as the drafter of the design. Neumann used his private trademark to 'sign' work produced in his studio

through such methods and explained that the

problem with Braun had arisen when Neumann withdrew from the studio and Braun continued to use Neumann's private trademark as a business asset. The confusion ceased when a court sided with Neumann and assigned him the trademark's legal use. The issues had be raised earlier when Neumann and Braun sent letters to Seidels Reklame about the controversy that followed Neumann's withdrawal in February 1913 from the firm he had founded in October 1910. 'Neumann gegen Neumann', Seidels Reklame, vol. 1, no. 7, July 1913, pp. 221-2.

35. Reimann, 'John Heartfield', p. 39.

36. See the spark plug ad in Westheim, 'Ernst Neumann', 14. By 1917 the use and alteration

Arts and Crafts School in Charlottenburg. Neumann was renowned in the

advertising world, having contributed not only to the genesis of the modern

poster in Germany through his work for the Eleven Executioners cabaret in Munich, but also doing outstanding work as Sorge & Sabeck's advertising director for six years.31 By 1910 he was acclaimed for his efficient organization of a large advertising studio in Berlin, his use of innovative training techniques for young designers, and his knowledge of the most recent advances in

reproductive technology.32 Heartfield was able to work with Neumann in his

advertising firm and through his assistance to participate in a design competition sponsored by automobile manufacturers for a frieze at the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne.33 Through such experiences Heartfield was exposed to attitudes about art and its relationship to industry34 which would effect his work and lay the basis for Hans Reimann's later comment that Heartfield was 'one of the few in Germany who has grasped what packaging means'.35 Neumann, like other advertising artists, had begun to combine photography with text and illustration in his magazine ads, anticipating the techniques of

photomontage which Heartfield would explore in subsequent years.36 However, Heartfield's own work during this period employed hand-drawn

images and lettering, as evidenced by his design (Fig. 7) for the Independent Alliance for Advertising Art and Science, a new advertising association which had been announced in Paul Ruben's book Die Reklame, ihre Kunst und Wissenschaft.37 The youth in Heartfield's drawing stretches his arms diagonally, breaking the frame's corners with Ruben's book above and the hand holding a flaming torch below and calling attention to the alliance's motto - 'Advertising becomes art and science when it proclaims the truth with ethical means' - lettered in the lower right corner. This solicitation through physical action is quite different from other student designs and resembles Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen's and

Mihaly Biro's political posters rather than typical German advertising posters.38

Fig. 7. John Heartfield: design for slogan of the Freie Vereinigung fur Reklame-Kunst und- Wissenschaft, 1914, media and size unknown. (Photograph: Paul Rubin, Die Reklame, ihre Kunst und Wissenschaft [Hermann Paetel Verlag: Berlin, 1915].) ? 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.




Sherwin Simmons

The emphasis on gesture, both in pose and crayon stroke, links the work to

expressionism and perhaps reflects the contacts that Heartfield and his brother Wieland had established with avant-garde circles in Berlin where they had begun to attend the lecture evenings of Die Aktion and the art exhibitions at Der Sturm.39

The Herzfelde brothers soon met George Grosz, who was working in Berlin as an illustrator for humour magazines after abandoning his dream of becoming a

history painter. Grosz's attitude toward the academic art world is expressed in his first drawing for Lustige Blitter in which a student, who has failed his final exams for the third time, wonders whether his father will have him become an academic painter or a military officer.40 This issue also contained Edel's satirical

essay, and Grosz's early letters from Berlin adopted a similar cynical attitude, declaring that he had abandoned fine art and was simply a member of the

bourgeoisie concerned with making money.41 His attitude was akin to that

expressed in a drawing (Fig. 8) in another issue of Lustige Bliitter dedicated to

Der moderne Maler, der seine Zeit versteht.

' Ve l lattt:emIne ,1eir r rp d t i b et t c n r a r . nr l.,'tt ft btc htir , ... tfrnb b r(t i e.. i. r? I n. t t?snetri , i erl ti',

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Fig. 8. P. Kraemer: 'The modern painter who understands his age', Lustige BlItter, vol. 26, no. 19, 20 May 1911, p. 23. (Photograph: Special Collections, Northwestern University Library.)

of photographs was discussed as the future of

advertising. On 27 March 1917 a lecture and exhibition of advertising photography were

arranged for the Verein Deutscher Reklamefachleute. See Julius Polster, 'Die

Photographie im Dienst der Reklame', MVDR, no. 2-3, February-March 1917, pp. 60-2. Advertisments for Odol mouthwash and Continental tires made frequent use of

photomontage. See the image of an arm holding up a tire against a factory backdrop that appears in Frankfurter Zeitung, 19 February 1911, 4th

morning ed. For information about the early use of photomontage in German advertising see Henriette Vath-Hinz, Odol: Reklame-Kunst um 1900 (Anabas-Verlag: GieBen, 1985), pp. 31-3.

37. Paul Ruben, Die Reklame, ihre Kunst und

Wissenschaft, 2 vols. (Verlag fur Sozialpolitik: Berlin, 1913 and 1915). In the second volume Ruben published ten designs by students in Neumann's advertising art class for the motto,

saying that these had been selected from twenty and asking members of the Freie Vereinigung fur Reklame-Kunst und -Wissenschaft to vote by 1 April 1915 on the award of ten prizes. No. 10 bears Herzfeld's signature.

38. I have in mind Steinlen's posters for La Feuille and Le Petit Sou, and Biro's for Nipszava. Reproductions and discussions of their works were available through articles in Das Plakat. Kathe Kollwitz's pathos and forceful drawing, which appears in her 1912 poster Fir gross Berlin, may have also been an influence. See Hans Meyer, 'Franzosische Plakatkunst:

Theophile Alex Steinlen', Mitteilungen des Vereins der Plakatfreunde, vol. 2, no. 1, January 1911, pp. 1-7 and Hans Sachs, 'Steinlen', Das Plakat, vol. 5, no. 4, July 1914, pp. 175; 'Briefe, Referate, Kritiken', Das Plakat, vol. 3, no. 2, 1912, pp. 84-6; and Daniel Varnai, 'Michael Bir6: Ein Proltarierkiinstler', Das Plakat, vol. 5, no. 2, March 1914, pp. 82-5.

39. At the end of 1913 Wieland Herzfelde wrote of his brother in a letter to the poet Else

Lasker-Schiiler, asserting that she had

undoubtedly seen him at exhibitions and lecture

evenings. He stressed that Heartfield differed from other artists in the fact that he did not wear typical clothing. Herzfelde, John Heartfield, pp. 325-6. Herzfelde later wrote that his brother adopted the typical blue overalls of the

worker, which led to his being called Monteur-

Dada, because he looked neither like an artist nor an advertising professional. Thus, Heartfield

rejected not only the garb of the painter, but also the elegant suits worn by advertising artists. He chose rather to style himself after the

typographers and printers. See Wieland Herzfelde, 'George Grosz, John Heartfield, Erwin Piscator, Dada und die Folgen oder Die Macht der Freundschaft', Sinn und Form, no. 6, 1971, pp. 1224-51; reprinted in Herzfelde, Zur Sache (Aufbau Verlag: Berlin and Weimar, 1976), p. 461.


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40. Untitled drawing signed Grosz, Lustige Bldtter, vol. 26, no. 1, 4 January 1911, p. 20.

41. George Grosz's letter of July 1913 to Robert Bell. George Grosz, Briefe 1913-1959

(Rowolt Verlag: Reibek bei Hamburg, 1979), p. 26.

42. P. Kraemer, 'Der moderne Maler der seine Zeit versteht', Lustige Bl'tter, vol. 26, no. 19, 20 May 1911, p. 23.

43. Hans Reimann wrote: 'A poster for unrivaled Cydonia Beardcream, which is still

displayed today in his studio, became the road

sign to the future.' Hans Reimann, 'Monumenta Germaniae. No. 4. George Grosz', Das Tagebuch, vol. 4, no. 31, 4 August 1923, p. 1116. Also see, George Grosz, Der Spiesser Spiegel (Reisser: Dresden, 1925), pp. 6-7.

44. Maud Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knfe: The

Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hich (Yale

University Press: New Haven and London, 1993), pp. 10, 51-61; and Maria Makela, 'By

Design: The Early Work of Hannah Hoch in Context', in Maria Makela and Peter Boswell, The Photomontages of Hannah Hdch (Waker Art

Center: Minneapolis, 1996), pp. 50-8.

45. Numerous articles in Das Plakat and MVDR from August 1914 through early 1915 treat this

problem, one example being the minutes of a meeting of the Verein Deutscher Reklamefachleute on 9 September 1914: 'Soll die Reklame wahrend des Krieges ruhen?'

exchanges between advertising and art. It depicts an artist in his studio painting a female model reclining in bed.42 The text below identifies the artist as the

'advertising painter of the M. Steiner and Son Paradise Bed Factory', while the

drawing's title, 'The modern painter who understands his age', contrasts

ironically with the former glory of art symbolized by a large Direr print of Adam and Eve which hangs on the wall. In order to study illustration and

applied art, Grosz enrolled in Emil Orlik's class at the State School of the

Applied Art Museum in Berlin, and soon sought commissions for posters, diplomas, menus and book jackets.43 Hannah H6ch was also an Orlik student,

having studied earlier at the Charlottenburg school attended by Heartfield, and executed similar commissions before getting a job as designer for the large Ullstein publishing house which made her very aware of the role of art within the information industry.44

IV

With the outbreak of the war, reports in the advertising press suggest that this

flourishing profession of advertising art was threatened by a loss of commissions and commercial artists were uncertain about how to proceed.45 However, Lucian Bernhard and Ludwig Hohlwein, the industry's leading artists, quickly developed what were called 'war graphics', posters and magazine ads which

positively associated commodities such as Manoli cigarettes and Leibniz cookies with the war effort.46 Large publishing companies were also quick to make the

change as they responded to intense public interest in news about the war. Artists supplied illustrations for serial histories of the war, such as Die groJ3e Zeit

published by the Ullstein Verlag. Otto Schmalhausen, an Orlik student and future participant in Berlin Dada, designed a poster (Fig. 9) whose large size and singular focus on an Iron Cross raised on a base against a red ground led to it being praised as one of the first successful war posters.47 Small silhouettes of soldiers who rally around the base provide a sense of scale and suggest that the monuments to Bismarck in Hamburg and the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig served as models for the design. Schmalhausen exploited the monuments' reductive tectonics and symbolism, realizing through graphic means the

relationship between commercial advertising and political propaganda that Karl Scheffler had previously noted when he described the Bismarck Monument as 'a

lighthouse of national purpose, a column of the Hanseatic League, a poster for the Reich in granite'.48

