In 1917, Heartfield married Helene Balzer, with whom he would have two children, Tom and Eva. He married his second wife, Barbara Friedmann in 1927.

PHOTOMONTAGE

Between 1916 and 1920, having co-founded the Berlin Dada group, Heartfield and Grosz invented the technique of photomontage, though this is disputed by a claim from Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann that they invented it in 1918.

Regardless, the medium of photomontage continued to develop, along with Heartfield's work. In addition to his teachers and Dada contemporaries, Heartfield was influenced by a Soviet movement called Productivism, or "production art", which in turn was closely related to Constructivism. Heartfield travelled to the Soviet Union, where Boris Arvatov, one of Productivism's main theoreticians, introduced him to to artists Rodchenko and Lissitzky.