Tucholsky Heartfield "Germany Germany above all": "Blättervideo"
1 2022-11-16T08:19:13-08:00 Verena Kick 1d32e4579dc15a1815e8d60cddf98a623f5bf4a3 26093 1 Video of leafing through the beginning of the book, in order to give an impression of the book's materiality, size, and at least vicariously an experience how it would be to interact with the book in one's own hands. plain 2022-11-16T08:19:13-08:00 Critical Commons 2022-11-16T18:01:42.942852+02:00 video vkick14 30 Verena Kick 1d32e4579dc15a1815e8d60cddf98a623f5bf4a3This page has paths:
- 1 2018-07-28T22:53:17-07:00 Verena Kick 1d32e4579dc15a1815e8d60cddf98a623f5bf4a3 Path 1: Have a look! Flip through a few pages of "Germany, Germany above All" Verena Kick 22 gallery 2022-11-16T08:31:36-08:00 Verena Kick 1d32e4579dc15a1815e8d60cddf98a623f5bf4a3
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Path 1: Have a look! Flip through a few pages of "Germany, Germany above All"
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Before you start this Scalar book, flip through a few selected pages from Germany, Germany above All (1929).
I selected a few non-consecutive pages from the photobook providing you with an idea of what the photobook looks like and giving you a chance to encounter the book first on your own terms.
(I've included the title page, both content pages, pp. 10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19, 28-29, 38-39, 62-63, 92-93.)
As clicking through scans of the double pages is not quite the same as leafing through the book, I am adding a brief video of me leafing through the first pages of the book, giving you a sense of its size and materiality:On the photobook's title and composition:
Kurt Tucholsky's and John Heartfield’s photo book Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles (GG) appeared in 1929, when the media landscape was saturated with illustrated magazines and books that had discovered photography’s presumed authentic qualities. Nonetheless, GG prompted a big echo from both the leftwing and rightwing press.
Already its title and its ironic play on the first verse of the national anthem The Song of the Germans, which President of the Reich Friedrich Ebert had chosen in 1922, indicates that the condition of the Weimar Republic (WR) is at stake in this photo book. The irony then, with which the right-wing press took issue, lies in the fact that Germany is not “above all” in 1929, but is struggling politically and economically at the end of the Weimar Republic. Yet, Tucholsky and Heartfield neither only offer clamoring ramblings nor solutions to change the course of the WR. Instead, they opt in GG for a showcase and criticism of the media’s portrayal of the Weimar Republic’s current state, aiming to unveil its actual condition by including, educating and addressing the working class and questioning its visibility and representation within the German public sphere.
Many publications at the time, particularly so-called “Deutschland-Bücher” tried reinforcing a “process of searching for a national identity" and coming to terms with the fundamental changes and instability of the WR since WWI (Köhn 173, my translation). Yet, even among these publications GG remains a unique take on the state of Germany, due to its intriguing text-photo combinations, its high volume of photographs (188 photographs and photomontages are combined with 96 texts) and its collaborative nature when it comes to its authors, Tucholsky, Heartfield and an array of anonymous photographers whose photos have been published by various media outlets and are reused in DD - as are many of Tucholsky's texts.