The German government, however, was slow to realize advertising's potential for furthering the war effort and initially continued pre-war policies which had been hostile to the advertising the state's industry.49 The

Independent Association for Advertising Art and Science, which organized in October 1913 and encouraged membership from all 'who have a sincere interest in the improvement of advertising's state, in the elimination of controversies concerning its feelings about the ethics of business life, in its artistic development, and preservation of the countryside', sought to combat the reasons for those hostile policies.50 Ruben's strategy was to link advertising to the expression of national interests, writing the following about the Battle of the Nations Monument: 'Doesn't this monument stand in the service of

propaganda and the service of political advertising? Doesn't it possibly promote a noble idea - Germany's honor, freedom, and glory? Scholars, industrialists, businessmen, artists, they all publicize their ideas, their

factories, their goods, their work - only they make use of other means and this is then called advertising!'5' He argued that only when advertising was




Sherwin Simmons

recognized as the means that all fields - politics, trade, industry, art, and science - used for publicity would the word 'advertising' connote esteem rather than disrepute. When Ruben wrote the foreword to his book's second volume in January 1915, a year and a half after the Free Association's formation, he mentioned that more than a thousand people had joined by July 1914 and stated his vision of advertising's new mission in wartime: 'to

promote the greatness and continued existence of the Empire, the honor of dead heroes, the glory of the living - Germany and Austria lead the world!'52

During the war's first year, however, only cities and aid societies made use of advertising to encourage support for the war.53 The national government remained reluctant to employ such means, although prominent figures in German advertising, such as Ludwig Roselius, the manufacturer of the de- caffeinated coffee - Kaffee Hag- in Bremen, and Julius Pinschewer, the owner of a Berlin advertising film company, began to pressure the government in early 1915 to reconsider its position.54 Both men pointed out to the German

Foreign Office that England's and France's astute use of propaganda was

succeeding in shaping the views of neutral countries and argued that it was essential that the government seek advice from advertising professionals in

putting together a central office that would direct all propaganda and use the latest advertising methods. Although a central office was not formed until the end of the war, the Reichsbank, after providing information about the first war loan only inside banks, hired an agency to place text ads in newspapers for the second and then put leading advertising professionals in charge of the campaign for the fifth war loan in the fall of 1916.55 Hermann Reckendorf, the

advertising director for H. Franck S6hne, the ersatz coffee manufacturer; Bernhard, the poster designer; and Pinschewer, the advertising film maker, continued to direct the rest of the war loan campaigns.56 Advertising's leaders viewed this as marking a major step in advertising's official acceptance and

during 1916-17 were happy to assist in the staffing of the Military Agency of the Foreign Office (MAA) and the Picture and Film Office (BUFA), the

government propaganda offices responsible for a broad range of propaganda posters, leaflets, booklets, films, slide shows, and lecture tours.57

Unlike artists who viewed the designing of propaganda as an economic

opportunity in the absence of other commissions, the war experiences of the Herzfelde brothers and Grosz led them by 1915 to oppose the war and to

bitterly attack the intellectuals, writers, and artists who assisted the

government with its propaganda. Grosz's letters indicate his initial

unwillingness to adapt to the production of war graphics so profitable at the moment. He writes with bitter cynicism that he should make a fortune by producing war souvenirs, thus providing the German population with the kitsch it so desired.58 Wieland Herzfelde's takeover of the journal NeueJugend in spring 1916 and his founding of the Malik Verlag soon provided an outlet for antiwar expression, particularly in its literary evenings59 and in the notice section of the journal where outrageous statements from the government's propaganda effort were reproduced, sometimes without comment.60

In the May and June issues of 1917, Heartfield initiated a discussion about

advertising and the shaping of public opinion by propaganda. The journal's revised newspaper format signalled its reconception as a competitor in the information industry. The inclusion of small ads for alcoholic spirits, its own

publications, lecture evenings, and advertising consultation made clear its awareness of the way advertising drove the publication industry, a fact made even more apparent at the time by the conservative influence exerted on the

press by the Allgemeine-Anzeigen-Gesellschaft, an ad agency controlled by

MVDR, no. 8, August-September 1914, pp. 279-86.

46. These advertisements began to place the well-known packages in war scenes or to associate them with patriotic emblems. See Hans

Sachs, 'Drei Berliner Kriegsplakatjahre', Das

Plakat, vol. 9, no. 1, January 1918, pp. 38-45.

47. Sachs, 'Drei Berliner Kriegsplakatjahre,' p. 39.

48. Karl Scheffler, Moderne Baukunst (Julius Zeitler: Leipzig, 1908), p. 136.

49. These policies reflected the impact on

government of an on-going critique of

advertising by intellectuals, broadly based efforts to control advertising excesses, and narrow

attempts by powerful agrarian groups to protect their financial interests. The intellectual critique was discussed extensively following publication of Werner Sombart's essay, 'Die Reklame', Morgen, vol. 1, no. 10, 6 March 1908, pp. 281-6. Numerous responses and commentaries followed in Morgen; other intellectual journals such as Plutus, Die Zukunft, and Der Kunstwart; newspapers; and humour

magazines. The strength of the essay's cultural reverberations can be gauged by continued reference to it in Hans Sachs, 'Kunst und

Reklame', Archivfiir Buchgewerbe, vol. 47, no. 5,

May 1910, pp. 105-16. For discussion of the

way the anti-advertising discourse affected the

Werkbund, see Schwartz, The Werkbund. For discussion of the Heimatschutz movement and its successes in passing laws to restrict

advertising's growth, see Use Spiekermann, 'Elitenkampf um die Werbung. Staat, Heimatschutz und Reklameindustrie im friihen 20. Jahrhundert', in Peter Borscheid and Clemens Wischermann (eds.), Bilderwelt des

Alltags: Werbung in der Konsumgesellschaft des 19.

und 20. Jahrhunderts (Franz Steiner Verlag:

Stuttgart, 1995), pp. 126-49. When the Bilow

government undertook tax reform in 1908, liberal and socialist parties pressed for lower tariffs and increased inheritance taxes, while the Bund der Landwirte and conservative parties defended their interests by supporting maintainance of high tariffs and taxes on

alcohol, tobacco, and advertising. The tax debate played an important role in the formation of the Hansa-Bund fur Gewerbe, Handel und Industrie. See Dirk Reinhardt, Von der Reklame zum Marketing: Geschichte der

Wirtschaftswerbung in Deutschland (Akademie

Verlag: Berlin, 1993), pp. 182-3; Siegfried Mielke, Der Hansa-Bundfiir Gewerbe, Handel und

Industrie 1909-1914 (Vandenkoeck & Ruprecht:

Gottingen, 1976); and Peter-Christian Witt, Die

Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1903 bis

1913 (Matthiesen Verlag: Liibeck and Hamburg, 1970).

50. Dr. Victor Mataja, 'Die freie Vereinigung fir Reklame-Kunst und -Wissenschaft', in Ruben, Die Reklame, vol. 2, p. xv.





51. Paul Ruben, 'Ein Aufruf!' Die Reklame, vol.

2, p. ix.

52. Ruben, Die Reklame, vol. 2, p. x.

53. Hans Sachs, 'Vom Hurrakitsch, von

Nagelungsstandbildern, Nagelungsplakaten und andren - Schonheiten', Das Plakat, vol. 8, no.

1, January 1917, pp. 3-4.

54. For Germany's attitudes about advertising, see Paul Westheim, 'Politik/Kunst/Reklame', Das Plakat, vol. 7, no. 3, May 1916,

pp. 129-39. For Roselius and Pinschewer, see

Ludwig Roselius, 'Ein Kapitel zur Organisation', in Briefe (H. M. Hauschild: Bremen,1919), pp. 1-13; and Julius Pinschewer, 'Politische

Propaganda', MVDR, no. 2, February 1915, pp. 35-8.

55. Albert Walter, '9 Milliarden Kriegsanleihe und - die Reklame', MVDR, vol. 5, no. 4, April 1915, pp. 107-8; Ernst Besser, 'Die Werbung fur die fiinfte Kriegs-Anleihe', Das Plakat, vol.

8, no. 1, 1917, p. 75; and 'Deutschlands grBl3te Werbewerk', MVDR, no. 10-11, November

1916, pp. 166-8. Reckendorf, Bernhard, and Pinschewer were eventually awarded the

Distinguished Service Cross for their assistance. See MVDR, no. 9, September 1917, p. 134.

56. Hermann Reckendorf, 'Uber die Werbewerk zur 9. Kriegsanleihe', Das Plakat, vol. 10, January 1919, pp. 86-8.

57. Two of the better primary sources for the

history of the war propaganda poster are Sachs, 'Drei Berliner Kriegsplakatjahre', pp. 38-45 and Heinrich Inheim, 'Das Berliner Plakatjahre 1918', Das Plakat, vol. 10, January 1919,

pp. 72-5. For recent discussions, see articles about the popular media in Rainer Rother (ed.), Die letzten Tage der Menschheit: Bilder des Ersten

Weltkrieges (Deutsches Historisches Museum:

Berlin, 1994).

58. George Grosz's letter of 1916 to Robert

Bell, in Grosz, Briefe 1913-1959, pp. 33-5.

Gustav Pazaurek had mounted an exhibition of this 'Hurrah-Kitsch' at Stuttgart's Landesgewerbemuseum in 1915. 'Vermischtes', Kunstgewerbeblatt, vol. 26, April 1915, p. 138.

For the discourse about kitsch, see Sherwin

Simmons, 'Grimaces on the Walls: Anti- Bolshevist Posters and the Debate about Kitsch', Design Issues, vol. 14, no. 2, Summer 1998.

59. Wieland Herzfelde, 'Aus der Jugendzeit des

Malik-Verlages. Zum Neudruck der Zeitschrift, "Neue Jugend"', in Zur Sache, pp. 334-50. Herzfelde says that the Neue Jugend literary evenings were the first public expressions against the war. Shouts of 'Nieder mit dem

Krieg' brought war widows to tears and led to the intervention of the police.

60. See, for instance, the statement of a Major KreBmann criticizing pacifism and also statements supporting the war by important public figures which had been posted with their

photographs for a Red Cross exhibition.

