One poster in Berlin in 1920 read, quite simply, ‘Dada is political’. Berlin Dada was political and to understand its character and actions is to feel the atmosphere of Berlin at this time. In 1918 disillusion with the war led to the flight of the emperor and the establishment of a republic. During 1918 and 1919 street battles raged in Berlin between the new government and the Spartakusbund, which wanted to replace the corrupt middle-class republic with a working-class republic. In 1919 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the Spartakusbund, were assassinated. But the fighting and accusations of corruption did not cease. After the war ‘the unscrupulous profiteering began,; every moral restraint disappeared’ (Huelsenbeck in Dada siegt 1920).
War
profiteers would be indulging themselves in restaurants and brothels while
legless war-wounded had to beg or sell matches outside. The enormous war
reparations imposed by the allies (‘squeezing Germany until the pips squeak’) had
brought the Mark from just over four to the Dollar to over four billion to the
Dollar. Unemployment was very high, so was the suicide rate.
The different
sociological, political and economic conditions in Berlin to, say, Zurich,
created a different Dada art movement. ‘While in Zurich people lived as in a
health resort, chasing after the ladies and longing for nightfall that would
bring pleasure barges, magic lanterns and music by Verdi, in Berlin you never
knew where the next meal was coming from.’ Huelsenbeck, writing in En avant
Dada in 1920, is describing his move from Zurich Data to Berlin as a search
for a less aesthetic Dadaism, and quotes his and Raoul Hausmann’s earlier
manifesto, ‘Dadaism demands the international revolutionary union of all
creative and intellectual men and women on the basis of radical Communism.’ The
cover to this history of Dadaism was by Richard Huelsenbeck himself and consciously
avoided the pictorial. But the script is decoratively arranged into sections by
diagonals from a central rectangle. Apart from sentences along these diagonals,
the words are all horizontal but are given variety by the large number of
types.
One of the
Zurich publications Phantastiche Gebete, when it appeared in Berlin in
1920, showed the shift to the more aggressive, social consciousness under
Huelsenbeck. Instead of Arp woodcuts, from the time Arp had spent in Berlin in
January, it showed the satirical drawings of George Grosz. There was a stress
on obscene works on corruption, decay, death, sex and offal – Grosz’s drawings
showed man as beast. Grosz’s art was aimed at the masses rather than literary
and artistic cliques. The third number of Der blutige Ernst published in
1920 has How the State Courts Ought to Look on the cover. Grosz has put the old
military aristocracy on trial, while the proletarians judge from under the gaze
of Liebknecht’s portrait. The issue also includes the Pimps of Death
which has the Generals Ludendorff and Hindenberg, and one other, acting as
pimps to skeletal prostitutes. The bitter satire Ludendorff’s Diary,
written by Carl Einstein, was also included. The fourth number of Der
blutige Ernst attacked the profiteer which Grosz’s cover allies with the
prostitute; a double-page drawing in the centre of the issue portrays wealthy
profiteers in the whorehouse. Mehring and Huelsenbeck wrote poems and Einstein
discussed profiteers as the product of bourgeois attitudes.
1920 saw the third and final issue of Der
Dada. The previous tow had been edited by Hausmann but, for the third, he
was aided by Heartfield and Grosz (or as they called themselves ‘Groszfield,
Hearthaus, Georgemann’). The cover, a montage by Heartfield, combined newspaper
clippings, with tyre and toothbrush advertisements, with the names of Hausmann,
Baader, Grosz and, of course, Dada. The issue contains collages, photographs,
illustrations, poetry and advertisements with a deliberately international
flavour. For example an American cartoon of Dada taken from Collier’s. Heartfield’s
montage of Jedermann sein eigner Fussball reappears in this issue. Der
Dada, however, rarely had the inflammatory power of the Jedermann sein
eigner Fussball magazine. Die Pleite would be more comparable in
tone to the latter. Early in January of 1920 an issue of Die Pleite was
published and was immediately banned. On the cover, by Grosz, a capitalist and
a general, each hanging from a gibbet, wish each other a Happy New Year. The
articles, poems and short plays were serious or satirical; but they all
incorporated the themes of the massacre of the revolutionaries, the increase in
militarism and the failure of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Die Pleite
resurfaced at the end of the year in the satirical section of the journal Der
Gegner which was published by Wieland Herzfelde and Julian Gumperz. Der
Gegner combined Grosz’s drawings with an idolization of Soviet art and
life.
