Die Drei Weisen aus dem Sorgenland

In his anti-Nazi photomontages for the leftist magazine Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (Workers’ Illustrated Journal), Heartfield used caricature, allegory, puns, and double entendres to create what one contemporary called “furious lampoons that inspire the friend and wound the foe.” Here, the three wise men of the Bible are reimagined as the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, the Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, and Adolf Hitler himself, who hail from the Fascist “land of sorrows.” As they awkwardly walk their political tightrope, a sharp-toothed vole (Wühlmaus, in German) gnaws at the rope, allegorizing the anti-Fascist agitator (Wühler) working assiduously to send the regime toppling down.