This page is from “Jedermann sein eigner Fußball” (Everyman His Own Football), a short-lived Dadaist periodical published in Berlin in 1919 by Wieland Herzfelde through Malik Verlag, with design contributions by John Heartfield (Helmut Herzfeld) and George Grosz.
It was the first Dada publication in Berlin, intended as a satirical political magazine — only one issue was ever produced before being confiscated by the authorities. The image you uploaded (with the man inside a football) is a photo-collage by John Heartfield, and the text is a mock article combining humor and absurdity typical of Dada.
Here’s an English translation of the visible text:
Right column:
Ein Dada-Wort
Jedermann sein eigener Fußball
(A Dada Word: Everyman His Own Football)
Main text:
One day, a lady appeared who had long envied the hardest men and wanted to have a personality like theirs.
In the end, she became a ball.
This was indeed progress, because the ball can roll everywhere.
She learned to jump very high and very far.
Then she was painted and signed.
From that moment on she had a name and a new world began for her.
She became famous and people kicked her everywhere.
She was happy about that, because she was useful.
That is how the ball became the queen of sports.
Her name was: The Light One (Die Leichte).
Her husband was a long-distance runner.
The long-distance runner was constantly in motion.
Their children were the shortest of all acquaintances:
the short-distance runners.
Their neighbor was a discus thrower.
He always threw his visitors out of the window.
Wieland Herzfelde, publisher of this magazine, lives in Berlin W 57, Kurfürstenstraße 99.
Send manuscripts and illustrations to the editorial office.
Contributions will not be returned.
This publication and collage represent early Berlin Dada’s political absurdism, mocking nationalism, sports, and bourgeois masculinity — a mix of satire, typography, and photo-montage that foreshadowed Heartfield’s later anti-fascist works.