Alfred Hugenberg and heavy industry.61 The format and typography of the revised Neue Jugend are, however, very different from typical German

newspapers of the period, which, with the exception of some new illustrated

papers and certain extra editions designed for street sale, remained a monotonous series of single columns set in Fraktur and broken only by short rules and one- or two-line descriptive titles. Use of banners, double columns, photos or stirring language were rare, as was any overall page design.62 In

Germany such devices were associated with advertising, and their employment seen as a corruption of the press's objectivity and restraint. One critic in 1911

complained that under the influence of America where everything 'is for sale, from the editorial to the local news item', the German press was being infiltrated by advertising and called for a clear separation of the text and

advertising sections of the newspaper.63 In his design for Neue Jugend Heartfield clearly wanted to challenge such

conservatism by linking the journal with American advertising. On the first

page of the June issue he used a photo of New York's Flat Iron Building with the word Reklameberatung overprinted in red ink and set on the diagonal (Fig. 10). Heartfield's design takes certain of the American elements and extends them, perhaps influenced by the Futurists' typographic practice and

theory. The choice of the extra-bold, condensed Grotesk typeface for the title and its printing in color immediately attracts attention, as do the articles' titles

through their varied typefaces and the suggestive power of the language employed in the articles' titles.64 Just as language was used to attract and then

develop an active relationship of reader to text, so Heartfield used graphic devices to capture the attention of the public at a newsstand65 and then direct the reader's eye across the page in a manner rarely seen in German

newspapers, but which was common in advertising and American papers. During 1916 Grosz had also become fascinated by the eye-catching power of

graphic design in urban space. The colour combinations and letter forms of

commodity signs were closely noted on sketchbook pages (Fig. 11), and advertising began to play an important role in paintings of 1917, such as

Metropolis, The Adventurer, and On the Twentieth-Eighth Floor.66 In 'Can you ride a

bicycle?', an article on the front page of Neue Jugend's June issue, Grosz

proclaimed the huge advertisements painted on building walls 'the purest unspoiled expressions and documents of our lives' and compared their impact, when seen from a rushing elevated train, to a 'ragtime dance melody driving again and again into the brain'. 67 Colours- 'woolen goods gray' and 'fistular rose' - were associated with particular products and a series of signs -'Sarg's Kalodont - Passage-Cafe - AEG - Ceresit' - reported to flash by the train were

printed in their characteristic typefaces. Across the page in another article, Grosz wrote that modern individuals were like fleas in a circus, trained by such advertisements into social and political regimens. One could not escape by 'dozing in the poet's chair or daubing beautifully nuanced pictures', but only by becoming a contortionist, becoming 'elastic again, highly flexible from all sides - buckle - punch out' and thus able to escape the trap of the flea circus.68

Heartfield's eye-catching typography also advertised lectures, performances and publications of NeueJugend and the Malik Verlag. The notice in the May issue for a lecture evening about film probably reflected the creative interests of Heartfield, who, according to his brother, was hired to make documentary films on natural science for the Militarische Bildstelle during this summer.69 Count

Harry Kessler reported that by November 1917 Heartfield and Grosz were

jointly working on propaganda films which earned them money and kept them

exempt from military service. Little is known about these films, but the work




Sherwin Simmons

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Fig. 10. John Heartfield: layout for Neue Jugend (Weekly edition), no. 2, June 1917, p. 1. 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild- Kunst, Bonn.


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, v

Fig. 11. George Grosz: drawing on page 2: Sketchbook no. 44, 1916/3, pencil, 16.4 10.3 cm. Archive of the Akademie der Kur Berlin, Kunstsammlung, HZ 2085. ? 199 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

'Mitteilungen', NeueJugend, vol. 1, no. 8,

August 1916, pp. 165-6.

61. On this issue see Dankwart Guratzsch, Macht durch Organisation: die Grundlegung des

Hugenbergschen Presseimperiums (Bertelmanns Universitatsverlag: Diisseldorf, 1974), pp. 202-15; and Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Pres 1940-1945. Geschichte der deutschen Presse, Te

(Colloquium Verlag: Berlin, 1972), pp. 22C

62. A radical transformation of newspaper layout and typography had been initiated in United States and England during the years before the war and then carried further unc the pressures of war reporting. See Allen H The Changing Newspaper: Typographic Trends ii Britain and America 1622-1972 (Gordon Frai

London, 1973, pp. 61-106; and Kenneth

Olson, Typography and Mechanics of the Newsj

(Appleton and Company: New York, 1930) pp. 208-50. Franz Jung said that NeueJugen large format, which contrasted with the sm, size of the typical German newspaper, was similar to the London Times. See Franz Jung, Weg nach unten (Hermann Luchtertand Verla Neuwied am Rhein, 1961), p. 113.

63. W. Hammer, Die Generalanzeiger-Presse kritisch beurteilt als ein Herd der Korruption (Leipzig 1911), p. 11, reprinted in Kurt

Koszyk, Deutsche Presse im 19. Jahrhundert. Geschichte der deutschen Presse, Teil II (Colloqu

was apparently quite extensive, employing well-known actors as well as puppets and animated drawings.70 The technique of cinematic animation pointed again to Heartfield's awareness of developments in the advertising industry, for the use of the technique in Germany had originated in publicity films. Julius Pinschewer had begun montaging separate shots to create object animation films as early as 1911. With the outbreak of the war he pressed for the use of film as propaganda, gave a lecture about the publicity film on May 1916 to government officials and then created war loan films such as Agir for the Reichsbank.71 During the war

years there were frequent articles on film in advertising journals, which stressed film's potential as one of the most powerful means for influencing the masses,72 so Heartfield's notice of a Neue Jugend Reklame-Beratung evening about film

propaganda to be held in June 1917 for specially invited advertising professionals might have found an enthusiastic audience.

It is not clear whether these evenings devoted to film, advertising, and

variety theater were held, but it is quite apparent that the artists who contributed to Neue Jugend were rethinking art's role and relationship to a mass

public.73 This was instantly realized by one critic who wrote: 'These young people boldly form their ethical revolution in front of us and don't once bother to conceal its commercialness. The columns of the temple which they promise us will be poster columns. Art in the service of the businessman - we have already had that; but this manner of exploiting "culturally creative

tempestuousness" in a thorough way, is to designate something new in the act.' 74

However, Neue Jugend's explicit acknowledgment of the commercial 3 of side of fine art was not just novel, it encouraged critical reflection about x important changes occurring within the art trade. Johannes Gaulke noted that

iste, the war economy, in which black market prices soared for rationed basic

goods, created awareness of an extreme disparity between production cost and market price.75 Simultaneously, the art market, rather than collapsing as feared at the war's beginning, boomed as war profiteers speculated in art as a hedge against inflation. The extraordinary price rise revealed what Gaulke termed the

'haggling' and commodity character of the art trade. These changes affected the market for modern art, as seen in the sale of Alfred Flechtheim's collection in Berlin on 5 June 1917, the first auction of modern art in Germany.76 Fritz

Stahl, the art critic for the Berliner Tageblatt, wrote that this type of auction

;sel e turned paintings into mere commodities and bemoaned the loss of dealers and

>-3. connoisseurs who slowly nurtured the talent of younger artists:

the Now everything is Americanized. Artists, dealers, buyers can't wait. The buyer wants a name that is already famous. The artist immediately wants the price that his pictures will perhaps

ler sometime demand. The dealer wants to realize large profits that are already made ... [unt, Previously the sale of a picture was a matter of taste and discerment, a matter in which the n finer person triumphed. Today, it happens this way: 'I offer 500 more!' 'Going once, going twice, iser:

going thrice. Mr. Meier's bid is accepted.'77

paper ), The references to advertising and America on Neue Jugend's front page placed rJid's the early efforts of Berlin Dada within this changing art market, a fact later

acknowledged by Grosz when he described his recognition at this moment that Der art was a 'merchandise that can be sold with clever promotion exactly like

ag: soap, towels or brushes, and the artist has become a sort of manufacturer who must produce new goods with ever-increasing speed for ever-changing display windows' .78

Heartfield's and Grosz's backgrounds in advertising art and illustration contributed to this reconception of artistic practice, but the return of Richard

uium Huelsenbeck to Berlin also played a role. Between February and the late fall of


'' r

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Sherwin Simmons

1916 Huelsenbeck had been one of the key participants in the Cabaret Voltaire and other activities of Zurich Dada. There he had become known as the 'Dada Drummer', because of his use of a large drum to underscore the rhythms of his

Negergedichte. Huelsenbeck's adoption of the drum as a means of shocking the

public connected him with one of the major symbols of advertising and

propaganda79 and was an indication of the keen understanding within Zurich Dada of the way techniques of advertising could be employed to attract an audience for the work of young radical artists.80 With Huelsenbeck's return to Berlin in early 1917 he joined the group around Neue Jugend, and during the

spring and summer began to lay plans for the propagandizing of Dada in

Germany.81 These publicity efforts became successful when many Berlin

newspapers reported on the first Dada evenings held on 21 January and 12

April 1918. From summer 1917 to spring 1918 the propaganda activities of the

government also intensified. Shocked by the first mass strikes in April 1917 and the Reichstag's peace resolution of 19 July 1917, the Supreme Command under the leadership of Ludendorff began to plan an extensive propaganda campaign calling for military victory with substantial annexations.82 The

military component of this campaign, the Vaterlandische Unterricht, was launched on 15 September 1917 after discussions within the Kriegspresseamt and preparation of visual materials by BUFA.83 Simultaneously and with the

approval of the Supreme Command,84 the Vaterlandspartei was founded by Wolfgang Kapp and Admiral von Tirpitz on 2 September 1917 with the

purpose of creating a mass civilian movement in support of expansionist war aims. Although it was financially supported by wealthy industrialists and the traditional conservative base of the Junkers on their East Prussian estates, the

Vaterlandspartei sought to broaden support for conservative ideas beyond the old Honoratioren to the middle class and workers.85 Kapp planned to achieve this by applying techniques developed for commercial advertising to the selling of political ideas. Ludwig Roselius and other prominent Bremen manufacturers

played key roles,86 and soon prominent advertising artists, such as Alexander

Cay, were designing postcards, stamps, and other visual materials for the

campaign.87 This material was directed not only against the Allies, but also

against pacifist elements within the Social Democratic Party, the Independent Socialists, and radical segments of the unions. When the Vaterlandspartei's call for more advantageous terms delayed the conclusion of hostilities with Russia in the Brest-Litowsk negotiation and contributed to the outbreak of a mass strike in late January 1918, artists were called on to help restore patriotic feelings among the workers.88 Such use of advertising techniques and the scale of the propaganda campaign were new to German political life and the dadaists in both Berlin and Switzerland were intensely interested in the change. Count

Harry Kessler's leadership of the German Foreign Office's propaganda effort in Switzerland was certainly known to Grosz and Heartfield, while Hugo Ball

exposed and criticized that propaganda through his journalistic work for the Diefreie Zeitung in Bern during 1917-18.89

V

With the outbreak of the German revolution in November 1918, the war

propaganda offices furnished experts for all sides of the political struggle who

began to make extensive use of posters, flyers, films and photographs. Most

important for the support of the new majority socialist government was the continued operation of the Zentrale fur Heimatdienst and the creation of a new

Verlag: Berlin, 1966), p. 274. For the change in

layout that emerged from war and revolution, also see Hans Traub, Zeitungswesen und

Zeitunglesen (C. Diinnhaupt Verlag: Dessau, 1928), pp. 11 1-52.

