Hannah Hoch was an avid collector of Weimar print media and her signature medium was the photomontage. Because of this, her work is generally explored within the context of mainstream media and, to a degree, this is adequate. Yet this dissertation questions the completeness of this path of enquiry and newly examines H¿¿ch’s oeuvre within an expanded context of media generated by sexology, ethnography, medicine, and sexual subculture. Furthermore, while diverse contemporary media were integral to H¿¿ch’s oeuvre, the close correlation between her artistic themes and her intimate relationships has yet to be fully examined.
In her early photomontages, H¿¿ch’s engagement with gender largely reflected her relationship with Raoul Hausmann and her difficult status as the sole woman among the Berlin Dadaists. Her engagement with gender grew and became more focused after 1926 when H¿¿ch entered into a ten year lesbian partnership with the Dutch writer Mathilda ‘Til’ Brugman. While this relationship has received cursory scholarly attention, it was arguably the artist’s most significant personal bond and influenced her oeuvre considerably. Moreover, during her years with Brugman, H¿¿ch’s photomontages clearly reflected lesbian subculture, as this dissertation will definitively establish. H¿¿ch and Brugman collaborated on a number of creative projects that satirically and critically addressed social and political issues, particularly those related to concepts of gender identity. Knowledge of Weimar sexual and medical discourse found expression in both women’s work and indicates that they were familiar with vanguard surgical procedures. Although the two women separated in 1936, H¿¿ch’s exploration of the social construction of gender remained a key theme in her photomontages and continued to occupy her well into the 1970s.