AND YET IT MOVES JOHN HEARTFIELD FULL

Heartfield and his brother Wieland would soon become regulars in the bohemian crowds that ran through Berlin.

Neumann was a pioneer of artistic printmaking and was the first German artist to use his innovative designs in the advertising industry.

Heartfield would also have the good fortune to study with an artist who would have a sizable impact on his future work, Ernst Neumann. He would study painting and design, finding work as a graphic designer with a large printing company. During his time in Wiesbaden, Heartfield would begin an immersion into the arts, where his talents were recognized immediately. He would find work with a bookseller in Wiesbaden, Germany – an experience that would influence his own craft later in his career. He would start school again only to leave at age fourteen (or, according to some sources, was thrown out). A bad match for the young Heartfield, who was raised as a Protestant. Heartfield would start to display impulsive behavior and anger, channeling some of his frustration into organizing a school strike leading a revolt of sorts that landed him in a juvenile detention home run by nuns. Sadly, it is unclear if they were ever reunited or what became of their parents. Heartfield's grandson, John, has shared the story of the children's abandonment and other details of Heartfield's early life and indicates the four siblings ended up in different foster homes. Frightened and helpless, despairing more completely with each passing hour and day, he ran into the woods again and again to call just one word: 'mother.'' The eight-year-old never thought of going down into the village. For four days and nights he was alone with us younger siblings in the isolated hut.

AND YET IT MOVES JOHN HEARTFIELD FULL

'My brother, who was five years older, experienced the full impact of the loss. Heartfield's brother Wieland, a copious custodian of the details of his brothers' life, described the days the children spent in the cabin, not knowing when or if their parents would ever return: Heartfield has referred to 1899 as the year he 'lost his parents,' giving support to the idea his parents' disappearance was nefarious and not a case of abandonment. Three short years later, Helmut and Alice, who were known to be in ill health, either disappeared or intentionally left all of their children in the remote cabin in the woods, never to return, leaving John, his younger brother Wieland, and his two younger sisters, Charlotte and Hertha, to fend for themselves.

Whatever the case, in 1896 the family would leave Switzerland and wind up living in a bare-bones cabin deep in the woods of Aigen, near Salzburg, Austria. It has been alleged the reason for their swift exit was that Helmut, after being convicted of ' blasphemy,' was eager to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. As noted in the book, John Heartfield: A Political Life (2016), Heartfield's family fled to Switzerland when he was five. His mother, Alice, was also politically active and, in addition to working in a textile factory, was a trade union activist. Heartfield's Jewish father, Franz Herzfeld, was a well-known socialist with a strong penchant for anarchy who wrote prodigiously about his political affiliations, often under the pen name Franz Held. From the beginning, Heartfield's (born Helmut Franz Josef Herzfeld) and his parents' lives were adversely affected by politics well before the Nazis arrived in Berlin.

And yet it moves john heartfield