64. Richard Huelsenbeck, 'Telegramme', Mdrz, vol. 9, 31 July 1915, pp. 81-2.

65. Although most of the copies were distributed secretly or mailed in the envelopes of Franz Jung's Seedienst, Heartfield did place some with the large newsstands where they sold out quickly on account of their striking layout. Jung, Der Weg nach unten, pp. 11 1-12.

66. His drawings of 1916-17 take a greater interest than previous ones in the graphic language of specific brandnames, a trend that continues into 1918 with careful notation in his sketchbooks of the signs for Sirius, Unterberg, S-I, Osram and Kaiser. The latter three were

incorporated into the upper right corner of

Germany, a Winter's Tale.

67. George Grosz, 'Kannst du radfahren?' Neue

Jugend, June 1917, p. 1.

68. George Grosz, 'Man muB Kautschukmann sein!' NeueJugend, June 1917, p. 1.

69. Herzfelde, 'George Grosz, John Heartfield, . . ' reprinted in Herzfelde, Zur Sache,

pp. 452-3. Herzfelde probably refers here to the Militarische Film- und Photostelle which had been formed on 1 September 1916 as a section of the Militarische Stelle des Auswirtigen Amts. This larger office, which had been founded in

July 1916, became the most important propaganda office under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel von Haeften. The film section was reorganized on 30 January 1917 and renamed the Bild- und Filmamt (BUFA). Hans

Traub, Die UFA: Ein Beitrag zur

Entwicklungsgeschichte des deutschen Filmschaffens

(UFA-Buchverlag: Berlin, 1943), 29-30 and H. Giese, Die Film-Wochenschau im Dienste der

Politik (M. Dittert & Co.: Dresden, 1940), p. 42. For contemporary comment about the

importance attached to the office's role in

countering Allied film propaganda, see 'Kunst und Wissenschaft', Neue preuflische Zeitung, 1

May 1917, Evening edition. Heartfield and his brother worked for UFA after its creation in

January 1918 until they were fired for

organizing a strike among cinema workers

following the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg.

70. For information about these films, see

Jeanpaul Goergen, 'Propaganda sollte den

Gegner lacherlich machen. DADA-Filme fur den

Krieg - Verschollene Arbeiten von George Grosz und John Heartfield', Der Tagespiegel, 2 December 1990, p. 12; and '"Filmisch sei der

Strich, klar, einfach": George Grosz und der

Film', in P. Schuster (ed.), George Grosz: Berlin- New York (Ars Nicolai: Berlin, 1995), pp. 211-8. Further information from Herzfelde about the method used in the animation is found in Hans Barkhausen, Filmpropagandafiir Deutschland im





Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg (Olms Presse:

Hildesheim, 1982), pp. 110-111. The cinematic work of Heartfield and Grosz is apparently cited in a report by the film maker Harry Jaeger where he mentions his difficulties in finding an animation camera while working for BUFA. When he eventually heard of one in

Lichtenberg, he found it was being monopolized by two young painters who carried out

experiments for the Ministry of War without success. See Harry Jaeger, 'Zeichenfilme', in

Edgar Beyfuss and Alex Kossowsky, Das

Kulturfilmbuch (Carl P. Chryselius'scher Verlag: Berlin, 1924), p. 202.

71. Pinschewer founded Werbefilm GmbH in 1910 and did his first trick film for Dr. Oetker's Baking Powder in 1911. He soon exercised a monopoly over the distribution of

advertising films to German cinemas. On 14

May 1916 he gave the address 'Der Film als Werbemittel' and showed some of his films to the Verein deutscher Reklamefachleute. The

meeting at the Union Theater in Berlin drew 600 people, among them members of the

Reichstag and War Ministry. See Ingrid Westbrock, Der Werbefilm (Georg Olms AG:

Hildesheim, 1983), pp. 39-40 and F. Fuchs, 'Im Banne des Films', MVDR, no. 5/6, May- June 1916, pp. 113-14.

72. For instance, a Mr. WeiBbach said on 29

September 1918 at a showing of propaganda films to the Verein deutscher Reklamefachleute that film, because of people's belief in the truth of the photograph and the broad popularity of the cinema, was the best means for the

'manipulation of the national soul in the

particularly desired direction'. W. B. 'Nachrichten fir die Mitglieder', MVDR, no.

11-12, November-December 1918, p. 188.

73. A newspaper reported that Neue Jugend did hold a 'Propaganda Evening' in I.B. Neumann's

Graphische Kabinett at which the May issue of the journal was distributed. f. g. 'Neue Jugend?' BerlinerTageblatt, 26 May 1917, Evening edition.

74. Willi Wolfradt, 'Neue Jugend', Die

Schaubiihne, vol. 13, 21 June 1917, p. 578.

75. Johannes Gaulke, 'Vom Kunstschacher', Die

Gegenwart, vol. 47, no. 9-10, 15 March 1918, pp. 67-70.

76. O. K. Werckmeister has discussed the

impact of changes in the art market, in The

Making of Paul Klee's Career 1914-1920

(University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1989), pp. 86-8.

77. Fritz Stahl, 'Kunsthandel und

Kunstauktion', Berliner Tageblatt, 31 June 1917,

Morning edition.

78. George Grosz: An Autobiography, p. 105. Grosz

made this comment while reflecting about his

relationship with Sally Falk, a collector in Mannheim who had become his patron. For discussion about Falk's investment of war profits in art and its impact on Grosz, see Roland

Werbedienst der sozialistischen Republik staffed by personnel from the former MAA.90 In a memo of 15 November 1918 to the Rat der Volksbeauftragten, Paul

Zech, the expressionist writer, argued that propaganda was the new means of

political control and called for the formation of a central publicity office under the leadership of the finest advertising mind in Germany.91 Although the central office was not formed, Zech did create the Werbedienst, which in November

began to produce posters directed toward the demobilized troops. In the words of one participant, printing shops were working day and night producing political propaganda in the same way as 'when a new mouthwash or a new film star is

placed before the public overnight and hammered into the brain as the latest

novelty'.92 To sell the need for order and abandonment of strikes during December and January, the Werbedienst distributed 100,000 posters and flyers daily,93 using not only advertising artists like Cay who had worked in war

graphics, but also expressionists like Max Pechstein. Zech said that through the use of artists like Pechstein the Werbedienst hoped to create a new type of

poster, 'a work of art spurred on by the hot wind of revolution'.94 Zech later

suggested it was a decision calculated to use Expressionism's radical rhetoric to stem the movement toward Spartakus, writing 'no other propaganda had had any effect on the great masses. We deliberately distributed very leftist views in order

thereby to combat the forces of the most extreme Left.'95 More direct attacks on the Left were made by the Antibolschewistische

Liga, which had been organized by Eduard Stadtler and had assembled a huge secret fund from industrial and banking interests. This organization supplied money for posters that proclaimed the dangers of Bolshevism, recruited for the

Freikorps, and called for defense of the eastern border. The Liga and associated anti-Bolshevist organizations also made extensive propaganda use of

brochures, leaflets, and special humour magazines.96 Spartakus and the USPD, the parties of the Left, made little use of pictorial

posters in the propaganda battle waged during the winter of 1918-19. Their

propaganda mainstays were street agitators and texts printed on brightly colored handbills that could be distributed or posted. While they understood that 'the rotary presses, the intellectual machine guns, are more dangerous than actual weapons'97 and twice occupied the Berlin newspaper district, they adopted a reactive and largely negative attitude towards pictorial propaganda. Die rote Fahne decried the posters of the Antibolschewistische Liga which

promised rewards for the murder of leftist leaders, renamed Hachez's famous anti-Bolshevist poster 'Noske goes through the country,' and published a satirical drawing by Karl Holtz which attacked the posters of the Right.98 But the KPD did not encourage artists sympathetic to the Left to develop a pictorial counter-propaganda. Likewise, the USPD leaders in Munich were described as 'filled with the old reactionary spirit that was hostile to advertising'. 99

The radical Left continued to ignore the need for effective visual

propaganda despite advice from members of Berlin Dada who were aware of the role of such propaganda from their war-time experiences0l? and information they had gained about the Right's strategies.10' Several of

Mehring's dadaist poems and cabaret songs refer to specific posters produced in huge numbers by the Antibolschewistische Liga and mention the roles of commercial film and magazine illustration in shaping public opinion, in one instance drawing an analogy between these media and the curative effects claimed in the advertising for the product 'Biomalz'.102 The Herzfelde brothers and Grosz, who had joined the German Communist Party on 31 December 1918, also began to consider how the Left might redirect its

propaganda activities and respond to this flood of material from the Right. In




Sherwin Simmons

1921, Wieland Herzfelde explained how during the revolution he had

encouraged the KPD to employ more pictures and drawings in its publications, but was rebuffed with the comment that the party press was not a humour

magazine. 03 At the same time Herzfelde discussed his plans for a new political

humour magazine with Count Kessler.'04 This occurred on 18 January 1919

during the final blitz of advertising for the national election, which culminating the following day with the pasting of Berlin's streetcars with a final Werbedienst election poster by Lucian Bernhard.105

Jedermann sein eigner Fussball (Fig. 12), Herzfelde's satire magazine, appeared on 15 February 1919 and featured Grosz's first published photomontage on a cover designed by Heartfield. The photomontage overlays photos of the SPD

government, military leaders, and propagandists on a large fan.'06 Its title

Jllustrierte Halbmonatsschrift . . ..... .............

rcei t rn I'di rcib tn!

213er ift ber d)iinfte??

Die Sozialisierun iIler Parteifonds

Fig. 12. John Heartfield: layout for Jedermann sein eigner FuBball, vol. 1, no. 1, 15 February 1919, p.l. c 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Dom, Karoline Hille and Jochen Kronjiger (eds.), Stifung und Sammlung Sally Falk

(Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim, 1994); and Sherwin Simmons, 'Chaplin Smiles on the Wall: Berlin Dada and Wish-Images of Popular Culture', (forthcoming).

