Surrealism was a political movement of international reach and internationalist convictions. Surrealists vocally denounced European colonial policies, they organized to resist fascist movements, fought in the Spanish Civil War, called on Wehrmacht soldiers to commit sabotage, were detained in camps and persecuted, escaped Europe, died in war. They wrote poetry, honed the deconstruction of an ostensibly rational language in an ostensibly rational world, they worked on paintings and collective drawings, they took photographs, made collages, and organized exhibitions. In analyzing and illustrating its political self-conception, we will be guided by an idea that was central to Surrealism: anti-fascism. The exhibition at the Lenbachhaus is meant to consolidate a series of attempts to revise a Surrealist canon that is still narrowly defined and politically inconsequential in order to answer the question: What is Surrealism?