Huelsenbeck,
Hausmann and Baader, the latter having just formed the Deutsche
Freiheitspartei, started a Dada tour in February 1920. The audiences, who
probably came expecting a polite and rather dull cultural lecture, were treated
to political propaganda, verbal abuse, simultaneist poetry and general fooling
around. The tour began in Leipzig on 24th February with a
performance in the Zentraltheater attended by two thousand people. They then
proceeded to the Kaiserbad, Teplitz-Schönau, in
Czechoslovakia on 26th February. In a drunken stupor they appointed Hugo
Dux chief of Czech Dada, while Baader wallowed in wine, women and roast pork at
the Bawdy House of the Bumblebee. On 1st March they appeared at the
Prague Bourse des Produits. Despite the fact that Baader deserted at the last
minute taking half the script with him, and all their money, it was regarded as
a success and was attended by two thousand five hundred people. On 2nd
March the two remaining RHs appeared before a smaller audience at the Mozarteum
and on the 5th March in Karlsbad. Overall the tour was a great
success, albeit a succés de scandale, in publicizing the
Dada movement in Berlin to a wider European audience.
They returned
to a Berlin still in political turmoil. On 12th March the Ehrhardt
Freikorps marched on Berlin with the swastika on their helmets. The government
fled to Dresden and Stuttgart. The Freikorps tried to install Wolfgang Kapp, a
nationalist civil servant, as chancellor but within five days the putsch fell
apart. Gustav Noske, the SPD minister of defence, who had used the Freikorps
against the Spartacists so thoroughly in 1919, resigned; but the rest of the
government survived intact. On 15th March there was a battle on the
Postplatz, Dresden, between the Reichswehr, under General Maercker, and
demonstrating workers. Sixty people were killed and a hundred and fifty
woundecd. Bullets also penetrated the Zwinger Gallery and slightly damaged Rubens’
Bathsheeba. Oskar Kokoschka, then a professor in the Dresden Academy,
wrote an article protesting about the damage and suggesting the inhabitants of
Dresden settle their petty squabbles elsewhere. Incensed by Kokoschka’s
insensitivity, Grosz and Heartfield published Der Kunstlump in Die
Aktion. They attacked Kokoschka’s attitude to works of art as heiligsten Güter. For Grosz and Heartfield these ‘holy heirlooms’ must be viewed in
human terms as expressions of creative people, not as objects which could be
used for profit and investment by the capitalist class. An artist cannot be
indifferent to human strife, for it art is not about that then it is about
nothing, they wrote.
The Collective
Dada Manifesto, published in April, went further in proposing a robust,
realistic art which reflected the dynamism of events. “The highest art will be
that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the
day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week,
which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday’s crash.” There
was no shortage of events to activate the Dadaists. In 1920, particularly in
April in the Ruhr, the Free Corps would descent on any protest or
demonstration. People would be ‘shot while attempting to escape’ or sentenced
to death by impromptu ‘court-martials’. In a letter written to his family a
student who was in the Von Epp Free Corps revels in the atmosphere, “No pardon
is given. We shoot even the wounded. The enthusiasm is terrific – unbelievable.