79. Richard Huelsenbeck, Reise bis ans Ende der

Freiheit: Autobiographische Fragmente (Lambert Schneider: Heidelberg, 1984), p. 161. See the discussion of Lorenz Strauch's engraving of a drummer which is used as the frontispiece for Walter v. Zur Westen, Reklamekunst (Verlag von

Velhagen & Klasing: Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1914), p. 1. Wolfradt wrote: 'It becomes evident how fundamental connections exist between the spiritual natures and the advertising drums of these pirates.' Wolfradt, 'Neue

Jugend', p. 578.

80. See Raimund Meyer's discussion of the relation of the term Dada to the brand-name of a contemporary beauty product. Raimund

Meyer, '"Dada is gross Dada is sch6n": Zur Geschichte von "Dada Zurich"', in Hans

Bolliger, Dada in Zurich (Kunsthaus Zurich: Zurich, 1985), pp. 25-7. Meyer also points out that the dadaists were interested in the way the double vocable 'Dada' was simultaneously 'empty and open to everything'. Open but

suggestive language was the material that

advertising copywriters exploited with growing frequency at this time, a tendency that was satirized in a 1910 poem composed of brand names. See 'Das 20. Jahrhundert: Ein Gedicht in neudeutscher Mundart', Ulk, vol. 39, 8 April 1910. For discussion about the considerations that went into the selection of a brand name, see Vath-Hinz, Odol: Reklame-Kunst ur 1900,

p. 13.

81. See the letters of spring and summer 1917 between Huelsenbeck and Tzara published in Richard Sheppard (ed.), Ziirich-Dadaco-Dadaglobe: The Correspondence between Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara and Kurt Wolff (1916-1924)

(Hutton Press: Fife, 1982), pp. 10-12, and the discussion of them in Timothy Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada (UMI Research Press: Ann Arbor, 1987), p. 66.

82. Gerald Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor in

Germany 1914-1918 (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1966), pp. 336-432; Susanne Miller, Burgfrieden und Klassenkampf (Droste Verlag: Diisseldorf, 1974), pp. 290-331; and Martin Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship (Holmes & Meier

Publishers: New York, 1976), pp. 58-60 and 127-40.

83. Walter Nicolai, Nachrichtendienst, Presse und

Volksstimmung im Weltkrieg (E. S. Mittler & Sohn:

Berlin, 1920), pp. 113-22. On 2 April 1917 the Bavarian War Ministry had recommended to the Kriegspresseamt in Berlin that the artistic

poster be used more extensively in the war

propaganda effort. See Karl-Ludwig Ay, Die Entstehung einer Revolution (Duncker & Humblot:

Berlin, 1968), p. 65. This suggestion was discussed and implemented at a major





conference which was held by the

Kriegspresseamt from 7 to 10 August 1917 to

plan the coming propaganda campaign. See the record of the conference in Ralph Lutz (ed.), Fall of the German Empire 1914-18 (Stanford University Press: Stanford, 1932), p. 131.

84. Roger Parkinson, Tormented Warrior:

Ludendorff and the Supreme Command (Stein &

Day: New York, 1979), p. 140; and Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship, p. 39.

85. Primary studies of the Vaterlandspartei are

by Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks

(Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Cologne, 1970), pp. 497-519, and 'Zwischen Repression und

Manipulation: Konservative Machteliten und Arbeiter- und Angestelltenbewegung 1910-1918', Archivfir Sozialgeschichte, vol. 12

(Verlag Neue Gesellschaft: Bonn-Bad

Godesberg, 1972), pp. 351-432. For discussion of the way Hugenberg's expanding press empire was exploited for the propaganda purposes of the DVLP, see Hans Barth, 'Zwischen Belgien und Baltikum: Interessenpolitik und Kriegsziele in der Berliner Elektro-GroBindustrie 1914-1918', in Jochen Boberg, Tilman Fichter and Eckart Gillen (ed.), Die Metropole: Industriekultur in Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert (C. H. Beck: Munich, 1986), pp. 94-5.

86. A typescript copy of Roselius' 1915 essay 'Ein Kapital zur Organisation' is found in the

Kapp archive (Zentrales Staatarchiv, Merseburg. Rep. 92, Nachlass Kapp, Nr. DX 1). Previous

scholarship has mistakenly attributed this essay to Kapp. See Abraham Peck, Radicals and Reactionaries: The Crisis of Conservatism in Wilhelmine Germany (University Press of America: Washington, DC, 1978), pp. 209-10.

87. Hermine C. Schuetzinger, 'Angelsachsischer und deutscher Chauvinismus in der politischen Bildreklame', Das Plakat, vol. 10, no. 2, February 1919, pp. 142-56.

88. Karl Wortmann, Geschichte der Deutschen Vaterlands-Partei (Otto Hendel: Halle, 1926), pp. 47-50. Shortly after the collapse of the

general strike the Vaterlandspartei announced in the 12 February 1918 issue of the Neue

Hamburger Zeitung a prize competition for a

poster that would accuse England of fomenting unrest in Germany. Franz Pfemfert published this in Die Aktion, vol. 9, March 1918, p. 130. The prize winning slogan followed in Die Aktion, vol. 8, 4 May 1918, p. 234. Alexander Cay designed a poster (Robert Gore Rifkind

collection), captioned 'Through Work to

Victory! Through Victory to Peace!', that

depicts a worker shaking hands with a soldier while standing beside a lathe used for turning artillery shells. Since Berlin metal workers were leaders of the general strike, this poster was

likely part of the anti-strike campaign. David W. Morgan, The Socialist Left and the German Revolution (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and

London, 1975), pp. 57, 67-92.

89. For sources about Kessler and Ball, see

'Prize Competition! Who is the Prettiest??' alludes not only to the electoral

politics discussed in Herzfelde's lead article below, but also to the prize competitions for poster designs announced in advertising journals and

newspapers by political parties and groups like the Antibolschewistische Liga. Herzfelde's article questions whether an election in which advertising played such a major role could truly be called democratic, when the massive funding came from a small number of people and interests. Given this situation, voting became a matter not of knowledge but instinct, triggered and shaped by outside forces.107 Thus, for Herzfelde, political power rested in the hands of

moneyed interests and the election became only a type of beauty contest. Herzfelde went on to propose a socialization of all money used for political advertising and a system that would ensure access of all citizens to this source of modern political power.

Other sections of the paper also addressed issues of propaganda. A Grosz

drawing on the third page satirized the anti-Bolshevist posters108 and an ad in which the 'Ebert Film A.G.' called for 2000 German males to report to the Cafe Vaterland to work as extras in a silent film entitled 'Wilhelm's Return'. It is clearly a satire on the Freikorps recruitment ads which began to appear in the newspapers by mid-January.'09 In the May 1919 issue of Die Pleite"10 the Dadaists again referred to film propaganda in an ad (Fig. 13) mentioning the new publicity films of the anti-Bolshevists."1 These films were compared to

English movies about war atrocities in Belgium and the trick-films for the war loans. But in satirically describing the Freikorps' recent violence against the

Achtung! Wer sich amiisi l)ie neuen WVorbefiln

L 1 II V IT c i'.'i ;L > 'i ZJl r',i ht l ;> ; * * t . h*- ;

alt :

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ieren will! ns der Antibolschexvisteni

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Fig. 13. Drawing by George Grosz: 'Attention! Whoever wants to be entertained! The new publicity films of the Anti-Bolshevists!' Die Pleite, vol. 1, no. 4, 1 May 1919, p. 2. ? 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.




Sherwin Simmons

proletariat as a film in which the butchered masses are the extras, the piece underlines the distinction between the illusion created by propaganda and the

reality of the 'white terror'. Some time later this imagined film was realized in

part, when a film was made on the streets of Berlin which recreated battles between the Freikorps and the revolutionaries.12

On the back page of Jedermann Heartfield included a section called 'Die Latrine'. The title is a pun on An die Laterne, the name of an important anti- Bolshevist humour magazine, for it asks if that magazine could spare a caricaturist and satirically calls Pechstein the 'people's fine artist'."3 These

propaganda efforts by the government are consigned to the toilet along with comments and actions by President Ebert and Kurt Hiller's Rat geistiger Arbeiter. Also published on the same page is a statement from the Executive Committee of the Soldiers' Council of Bavaria warning that Noske's calls for volunteers to defend the eastern border are a swindle, concealing the true

purpose of the Freikorps as a 'white terror' to suppress the revolution. It was the publication of this statement that led to a ban on the magazine, the arrest of

Herzfelde, and a hunt for the other participants, when Noske brought the

Freikorps into Berlin during the first two weeks of March to crush a general strike. 114

The politicized circle around the Malik Verlag continued during 1919-20 to

respond to what they saw as the counter-revolutionary use of the media and

advertising. Image appropriation and montage were the techniques of choice,

employed to expose and ridicule the ideological function of the original sources. This was true of the well-known Klebebilder, but also of combinations of text and

image like the piece 'Children in Need' (Fig. 14) that was published by Herzfelde in Der Gegner in early 1921.115 It is comprised of four parts. On one

page a poster 'Children in Need' designed by Theo Matejko for the Deutsche Kinderhilfel6 is juxtaposed with an ad for the Julius Grieneisen Funeral Home

published in the Deutsche Zeitung.17 Facing the visual images on the opposite page is an article entitled 'Holiday Thoughts' that had been published in the Deutsche Zeitung,1l8 while commentary by Herzfelde is found on a following

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Fig. 14. Wieland Herzfelde: 'Children in Need', Der Gegner, vol. 2, no. 5, 1920-21, pp. 126-7.

Peter Grupp, Harry Graf Kessler: 1868-1937, eine

Biographie (Beck, Munich, 1995), pp. 167-78; and Philip Mann, Hugo Ball: An Intellectual

Biography (The Institute of Germanic Studies: London, 1987), pp. 110-15. For articles in Die

freie Zeitung about the propaganda effort, see: 'Deutsche Kulturpropaganda in der Schweiz', 13

June 1917, p. 69; 'Ein deutscher Geheimzirkular', 8 September 1917, pp. 177-8; 'Die deutsche Kunst in Kriegdienst', 1 January 1918, p. 7; Helveticus, 'Deutsche

Kulturpropaganda', 6 January 1918, p. 15;

Hugo Ball, 'Propaganda, hier und dort', 31

August 1918, p. 281; and 'Deutsche

Propagandachefs', 8 October 1919, pp. 314-15.

90. Walter Simon, 'Propaganda-Experimente und Volkspsyche', Die Reklame, no. 116, September 1919, pp. 202-4. The Zentrale fur Heimatdienst had been formed in March 1918,

following the January mass strike, and took over much of the domestic propaganda work that had been carried out by the Vaterlandspartei. At the close of the war the MAA was known as the

Auslandsabteilung der Obersten Heeresleitung (Ohla), having been renamed in July 1918. The fullest discussion of these offices is found in Karl

Wippermann, Politische Propaganda und

staatsbiirgerliche Bildung: Die Reichszentralefur Heimatdienst in der Weimarer Republik (Bundeszentrale fir politische Bildung: Bonn, 1976), pp. 49-86.

