Heartfield’s Address Books
Lecture
Address books are like an atlas showing a tapestry of relationships to their owner. Alongside prominent friends and colleagues, such as Johannes R. Becher, George Grosz, Hermann Henselmann and Stefan Heym, John Heartfield’s two address books (housed in his archive at the Akademie der Künste) list his barber, the pharmacist, and the local gardening nursery on equal footing. Christine Fischer-Defoy has concerned herself with address books for many years – including those that once belonged to Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Paul Hindemith – eliciting the secrets of their owners from them.