cut with a kitchen knife dada through the last weimar beer belly cultural epoch of germany (1919)
Hannah Höch Dada as a movement was inherently political in nature. Dada artists often used political satires to address the issues of the time. They attempted to push art to the limits of humanity and to convey the chaos in post-war (World War I, which did not yet have this title) Germany. "Many of Höch's overtly political photomontages caricatured the pretended socialism of the new republic and linked female liberation with leftist political revolution" (Lavin).[19] Perhaps Höch's most well known piece Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic symbolizes her cutting through the patriarchal society. The piece is a direct criticism of the failed attempt at democracy imposed by the Weimar Republic. Cut with the Kitchen Knife is "an explosive agglomeration of cut-up images, bang in the middle of the most well-known photograph of the seminal First International Dada Fair in 1920" (Hudson).[16] This photomontage is an excellent example of a piece that combines these three central themes in Höch's works: androgyny, the "New Woman" and political discourse. It combines images of political leaders with sports stars, mechanized images of the city, and Dada artists.
Weimar Republic Weimar Republic (German: Weimarer Republik [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk] ( listen)) was an unofficial, historical designation for the German state between 1919 and 1933. The name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich; it had remained unchanged since 1871. In English the country was usually known simply as Germany. A national assembly was convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the Deutsches Reich was written, and adopted on 11 August 1919. In its fourteen years, the Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism (with paramilitaries – both left- and right-wing), as well as contentious relationships with the victors of the First World War. The people of Germany blamed the Weimar Republic rather than their wartime leaders for the country's defeat and for the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Weimar Germany fulfilled most of the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles although it never completely met its disarmament requirements, and eventually paid only a small portion of the war reparations (by twice restructuring its debt through the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan).[5] Under the Locarno Treaties, Germany accepted the western borders of the republic, but continued to dispute the Eastern border.