91. Paul Zech, 'Reichspropaganda. Eine ketzerische Studie', Die Kulture der Reklame, vol.

2, February 1920, pp. 95-6. Die Kulture der Reklame was a supplement to Das Plakat which

began publication in January 1919 and was edited by Hermann Reckendorf. A section from the memo is cited in the following article where

Zech is described as the 'publicity director of the Social Democratic Party': Peter Rosner, 'Plakatkunst und Tagepresse', Die Kultur der Reklame, vol. 1, no. 3, May 1919, p. 240.

92. Wilhelm Ziegler, 'Reichspropaganda oder

Reichsaufklarung', Die Kulture der Reklame, vol.

2, no. 2, February 1920, p. 99.

93. Zech, 'Reichspropaganda, eine ketzerische Studie', p. 98.

94. Zech, 'Reichspropaganda, eine ketzerische Studie', p. 98. Posters were broadly discussed in the daily press and professional journals of the period, as well as in monographs, such as Oscar Gehrig, Plakatkunst und Revolution (Ernst Wasmuth: Berlin, 1920) and Adolf Behne, Paul Landau, and Herbert Lowing, Das Politische Plakat ('Das Plakat': Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1919). More recent studies include: Rainer Schoch, Politische Plakate der Weimarer Republic 1918-1933 (Hessisches Landesmuseum: Darmstadt, 1980); Ida Rigby, 'German

Expressionist Political Posters 1918-1919: Art and Politics, A Failed Alliance,' Art Journal, vol. 44, Spring 1984, pp. 33-9; Ruth Malhotra, Politische Plakate 1914-1945 (Museum fur Kunst

und Gewerbe: Hamburg, 1988); and Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the





November Revolution in Germany (University of

Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990), pp. 32-8.

95. Communication from Paul Zech to the Reichskanzlei on 30 September 1919. Bundesarchiv, Koblenz. R 43 1/2496. Cited in

Wippermann, Politische Propaganda, p. 85.

96. The use of humor magazines and posters in the propaganda battle is discussed in my articles: 'Picture as Weapon in the German Mass Media, 1914-1930,' in Virginia Marquardt (ed.), Art and

Journals on the Political Front, 1910-40 (University Press of Florida: Gainesville, 1997), pp. 142-82; and 'Grimaces on the Walls: Anti-Bolshevist Posters and the Debate about Kitsch', Design Issues, vol. 14, no. 2, Summer 1998, pp. 16-40.

97. Robert Nordhausen, 'Der Aufstand des

Spartakus', Illustrirte Zeitung Leipzig, vol. 152, 23

January 1919, p. 91.

98. See the comments in 'Aus GroB Berlin', Die rote Fahne, 4 December 1918 and 4

February 1919). The Holtz drawing 'Das is Bolschewismus! Der deutsche Michel im

Anschauungsunterricht' appeared in Die rote

Fahne, 13 December 1918.

99. Inheim, 'Das Berliner Plakatjahr 1918', p. 72.

100. For an example of this awareness, see 'Der Plakatkrieg', Das Forum, vol. 7, April 1923, pp. 57-64.

101. Ben Hecht, who had been sent to Berlin

by the Chicago Daily News to cover the

revolution, was a close friend of the Dadaists and reported in the newspaper on their

performances of 30 April 1919 at I. B. Neumann's gallery and 24 May 1919 at the Meistersaal. See Chicago Daily News (9 and 27

May 1919). He likely shared information with the Dadaists that he had gained about the

Right's propaganda effort. Baron Heinrich von

Gleichen-RuBwurm, who had been a major figure in German war propaganda, told Hecht that half a billion Marks had been collected for a

propaganda war against bolshevism which would

promote a new national socialist approach to the

political situation. See Chicago Daily News (19 March 1919). Gleichen-RuBwurm also introduced Hecht to Eduard Stadtler and Dr. Fritz von Berg, the leaders of the Antibolschewtisische Liga. For this issue of

governmental and rightist propaganda, see Hecht's reports in the Chicago Daily News of his interviews with General von Hoffmann (13 March), Ebert (17 March), Stadtler (2 April), Stinnes (8 May), Noske (9 July) and his distorted recall of events in his autobiography, A Child of the Century (Simon and Schuster: New

York, 1954), pp. 270-319.

102. Walter Mehring, 'Dada-Prolog', DieJunge Kunst, vol. 1, no. 1, 1919, pp. 8-9. Also see 'Berlin dein Tanzer ist der Tod' and 'Das Lied vom braven Pressemann', which like 'Dada- Prolog' were published in Das politische Cabaret

(Kammer: Dresden, 1920).

page. In Herzfelde's comments he remarks that he recently saw two 'Children in Need' posters whose imagery reminded him of two war posters: one for the

Empress's charity that depicted her holding a gaunt orphan and one that used the

image of a starving child to justify the submarine campaign against England's blockade. Herzfelde makes the comparison to point out the insincerity found in such 'publicity' which, in his words, 'makes advertising for the good heart of the

exploiter'. The commentary ends by pointing out the inconsequence of such liberal charity efforts when compared with the more far-reaching solution to

poverty in the revolutionary society of the Soviet Union. The other parts of the

montage are employed to open cracks in the apparently seamless image of

bourgeois charity, to reveal its ideological function. Matejko's presentation of

hunger as spectacle, an approach very similar to the sensational cinema posters for which he was famous, is countered by the cool objectivity of the small ad for the funeral home, which repositions starvation within a world of commerce sanctioned by institutions like the Offizier- u. Beamten-Verein which is mentioned at the bottom of the ad. However, it is primarily the article from the Deutsche Zeitung that carries Herzfelde's attack. Written as a reflection upon the

meaning of Christmas, the article points out that the holiday, because of its association with children, provides a welcome opportunity for Germans to

indulge a gentle side of their nature during a period in which political events

require the constant display of their steely combative will. Given the article's use of Christian charity to mitigate and justify the authoritarianism and militarism within the German character, it provides Herzfelde with an effective means of critiquing the imagery of the poster.

VI

In the hands of other Berlin Dadaists, the issues of advertising were often treated in a less overtly political manner, but they were constantly present in the discourse. 19 For instance, the Dadaists used the language and tone found in the business literature of advertising firms to announce the existence of a Dada Reklame Gesellschaft where, as the announcement states, writers and artists

experienced in handling the press would serve the needs of business without

scruples.120 The operation of this Dada Reklame Gesellschaft was the subject of the principal sketch in the widely attended 'Dada-Matinee', the theatrical event that Berlin Dada staged on 30 November 1919.121 Additionally, the famous First International Dada-Messe held in July 1920 seems to have taken its name as well as the method of hanging the exhibition from the example of trade-fairs. These fairs, such as those in Leipzig, were known for their raucous use of

advertising,122 and were becoming important venues for the advertising industry.123 Similar to such advertising displays, the Dada-Messe contained not

just drawings and collages, but a wide range of publicity materials and

publications. In at least one case, the Dada-Messe featured a work by a commercial artist appropriated directly from the world of political advertising.

A photograph (Fig. 15) of the main room of the Dada-Messe in Dr. Otto Burchard's gallery shows clearly the presence of a poster by Cay (Fig. 16). It was hung low to floor, and immediately above and to the right of it were works by George Grosz- a collage entitled The most mysterious and inexplicable ever to be shown and a large oil painting entitled Germany, a Winter's Tale.124 A

sign reading 'Dada is political' hung below the painting and established a context for all three works. All pointed to the politicized use of the media. The collage includes a recruitment ad for the Freikorps; the Biirger in the

painting reads the front page of the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger;125 and the




Sherwin Simmons

Fig. 15. Photograph of Room 1 of the First International Dada Trade-Fair, 30 June - 25 August 1920, Kunsthandlung Dr. Otto Burchard, Lutzow-Ufer 13, Berlin. (Photograph: Stationen der Moderne, exhibition catalogue, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, 1998.)

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Fig. 16. Alexander W. Cay, poster for the German People's Party, 1920, colour lithograph, 69 x 95 cm. Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University (GE 625).

description of Cay's poster in the Dada-Messe catalogue - 'Deutsche

Volkspartei election poster glued up by workers of a Berlin cliche factory' -

also identifies it as part of this political use of art. More than any other artist

producing political posters, Cay raised the question of artistic and political

expediency and was representative of a type of artist whom the Dadaists

sought to expose, critique, and counter.

103. Wieland Herzfelde, 'Gesellschaft, Kunstler und Kommunismus. Teil IV: Der Kunstler im kommunistischen Staat', Der Gegner, vol. 2, no. 10-11, 1920-21, pp. 363-70.

104. H. Kessler, The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan: Count Harry Kessler 1918-1937 (Weidenfeld and

Nicholson: London, 1971), p. 60.

105. See the photo of a streetcar in E. Bauer, 'Das politische Gesicht der StraBe', Das Plakat, vol. 10, March 1919, p. 166.

106. Herzfelde has identified the six images on the fan as members of the Ebert-Scheidemann

government and those on the handle as Noske, Ludendorff and Erzberger. See W. Herzfelde, 'George Grosz, John Heartfield, Erwin Piscator, Dada und die Folgen oder Die Macht der Freundschaft', in Herzfelde, Zur Sache, p. 451.

107. There are several reports by advertising professionals concerning their paid work for

political parties. See Dr. Kolbe, 'Von der Werbearbeit der politischen Parteien', Die Reklame, no. 111, April 1919, pp. 58-60.

108. For discussion, see Simmons, 'Grimaces on the Walls'.

109. See ads for the Freikorps Hiilsen which

appeared in the Berliner Lokal Anzeiger after 15

January. One of the recruitment offices for this

group was in the Cafe Vaterland on the Potzdamer Platz. See the photo by Willy Romer in Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst: Revolution und Fotografie Berlin 1918/19 (Verlag Dirk Nishen: Berlin, 1989), p. 291.

110. Die Pleite, vol. 1, 4 May 1919, p. 2.

111. During the period before the election the Reichzentrale fur Heimatdienst and the Werbedienst produced a variety of propaganda films that served functions similar to the

previously described posters. Films such as Veritas vincit and Mutter Erde called for returning soldiers to avoid the radicalized cities and return to work and order. See Wippermann, Politische

Propaganda und staatsburgerliche Bildung, p. 280, and Alfred Birbaum, 'Eine Propaganda in

gefahrlicher Zeit', MVDR, no. 112, May 1919, pp. 94-5. A publication of the Liga claimed that it circulated four films in twenty copies through the country. See Die Tdtigkeit der Liga zum Schutz

der deutschen Kultur (Berlin, 1919) as reported in

Herz and Halfbrodt, Revolution und Fotografie, p. 300.

