ing onasingular emotion–what his brotherWieland Herzfelde calledproduk-
tiverJähzorn(productive rage)–and making its formal manifestations the organ-
izing principle behind his approach to political photomontage.²
In this chapter,the term“productive rage”will be used to approach the mak-
ing of proletarian identifications through the languageofembodied ideologyand
one particular visual motif, thatofhandsand fists. When Herzfelde used the
term ina1962biographyofthe younger brother,heexplained his all-consuming
rage in psychologicalterms, that is, the resultofhaving been abandoned by their
parents–in Heartfield’scase, at the ageofseven. This traumaticexperience,
Herzfelde concluded, fueledthe strong sense of injusticethat Heartfield chan-
neled into his fervent belief in the future of communism.³It would be easy,all
too easy,torelyonpsychobiographytoexplain both his need for artistic inno-
vationandhistendencytowardpoliticaldogmatism.Infact,manyofthesocial-
ists and communists mentioned in this book suffered parentalabandonment or
neglect,endured lifelong illnesses and disabilities,and, asaconsequenceof
their political activism, experienced economic hardship, political persecution,
as well asyears of imprisonment and exile. These individual experiences, in
ways that cannot be elaborated here, alsocontributed to the making of collective
imaginaries–in Heartfield’scase, through the discourse ofrage (i.e.,rage du
combat,produktiverJähzorn)that assumedacentral place in the emotional re-
gimes associated with proletarianmodernism.With the exception perhaps of
George Grosz, no otherWeimarartistemployed modernist techniqueswith
such visceral contempt and disgust: contempt for the political elites and disgust
with thehypocrisies of bourgeois life. The degreeto which the aggressive gestus
of photomontageserved as protection againstavery different set of emotions–
fear,despair,and powerlessness–can onlyberaised asaquestion, since pur-
suing this line of inquiry with regards to Heartfield’srelationship to the KPD
would requireapsychobiographical discussion of communist militancy andWei-
mar masculinity.
Confirmingthe destructive energies inherent in photomontage, the surviving
originals for the posters,fliers, and magazine covers that Heartfield created for
the KPDand affiliated organizations oftenresemble battlefields marked by cuts,
Wieland Herzfelde,John Heartfield: Leben undWerk.Dargestellt von seinem Bruder(Dresden:
VEBVerlag derKunst,1976), 18. In her analysis of the relationship between the brothers, Nancy
Roth translates the phrase as“high-energy temper;”see“Heartfield’sCollaboration,”Oxford Art
Journal29.3 (2006): 395–418.
Herzfelde,John Heartfield,12. After the war,the psychobiographiesofWeimar-era communists
would become part of the selective reclamation in the GDR ofWeimar modernism for the social-
ist heritage;astobe expected, fear and shame have no placeinthese accounts.
302 Chapter 17