Friday, 9 September 2011

Publication : Biography Hannah Höch

Cara Schweitzer
Schrankenlose Freiheit für Hannah Höch
Osburg Verlag : Berlin 2011
439 Seiten
ISBN-10: 3940731641
ISBN-13: 978-3940731647

The life of the Dada artist under the Nazi dictatorship

With her ​​scissors she cut art history, the collages of the grande dame of Berlin Dada movement, Hannah Höch (1889 - 1978), shook the Weimar »Beer Belly Cultural Epoch." Now for the first time a biography of the artist appears, who extensively discussed their predicament under the Nazi dictatorship. Previously undiscovered letters and documents explain why Hannah Höch could not leave Germany at the last minute.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in Berlin the Dada movement was formed. Hannah Höch is one of the few women in this illustrious men's club. After the takeover by the Nazis their work was considered as "degenerate". Her closest friends left the country. During the war years, she retired to spend in her garden on the outskirts of Berlin. Her house becomes a secret archive of the avant-garde. The biography focuses on the dramatic circumstances of her marriage to the 21 years younger Heinz Kurt Matthies. In 1938 he was arrested, and for the once cautious artist begins the fight for his release.

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