112. See the photo of a street closed off for

filming in Die Woche, vol. 22, 13 March 1920, p. 294.

113. Pechstein was the main illustrator for An die Laterne, which was published by the Werbedienst. It ran for nine issues and was circulated throughout Germany in editions of 28 million during the campaign for the National

Assembly election. Paul Zech considered it his

major accomplishment as a government propagandist. Zech, 'Reichspropaganda. Eine ketzerische Studie', p. 97. For further discussion


I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ jI -




of An die Laterne, see Weinstein, The End of

Expressionism, 51-5 and Simmons, 'War, Revolution, and the Transformation of the German Humor Magazine', p. 50.

114. Herzfeld's and Mehring's descriptions of the distribution and sale of the issue made use of publicity techniques employed in the recent election. See Walter Mehring, Berlin Dada: eine Chronik mit Photos und Dokumenten (Verlag der

Arche: Zurich, 1959), pp. 67-70; Wieland Herzfelde (ed.), Der Malik- Verlag 1916-1947

(Deutsche Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin:

Berlin, 1967), p. 24; and Wieland Herzfelde,

'Einleitung zum Neudruck "Jedermann sein

Eigner Fussball" and "Die Pleite",' Die Pleite, new photomechanical printing of the original issues 1919-24 (Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik: Leipzig, 1978), pp. 1-2. For descriptions of the election

propaganda, see 'Wahlbilder', Der Montag, vol. 16, 24 February 1919.

115. Wieland Herzfelde, 'Kinder in Not', Der

Gegner, vol. 2, no. 5, 1920-21, pp. 126-8.

116. Theo Matejko, poster for Deutsche

Kinderhilfe, 'Kinder in Not' 1920. Colour

lithograph. Printer: Dinse & Eckert. For information about the competition for this

poster design, see Das Plakat, vol. 11, November 1920, p. 546.

117. Ad for Julius Grieneisen Beerdigungs- Institut, Deutsche Zeitung, 2 December 1920.

118. Psk. -Osn., 'Feiertagsgedanken', Deutsche

Zeitung, 12 December 1920.

119. Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada,

pp. 168-75.

120. For the text and the problems that it and

advertising raised for Herzfelde in leftist circles see: Die Aktion, vol. 11, 10 December 1921, pp. 680-3 and vol. 12, 21 January 1922, pp. 49-51.

121. Karin Fiillner, Richard Huelsenbeck: Texte

und Aktionen eines Dadaisten (Carl Winter

Universitatsverlag: Heidelberg, 1983), pp. 185-206; and Hanne Bergius, Das Lachen Dadas: Die Berliner Dadaisten und ihre Aktionen

(Anabas-Verlag: Giefen, 1989), pp. 344-7.

122. See the photo of Petersstral3e in Leipzig on opening day of the 1920 Spring-Messe in Die Woche, vol. 22, 6 March 1920, p. 263.

123. Advertising firms set up displays in Leipzig in 1919, initiating a series of advertising trade shows. See 'Reklame Echo', Die Reklame, no. 113, June 1919, p. 144, and K. Wether, 'Die

Leipziger Friihjahrsmesse 1920', Die Reklame, no. 123, April 1920, pp. 101-7.

124. Das Geheimnisvollste und Unerkldrlichste was je

gezeigt wurde was reproduced on the cover of Der blutige Ernst, vol. 1, February 1920.

Deutschland, ein Wintermdrchen takes its title from

Heine's satirical poem about Germany after the 1848 revolution and like a poem that appeared in Ulk in December 1918 uses that earlier work

Cay had been a leading figure in the war propaganda of the government and the Vaterlandspartei. After the revolution he was the artist most active in

political work, doing both picture and script posters for the government's Werbedienst as well as numerous posters for the Freikorps and political parties. During the Reichstag election campaign in early June of 1920, Cay's activities had raised controversy within the advertising community about the ethics of commercial artists. It was pointed out that Cay had designed posters for five political parties and as one writer put it, 'there is an interesting question about the culture of advertising: should a good poster artist deliver

good art for a bad thing?'126 This was a fundamental question raised by changing conditions of artistic production which interested the dadaists. However, the description in the catalogue of the poster as a 'cliche' also indicates that the dadaists understood that issues of quality in political propaganda involved more than the abilities of an individual artist. The 'cliche' of the poster's lighthouse image was chosen by the DVP as a political theme in the Reichstag campaign and related imagery appeared in other posters.27 Gustav Stresemann and the party were presented as the forces that would be able to unify the bourgeoisie and guide the German ship of state past the dangers created by the Left and into a safe harbour.128

There was an additional reason why Cay's work attracted the attention of the dadaists. During 1919, at the same time that the dadaists were beginning to produce their Klebebilder, Cay designed a huge poster (Fig. 17) for the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger which used an overlapping collage of the newspaper's front

pages as background. The various headlines stress the mandate given to the

bourgeoisie by the National Assembly election of 1919. Floated above this

ground is a burnt-orange rectangle with the text 'Berlin Local Gazette. The Paper of the Free Citizen' printed in blue and white. Although the novel form of the poster may have had some precedent in newspaper posters from the period of the war,129 the simulation of newspaper pages reminds one of Grosz's use of the paper's actual front page in Germany, a Winter's Tale and points to an exchange of formal features with advertising that characterizes Berlin dada.

By participating in the competitive world of publicity and making issues raised by advertising central elements of their practice, the Dadaists by late 1919 found their work discussed in the advertising journals as well as in the popular press. Adolf Behne emphasized the importance of Dada in an article which proclaimed the purely typographic poster the future direction of the commercial poster and used Raoul Hausmann's collage Plakat Dada as an illustration of this development.'30 One critic wrote that Dada's involvement with printed material had led it consciously to the poster and that it had 'given itself up to it' 3'3 while Robert H6sel called Grosz's and Heartfield's poster (Fig. 18) for the opening of the Schall und Rauch cabaret on 8 December 1919 a poster by a painter who 'has much talent and understanding of advertising' and which 'beats any in the vicinity and totally dominates the poster column or wall'. 132

By arguing that fine art's traditional considerations of spirituality were absent from the Schall und Rauch poster, H6sel also directed attention to the way the Dadaists problematized the entire relationship of 'fine' and 'commercial' art. He pointed out the poster's simple means and admired the way any layperson could easily understand the photo-mechanical process employed, since the tacks used to hold the original collage in place were not eliminated in the final image. Such demystification of the productive process was also extended by the Dadaists to the marketing and distribution of the




Sherwin Simmons

product. The revolution had encouraged a questioning of the art world's institutions and economic structures, as groups such as the Arbeitsrat fur Kunst tried to broaden art's audience through new exhibition venues and formats. Adolf Behne wrote about the way art dealers raised art's prestige through the luxurious decor of their galleries and the Rate Zeitung called for radical artists to exhibit as a group and 'to shed the false solemnity and dignity of art, which is only a facade to allow the business to seem less naked and

ordinary, and present their work as what it is, as straight production'.33 The

hanging of oil paintings and publicity materials together in the Dada-Messe did

something similar by mixing and confusing the spaces of 'fine' and 'commercial' art.

This contrasted with the recent 'Kunstmesse' at the Frankfurter Messe where a special effort was made to separate 'fine art' from the commerce of the larger exhibition. This trade show in Frankfurt am Main had been

inaugurated in October 1919 as an international exhibition whose focus on

expensive, high quality goods contrasted with the more inclusive orientation of the Leiziger Messe. Dealers in both traditional and avant-garde art saw the show as a new venue through which they could reach a segment of the German

Fig. 18. George Grosz and John Heartfield: detail of poster for Schall und Rauch, December 1920, photographic reproduction of collage, dimensions unknown. Photograph from Seidels Reklame, vol. 6, no. 2, February 1921, p. 37. (Photograph: Cleveland Public Library.) c 1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

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Fig. 17. Alexander W. Cay, poster for the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, 1919, colour lithograph, 141 x 94 cm.

as a means of caricaturing contemporary events. Hans H. von Twardowski, 'Das neue Wintermarchen', Ulk, vol. 47, 13 December 1918.

125. The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger was one of the

most conservative papers in Berlin, having been

secretly taken over by Alfred Hugenberg from the Scherl family during the war. It was

purchased with war profits by a consortium of industrial investors who had agreed on the need to acquire substantial control over the German media. See John Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The

Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar

Republic (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1974), p. 8. During December 1918 it

constantly emphasized the Polish and Bolshevist threat to German territory in the east and called for the formation of new volunteer troops.

126. Karl Karrenbach, 'Die Werbedienst fiir die Reichstagwahlen in Berlin', Das Plakat, vol.

11, July 1920, pp. 340. Cay did posters for the DNVP, DVP, DDP, Zentrum and the SPD.

127. A poster with the image of a helmsman is seen along with Cay's lighthouse poster in

photographs of mobile poster columns being paraded along Unter den Linden during the

campaign. See Robert Sennecke's photograph in Die Woche, vol. 22, 12 June 1920, p. 587. These cliches were broadly satirized in the humor magazines of the period. However, Cay's lighthouse image might also be termed a cliche because it is so similar to an earlier image that advertised Kalodont toothpaste.

128. Wolfgang Hartenstein, Die Anfange der


i - - -

I. . ..




Deutschen Volkspartei 1918-1920 (Droste Verlag: Diisseldorf, 1962), pp. 203-11.

129. See the discussion of Heinrich Jager's designs for Lokal-Anzeiger posters in Albert

Halbert, 'Das Schriftplakat. Das bevorezugte Kind des Krieges', Das Plakat, vol. 7, July 1916, p. 181.

130. Adolf Behne, 'Malerei und Plakatkunst in ihrer Wechselwirkung', Das Plakat, vol. 11,

January 1920, pp. 28-38; and 'Kitschkunst oder Kunstkitsch?' Das Plakat, vol. 11, July 1920, p. 306 and 312. For further discussion, see Simmons, 'Grimaces on the Walls'.

131. Kurt Pinthus, 'Jiingste Dichtung und Satzbild', Archivfiir Buchgewerbe und Graphik, vol.

57, no. 1-2, 1920, p. 17.