Anyone who falls into our hands first gets the rifle butt and then is finished
off with a bullet. We even shot ten Red Cross nurses on sight because they were
carrying pistols. We shot those little ladies with pleasure – how they cried
and pleaded with us to save their lives. Nothing doing!” Under the
circumstances it is easy to see why the Berlin Dadaists turned to the idea of Communism
as the most viable counter-force to this foretaste of Fascism. On the 5th of April the KAPD was formed as
a splinter group of the KPD and Franz Jung quickly became one of the more
prominent members. In late April Jung and Franz Appel hijacked the trawler Senator
Schröeder and sailed to Murmansk. Franz Jung had been
one of the signatories of the Collective Dada Manifesto, along with
Tristan Tzara, George Grosz, Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Raoul Hausmann
and may others. Some of the other signatories are possible but also included a liberal sprinkling of the highly
improbable.
The military
being used to brutally put down the working class was most viciously portrayed
by Georg Grosz. He had plenty of material to work from since forty-two people
were killed and a hundred and five injured during a protest outside the
Reichstag in January 1920. Grosz’s portfolio of lithographs Gott mit uns,
published in June, referred to the inscription on German military belts
highlighting the hypocrisy of using moral and spiritual decorative trimmings.
Irony is also evident in the lithographs entitled The World Made Safe For
Democracy. A man is being handcuffed, beaten and whipped by soldiers. He is
being enslaved in the name of freedom, by a democracy in which free speech is
not allowed. The Faith-healers shows the
military authorities declaring a rotting skeletal figure fit for active
service. The portfolio also includes the Pimps of Death. But, as The
Communist Fall, and the Mark Rises points out Grosz felt the military, by
its very nature, is just the blunt instrument designed to follow orders without
judgement. The real villains were the financial interests at play trying to
grab what little money there was exclusively for the financiers.
As might be
expected, sponsorship to take exhibition space was not easily forthcoming for
the Dadaists. Grosz had one exhibition in 1920 in Hans Goltz’s Galerie
Neue Kunst in Munich during April and May. However in June the opportunity
arose for all the Dadaists to exhibit and to invite others to contribute. Dr.
Otto Burchard, who thus earned himself the title of Finanz-Dada, offered his
gallery at Lutzowufer 13 in Berlin. The exhibition was given the rather
orthodox title of the First Grand International Dada Fair, though the
newspapers tended to refer to it as the Great Dada-Monster Show, and it ran
from 24th June to 5th August. It was largely organised by
Grosz, Hausmann and Hertfield. Heartfield designed the folding catalogue for
the exhibition. The front cover used his Dada-Fotomontage of that year as
backdrop for the words. The piece was also included in the exhibition and
demonstrated his love for all things American (which had inspired the
anglicisation of his name from Herzfelde). Not a single German word was used,
it was all taken from American newspapers, magazines, film advertisements and
so on. Phrases like ‘Cheer, Boys Cheer!’, ‘Son of a Gun’, ‘The Return of
…Bronco Bill’ were set against photocopied heads, drawn heads, bits of film, a
wheel, part of a telephone and skyscrapers. Superimposed on the reproduction
from the exhibition is the information on the exhibition including the phrase,
‘the Dada movement leads to the disappearance of the artistic market.’ The back
cover featured Gerhard Preiss (Obermusikdada) in a skin-tight body covering
with shoes and bowler hat executing a ‘dadaistischer Holzpuppentanz’. It also
catalogued the exhibits and was further embellished with a pair of spectacles
and several small bicycles. Most of the Heartfields in the exhibition were
photomontages taken from various Dada publications. Whether Heartfield, with
Grosz, or Hausmann, with Höch, first used photomontage it served as an excellent
medium for them. It could exploit the whimsical and illogical conjunction of
images (later beloved of the surrealists), was against the fine art tradition
of hand-crafted representation, and it offered familiar contemporary imagery
from escapist and realistic everyday life.
In rejecting the hand-made fine art aesthetic Heartfield
became an engineer in his own mind, or Monteurdada, as illustrated in Grosz’s
picture Heartfield the Mechanic. The picture portrays Heartfield in
Grosz’s typical pose – in profile with bald head with a mischievous grimace and
clenched fists. As well as watercolour Grosz used photographs of mechanical
parts and architectural details.
