DAS MÖDERKREUZ (THE MURDERER'S CROSS)

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Heartfield suggests martyrdom by placing the corpse along the central arms of the swastika, which form a cross. The body, though unidentified in the montage, would have been recognized by AIZ readers as August Bassy, an agricultural worker and active anti-Fascist murdered by the SA in 1932 who had been featured in an article that year. This montage was used twice more by Heartfield, once on a book jacket and once in a set of propaganda postcards. In those instances, it was used to refer to the suspicious fire that destroyed the Reichstag.

Keywords

World War II
Politics
Propaganda
Photogravure
Germany
Photomontage
Commercial Art