Paper read at the "Theatres of World War I" conference, St. Petersburg, Russia

The German Heartbeat of Dada: “Literature with a Gun” during the World War I

Dada originated in countries neutral at the beginning of World War I (Switzerland and the USA), but German artists provided crucial sparks for this revolutionary avant-garde movement from 1915. Founder Hugo Ball came from the German Palatinate, near the French border, but called for Dada to be both international and stateless (Heimatlose) in reaction to the unprecedented carnage of the war. Ball’s wife, the poet and singer Emmy Hennings (from the German-Danish border), was admired by expressionists as the “incarnation of the cabaret artist” during World War I.

German Expressionists and Dadaists reacted with irony and disgust at the war, deploying and performing a new language and aesthetics of exile. Painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Hans Richter (1888-1976) brought innovations from his work with the Blaue Reiter (in Vienna) and Der Sturm (in Berlin) to Zürich after being discharged from the German army in 1916. Richard Hülsenbeck (1892-1973) was German poet, drummer, and medical student on the eve of World War I; he spent a year accompanying Cabaret Voltaire performances. Hülsenbeck’s advocacy of ragtime and jazz rhythms helped to attack the cultural values that had led to the war.

All art in Berlin was circumscribed by political events: Hülsenbeck’s Neue Jugend (1917) marked his return to the collapsing city from Zürich. His Dadaistisches Manifest (Berlin, 1918) called for the highest art to focus on the thousandfold “Probleme der Zeit” torn apart by “den Explosionen der letzten Woche.” Dada should gather “Glieder” (members/limbs) after the “Stoß (impact) des letzten Tages.” The most unprecedented artists would “pull the shreds of their bodies together ...out of the chaos of life’s cataracts ... bleeding from hands and hearts.” Public readings of such works were accompanied by poetry, drumming, and dancing, beginning with George Grosz’s 1918 homage to jazz (Sincopation) and inspiring Raoul Hausmann’s later Dada-Trot (Sixty-One Step, 1920).

In 1917, Dada in the German capital reflected social upheavals that would lead to the Spartakusaufstand, which broke out at the end of World War I. Public art reflected left-wing politics, claiming “Dada is German Bolshevism.” As the war progressed, avant-garde, anti-war art became dangerous political speech, especially since some members of Club Dada served in the military. Hülsenbeck wrote that his dream was “to make literature with a gun in [his] hand,” and his autobiographical Memoirs of a Dada Drummer reveals how German Dadaists re-purposed Italian Futurist typography to oppose war, rather than to glorify it.

The abdication of Emperor William II in 1918 was followed by brutal suppression of dissent in Berlin, but Berlin Dadaists continued to fight back based on the foundation they had laid during the last years of the war. This paper presents a new approach by exploring how Dada developed in tandem with German political protest, and how postmodern and multimedia political speech owes it a direct debt. Berlin Dada’s originality stemmed from its political militantism, as new forms of media arose that were both distinctly German and anti-war.