Gott mi tuns was on display with its scratchy cartoon lines
and political intent. Grosz’s graffiti inspired art was a more obvious
rejection of the spiritual and formal preoccupations of contemporary abstract
artists. An analogy could be made between Heartfield the Mechanic and
Hausmann’s Tatlin at Home. Both represent particular people as rather
characterless types, part machine, and combining painting and collage/montage,
set in simplified classical de Chiricoesque interiors. Hausmann’s Dada Siegt
(not the publication of the same name) was another montage in this style.
There was also a hairdresser’s mannequin with a number and
scale, together with a number of other appendages, which confirms the impact of
the scuolo metafisica on Berlin Dada. But, in the exhibition at least,
Hausmann the Dadasophe (see his self-portrait) is more purely art-orientated
than the anti-military propaganda of Marschall G. Grosz.
Hanna Höch exhibited collages, reliefs ad doll-like figures; the
most impressive of which was the collage Cut with a Kitchen Knife. The
new metropolitan masses on the lower left are contrasted with the old culture
of Kaiser Wilhelm at the top right – his moustache is replaced by two wrestlers,
a soldier and a top hat. A mass of machinery dominates the composition, but
there is also Baader in a swimsuit, Lenin and Radek as acrobats, Marx,
Hausmann, Grosz, Heartfield, Mehring, Höch herself, and several others. In
fact Baader appears twice, once at the bottom with one large eye as a comment
upon the Dadaists affectation of using a monocle. Baader himself exhibited
mostly manuscripts and constructions. For example:
the luggage of Oberdada at the
time of his first escape from the insane asylum, 18 September 1899. A Dada
relic. Historic.
Why Andrew Carnegie rolls his
eyes
A project for an animals’
paradise in the Paris zoo, containing compartments for all the French and
German Dadaists in the Hagenbeck style without bars.
The largest was a quasi-architectural structure called The
Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama: Germany’s Greatness and Decline[…] Or The
Phantastic Life Story of Oberdada.
It contained five storeys, three gardens, one tunnel, two lifts
and a cylindrical top reminiscent of a top hat. His exhibits combined his skill
as an architect with an abuse of Germany and growing rage and mental state. The
flysheet threatening to ‘blow Weimar sky-high’ was included.
One of the most striking exhibits was Rudolf Schlicter’s
mannequin of a German soldier with the head of a pig. It was suspended from the
ceiling, having been ‘hanged by the Revolution.’ Schlicter’s brother ran a
restaurant where the Dadaists used to meet. John Heartfield’s brother Wieland
Herzfelde, also exhibited. Otto Schmalhausen, who called himself Dada-oz,
created a head of Beethoven given a sacrilegious moustache and cross-eyes. Otto
Dix showed his social realist caricatures which, particularly in the
prostitutes, are akin to Grosz’s work.
Dadamax Ernst exhibited his Dadafex
maximus and National Codex and Index of the
Refinements of Dada Baargeld. Johannes T. Baargeld, who, like Ernst, came
from Cologne and used photo-montage, was also in the exhibition. The mechanistic
art of 391 by Picabia was on view, as were the abstract reliefs of Hans Arp.
With the exception of Hans Arp the Dada-Messe was remarkably homogeneous,
expounding photo-montage, whimsical objects or socially critical drawings in
most of the one hundred and seventy four items. Some of the other named
contributors are less well known and a good deal are entirely fictitious.
Officers of the Lütwitz Corps who visited
the Messe lodged complaints for slander in the name of the German army. The prosecution
was brought against Burchard, Grosz, Heartfield and Schlicter in April 1921.
Baader’s house had been searched in September after the exhibition but he was
beyond any criminal responsibility. The others were found guilty of insulting
the Reichswehr; Grosz and Heartfield were given six weeks in jail and all were
fined. However the affair proved rather anti-cliimactic in political terms. It
transpired that no-one took Berlin Dada seriously as a threat to society and
they were dismissed as stupid, but essentially harmless, fools.
At about the same time as the exhibition
the Dada Almanach was published. It was edited by Huelsenbeck and featured
contributions from Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Walter Mehring, Francis Picabia,
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Adon Lacroix, Hugo Ball, Philippe Soupault, Citröen-Dada.