132. Robert H6sel, 'Expressionistische Reklameentwiirfe', Seidels Reklame, vol. 6, no. 2, February 1921, p. 38.

133. 'Kunstausstellungen fir Proletarier', Rate

Zeitung, vol 1, no. 53 (1919), p. 2; and Adolf Behne, 'Kunst, Kunstsalon und Kritik', Die Freiheit, 1 April 1920.

134. Statement by Franz Rieffel in the

Frankfurter Zeitung quoted in G. B. 'Die

Frankfurter Kunstmesse und ihr neugeplantes Versteigerungs-Unternehmen', Der Cicerone, vol. 11, no. 14, 15 July 1920, p. 544. For further

commentary about the 'Kunstmesse', see 'Die Frankfurter Messe und der Kunsthandel', Der Cicerone, vol. 10, no. 17, 4 September 1919, p. 562; and Fritz Hoeber, 'Deutsche Kunstmesse', Der Cicerone, vol. 10, no. 23, 4 December 1919, pp. 767-76. Two of the articles appeared in issues containing a major article on Grosz and the announcement of the Dada-Messe.

135. Robert Jensen, 'The Avant-Garde and the Trade in Art', Art Journal, vol. 47, Winter 1988, pp. 360-7. For Burchard's collection, see the auction catalogue, Die Sammlung des Herrn Dr. Otto Burchard (Paul Cassirer and Hugo

Helbing: Berlin, 1928).

136. Grosz, George Grosz, 138.

137. 'Bilder vom Tage', Die Woche, vol. 22, 17

July 1920, p. 732.

population - industrialists and merchants from smaller German cities - which had not participated in the art market. However, the art was shown not in the main exhibition hall, but in the Palais Oppenheimer and the Palais Romer

(Fig. 19) whose elegant settings led a critic to remark, 'No museum . . .

produces this elation of a life embellished by art.'134 This was a conscious decision by art dealers and the Frankfurter Messe's directors to conceal the

increasingly evident connection between art and other commodities shown in the Messe. Since Dr. Otto Burchard showed his stock of Asian and Renaissance art in the 'Kunstmesse', the Dadaists were well aware of the way the culture

industry had begun to use publicity and the mass media to expand the market for a particular type of luxury commodity, while continuing to assert its timeless, non-commodity status.135 Grosz later indicated the Dadaists' effort to critique this situation when he described reaction to the Dada-Messe's mode of display, 'Modern artists were particularly angry, because nothing was

respected or taken seriously. We made fun even of the avant-garde.'136 The challenge that such actions presented to traditional fine art was

perceived by Dada's critics, a fact most apparent in a half-page picture spread on the Dada-Messe (Fig. 20) published in the illustrated newspaper Die Woche on 17 July 1920.137 It features a large photograph of Grosz's painting Germany, a Winter's Tale with photographs of two posters flanking it. These posters combine photographs of the shouting faces of Hausmann and Heartfield with dadaist slogans that decry art's reinforcement of bourgeois ideology. To these

photographs Die Woche added renderings of some of the other placards displayed at the Dada-Messe, including the 'Dada is political' slogan immediately below the Grosz painting. The short text at the bottom of the

page makes reference to Dada being a 'beer-joke', which had become a standard way of dismissing it in the press. However, the harsher comments are

Fig. 19. 'View of the Kunstmesse in the Palais Romer's Kaisersaal at the Fruhjahrsmesse, Frankfurt a. M., 1920', Der Cicerone, vol. 12, no. 14, 15 July 1920, p. 545. (Photograph: Duke University Library.)




Sherwin Simmons

138. For an example of the many denunciations of Dadaist efforts to 'socialize' art and connect it to contemporary events, see Carl Emil

Uphoff, 'Der organisierte Kiinstler', Der Cicerone, vol. 10, no. 20, 16 October 1919, pp. 646-52.

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the Scherl Verlag's comment 'Dada is idiotic' written in the surrounding frame, as well as the montage of the report on Dada with a story above it about

Germany's prize bull. Through such placement in the newspaper Dada became

part of the 'pictures of the day', mixing with stories on the armistice

negotiations at Spa, elections in disputed territories in the east, the death of

Napoleon II's widow and bathing resorts in New Jersey.138

VII

Through its exhibition strategies and other actions, Berlin Dada presented a theorization of the commodity and the increasingly powerful role of

advertising in its valorization. Perhaps the clearest formulation is found in a


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139. Carl Einstein, 'Freie Bahn den Tiichtigen. Ein Beitrag zur Demokratie', Der blutige Ernst, vol. 1, December 1919, pp. 10-4.

140. Einstein, 'Freie Bahn', p. 14. Satirical reference is made here to Freikorps signs warning against resistance during the March

fighting in Berlin and posters bearing the headlines 'Socialization is on the March!' and 'Socialization is here!' which were glued up on 2 and 4 March 1919 to avert a general strike called to demand socialization and worker control of mines in the Ruhr. Wieland Herzfelde, in an account of his arrest for

publishing Jedermann, remembered that these

posters lined the route of 350 prisoners who were marched on I March 1919 from Lehrter to Plotzensee prison with an advance guard of the Eberhard Marine Brigade who bore swastikas on their helmets. Wieland Herzfelde, Immergriin (Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar, 1975), pp. 211-12. Heartfield used the 'Socialization is on the March!' poster as ground for a photomontage. 'Noch ist Deutschland nicht verloren!' AIZ, vol. 9, no. 4, 30 August 1930, p. 803.

141. Typographic design by Raoul Hausmann in Der Dada, no. 2, December 1919, p. 7.

142. 'Umschau', Seidels Reklame, vol. 5, June 1920, p. 164. The same photo also appeared in Die Woche, vol. 22, 29 May 1920, p. 534.

143. Later in the 1920s a photograph on the cover of the Illustrierte Beobachter would further link advertising and the violent imposition of

political will. The photograph shows a 'publicity tank', which is painted with swastikas and

slogans that proclaim the Illustrierte Beobachter and Volkischer Beobachter to be weapons of the Nazi party, standing at the site of Hitler's failed Munich putsch of 1923. Image and text suggest that the party press would play an important role in any future seizure of power. 'Miinchen im Kriegszustand der Propaganda und Reklame', Illustrierte Beobachter, vol. 2, no. 19, 15 October 1927, p. 1. I address the response of former Dadaists in 1923-24 to the NSDAP Wahrzeichen in a paper 'Mihaly Biro's Red Man with the Hammer: Labour's Image in the Struggle of

Signs' which was presented at 'Work and the

Image', a conference at the University of Leeds in April 1998.

satirical essay that Carl Einstein wrote for Der blutige Ernst about the rule of

profits and the individual in bourgeois society.'39 Einstein's satire revolves around a business agent named Meier who after the November revolution must calculate how to maximize the profits to which he has grown accustomed

during the war. Lying in a 'Matisse room' with a picture of 'Wilhelm the

Irreplaceable' hanging above the divan, Meier discovers his answer while

reading a parable about the Buddha which described the last step in the Buddha's renunciation of desire. To achieve this he thirsted for forty days in the desert and his thirst grew so intense that the fire in his throat could light his

path at night. After wandering in the desert, just as the Buddha imagined he was about to die of thirst, the fire's light reflecting off the sands simulated the

glitter of water and he drank of it thereby extinguishing his desire. This parable makes Meier realize that his profit problem could be simply solved by using this magical water in a beauty product with the brand name Sudol. With such an additive he could promise the satisfaction of any desire, but when the casks of water arrive they dry up, disgusted by Meier's face. Meier quickly understands, however, that he does not actually need the water, which only increases production costs, but only the promises contained in it. For this

purpose an 'exotic poster' will suffice. So he telephones the 'most important German Gauguin' and uses deceased German poets to write a prospectus for the product. Meier then lies back and sings a 'hymn of the yoga of profit'. Throughout the satirical sketch Einstein expresses a fundamental under-

standing of the role of advertising, concluding the hymn with these lines: 'Soap is cleanliness to the uninitiated. / The perfected being lets soap wander

endlessly, unattainable to the buyer. / To the buyer soap is the entanglement of dream and maya.' However, Einstein does not simply consider the issue

abstractly, he also situates this form of business practice in relation to the role that advertising played in the failure of the revolution, writing, 'Whoever goes on the street without Sudol will be shot. Without Sudol the German people collapse. Sudol replaces Socialization.'140

When Dada asked questions such as 'What is dada? An art? A philosophy? A

politics? A fire insurance? Or: state religion? Is dada really energy? Or is it

absolutely nothing, or rather everything?', 41

it expressed an understanding about the brand named commodity similar to that of Einstein's essay. Grosz and Heartfield presented themselves as manufacturers of such commodities in a 1921 New Year's greeting card from the Grosz-Heartfield-Works which

publicized their ability to execute any artistic commission in any style. Through such strategies the Dadaists stressed the pure exchange value of the artistic commodity and suggested that it was a mirror or simulacrum reflecting the desires of the consumer, brought to the surface and exploited by the means of publicity and advertising.

During Berlin Dada's brief existence, it was always aware of a new power in the world that had seized possession of the space of consciousness. This

perception was stimulated by a new type of imagery which began to emerge at this time from advertising's phantasmagoria. One telling example is a fake

military tank (Fig. 21) used as advertising for brand names in Prague during 1920. Commentators noted the way it seized attention on the street, but

suggested that perhaps it should shoot blanks so that all of the nerves could be stimulated.142 Mehring's poem cited at the beginning of this paper suggests a link between such a commercial attraction and the real tanks on the streets of Berlin which bore the Freikorps' trademark of the death's head.143 Aware of such connections, Dada turned to the techniques of advertising in order to




Sherwin Simmons

Fig. 21. 'Military tank in the service of adv. . ..... v. 5 n. 6 J

p. 164. (Photograph: Cleveland Public Library.)

-.... "'

of the College Art Association in New York City. Since that time it has benefited

substantially from the publications and criticisms of Robert Jensen, Beth Irwin Lewis,

Barbara cCosey, Frederic Schwartz, and Joan Weinstein.

.."Ar

7 - ~ -- ~. .. ......... . . .........

Der Kriegstankim D)ienste der Reklame

p. 164. (Photograph: Cleveland Public Library.) i

problematize the commodity and its signs, and to point to the collusion of the forces that served to maintain advertising's allure and power over society.

Research for this paper was begun with the help of a visiting fellowship at the Robert Gore Rikind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a 1988 summer awardfrom the Oregon Committee on the Humanities. The paper was initially presented to the Assembly of the Design Forum at the 1990 meeting of the College Art Association in New York City. Since that time it has benefited substantiallyfrom the publications and criticisms of Robert Jensen, Beth Irwin Lewis, Barbara McCloskey, Frederic Schwartz, and Joan Weinstein.




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Berlin Dada and the Power of Advertising