Kurt Tucholsky

Tucholsky has been described as much read, but not well known; a satirist and a polemical critic of conventional values in Weimar Germany, he was a colleague and collaborator of Heartfield on the magazine AIZ. He and Grosz were mutual admirers and correspondents. He co-authored a revue with Polgar, and was a colleague of Kästner, who (quite affectionately) called him a small fat Berliner, trying to stave off catastrophe with his typewriter. Aged twenty-one, Tucholsky went to Prague to surprise his favourite writer, Brod, with a home-made model landscape; Kafka, also present, was impressed by the swing of Tucholsky’s walking-stick.