Hans Arp, Paul Dermeé, Roual Hausmann and Vincente Huidobro – a largely
non-German lineup. The cover carried the Schmalhausen head of Beethoven and
Baader’s Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama was also discussed in the issue.
Some of the Almanach’s coverage of the exhibition, like the reproduction
of Schlicter’s pig-headed German soldier, obviously conveyed Berlin Dad’s
political polemic but otherwise it was purely poetic and aesthetic. Tzara, Ball
and Lacroix published sound poems and Tzara also traced the history of Zurich
Dada. Hausmann merely attacked abstract painting and even that was counter-balanced
by the opposing argument by an admirer of Arp.
Grosz continued the fight against artists
who he perceived served the bourgeois. ‘Your brushes and pens which should be weapons
are hollow straws’, according to the Statt einer Biographie dated 16th
August. Statt einer Biographie traces Grosz’s idea of Tendenzkunst,
since art must serve its own time and class therefore serving the struggle of
the proletariat. Zu meinen neuen Bildern, written in November but
published in January 1921 in Das Kunstblatt, introduces Grosz’s new
paintings of ‘Republican automatons‘. They extend Grosz’s fascination with the scuola
metafisica of Carrá and de Chirico but do not share their metaphysical
intention. Paintings like The Cyclist and Berlin C present faceless,
nameless mannequins in an architectural dreamworld with exaggerated
perspective.
By the end of the year the Berlin group
had gradually dissolved. Hausmann undertook one final Dada tour to Prague with
Hanna Hoch and Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters, significantly, was despised by the
other Berlin Dadaists. Baader left Berlin and founded his Interplanetary
Academy in Potsdam. Wieland Herzfelde and John Heartfield’s publications became
less Dadaistic and more purely political in their approach to art: for example Herzfelde’s
Society, Artist and Communism of 1921. Walter Mehring moved to Paris and
Huelsenbeck travelled the world as a ship’s doctor.
Some of the personal tensions leading to
their breakup can be surmised from Hausmann’s Dada Riots, Moves and Dies in
Berlin. ‘The members of Club Dada were jealous of each other and sometimes
indulged in rather shabby fights. The Heartfield-Herzfelde brothers and Mehring
adored George Grosz, that pseudo-revolutionary. Huelsenbeck adored Huelsenbeck…I
formed an alliance aside with Baader who was, unhappily, too often obsessed by
his religious paranoiac ideas.’ The Berlin Dadaists were of different natures
and had different intentions that frustrate the art historian’s mental
compulsion for tidy labels, groups and movements. Baader’s undermining of
reality contrasted strongly with Grosz and the Herzfelde brothers’ concern for
political events. While Huelsenbeck became increasingly anti-art, Hausmann and
Hoch leaned towards Schwitter’s fine art conscious aestheticism. There was
something in the nature of Berlin 1920 that made its Dadaism implode. According
to the Dada-Almanach the Dadaist ‘can compensate for the citizen’s lack
of inner urgency and vitality, and shake him into new life.’ But in Berlin at
that time if the shattering events could not stir or wake a person then nothing
would. The Dadaist could make a row or shatter the tranquility of a place like
Zurich, or on the Dada tours, but in Berlin their voice was drowned by much
graver anarchy.
Partial Bibliography and apologies for omitting visiting artists like Moholy-Nagy and
other movements such as the Novembergruppe and the Arbeitsrat für Kunst.
Annely Juda 1978 – The 20s in Berlin
Hess – George Grosz
Huelsenbeck – Memoirs of a Dada Drummer
Institute of Contemporary Arts – Berlin: A Critical View
Lewis - George Grosz
Ed. Motherwell – The Dada Painters and Poets
Richter – Dada Art and Anti-Art
University of Iowa Museum of Art – Dada Artifacts
Chronology of Events
1905 – Hausmann meets Baader in Berlin.
1910 3rd March – First issue of Der Sturm (ed.
