Dada is anti-art. It was never meant to be beautiful, nor was it ever meant to conform. It was there to provoke, to disrupt, to challenge everything that had come before. For me, a German, this movement holds a particular weight- a moment in history where art ceased to be just art and became a weapon against the absurdity of a collapsing society. It has been more than 100 years since Dada reached its peak, yet it seems that it is forgotten what it did for modern art, particularly the innovation of photomontage. When I talk to fellow students about this thesis paper, I am often met with responses such as, “Wasn’t that just the crazy art?” But Dada was never just about chaos. It was born out of necessity, out of the ruins of World War I, as a response to a world that no longer made sense.

Dada did not appear out of thin air. It emerged, of all places, in neutral Switzerland, where exiled artists such as Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and Richard Huelsenbeck found solace in the absurd. But it was in Berlin that the movement transformed into something far more radical. Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, George Grosz, and John Heartfield saw an opportunity to take Dada beyond mere performance and poetry. They saw the power of image- the manipulation of reality through photomontage- to expose the political and social hypocrisy of their time. Heartfield’s work in the 1920s and 1930s, in particular, marks a turning point in visual culture, one that directly challenges the traditional perspectives established in the 15th century. With photomontage, he and his contemporaries created an entirely new form of visual critique, merging fragments of reality into a grotesque yet powerful distortion of truth.

What fascinates me most is how Dada questioned not only the value of art, but also its very purpose in a society on the brink of collapse. After WWI, Germany was in turmoil- people were starving, political tensions were escalating, and the Weimar Republic was struggling to find stability. In such a world, art could no longer afford to be bourgeois, decorative, or detached from reality. Dada refused to be complicit. Instead, it mocked, criticised, and exposed. It was inevitable that a group of artists- or rather, anti-artists (monteurs)- would come together to ask the most urgent questions: What is art? Who decides its value? And does art even matter when society itself has lost its sense of purpose?

In this thesis, I will explore the rise and development of Dada, focusing particularly on photomontage as its most subversive and lasting contribution. By analysing key artworks, texts, and manifestos from that time, I will examine how this technique was not just a visual experiment, but a direct response to the socio-political chaos of post-war Germany. While many books on Dada were written in the 1960s and 1970s, more recent debates and documentaries have sought to place the movement in a contemporary context, helping us understand the mindset of those artists who turned to scissors and glue as their weapons of choice.

Through this research, I aim to uncover how photomontage became a crucial tool for political critique and subsequently why, a century later, its impact remains as relevant as ever. Although Dadaism is well documented in terms of primary sources and a resurge in 70s literature, the more recent trend since the 2000s is a decline in book sales , as philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger said in an interview on the Swiss Radio Channel SRF. The known publications till now are extensive books, never truly focusing concisely on the topic at hand: This thesis is a holistic compiled writing uncovering the depth of the photomontage philosophy, technique, monteurs and the prevailing Zeitgeist.