Herwarth Walden, Berlin). Last issue March 1932.
1911 20th
February – First issue of Die Aktion (ed. Franz Pfemfert, Berlin). Last
issue August 1932.
1912 August – Ball meets Huelsenbeck in Munich.
1913 20th September to 1st December –
The Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon in Walden’s Sturm-Galeria, Berlin.
1914 4th August – Outbreak of war. Grosz and Jung
volunteer for service. Ball turned down on medical grounds but goes to the
front as a civilian volunteer. Returns to Berlin in November in disgust and is
joined by Hennings who was released from prison for forging passports for those
who wished to avoid military service.
1915 early February – Herzfelde returns from the front to
Berlin.
12th February - Ball speaks at the memorial celebration in
the Berlin Architektenhaus for five writers who were killed in the war.
11th March – Herzfelde
meets Grosz who had been released from the Army that Spring.
12th May – Ball and
Huelsenbeck organise an Expressionist evening in the Berlin Harmoniumsaal in
which Johannes R. Becher, Hennings and Resi Langer participate. Huelsenbeck
declaims ‘negro poems’ and Ball nonsense poems.
Late May/early June – Ball
arrives in Zurich.
4th September – Die
Aktion publishes the manifesto Der Impertinentismus by A. Undo (pseudonym).
Autumn – First issue of Die
freie Strasse (ed. Jung etc, Berlin)
1916 – Ernst meets Grosz and Herzfelde at a Sturm exhibition
while on leave in Berlin.
Herzfelde
founds Neue Jugend.
26th
February – possible date of Huelsenbeck’s arrival in Zurich.
21st
March – Baader visits the peasant poet Christian Wagner near Stuttgart and
lectures on his philosophical views.
March/Apri
– Discovery of the word ‘Dada’, possibly by Ball.
July –
First issue of Neue Jugend (ed. Heinz Berger and Herzfelde, Berlin). Last issue June 1917.
Autumn –
Baader writes a pacifist letter to Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia and is
certified insane.
Late
December – Huelsenbeck leaves Zurich for Germany.
1917 early January – Huelsenbeck arrives in Berlin.
February
– Huelsenbeck links up with Hausmann and Jung.
1st
March - Heartfield founds the Malik
Verlag.
October
– Bolshevik revolution in Ruissia.
9th
October – Baader stands as a candidate for the Reichstag in Saarbrücken.
1918 January – Foundation of Club Dada in Berlin. Later that
year Huelsenbeck rejects Schwitters’ application.
19th
January – Schwitters hears Rudolf Blümner read Sturm poetry in the Kestner
– Gesellschaft, Hanover. As a result he goes to Berlin in late June to meet Walden.
22nd
January – Dada evening in I.B. Neumann’s Graphisches Kabinett on the Berlin
Ku-Damm. Huelsenbeck reads his First Dada Speech in German.
27th January – spoof
announcement in the Vossische Zeitung names Ferdinand Hardekopf, Theodor
Däubler,
Max Herrmann-Neisse and Anselm Ruest as members of the Club Dada.
April – Huelsenbeck leaves
Berlin.
12th April - Huelsenbeck
reads the First German Dada-Manifesto in the Berliner Sezession,
Ku-Damm.
April to December – Huausmann and
Baader cause spoof announcements to appear in Berlin newspapers, especially BZ
am Mittag.
6th June – Dada
evening in the Café Austria, Berlin. Hausmann reads sound poems.
Late June – Hausmann claims to
discover photomontage while on holiday with Höch on the island of Usedom.
23rd July – Hausmann
and Baader celebrate Gottfied Keller’s birthday with readings from his work in
the street.
29th August – Baader
referred to as Oberdada for the first time in print (Die Weltbühne).
September – Berliner Tageblatt
and Tägliche Rundschau report that Baader is standing as the
Reichstag candidate for Berlin First District.
October – Hausmann publishes Material
der Malerai, Plastik, und Architektur.
8th to 9th November – Revolution.
The Kaiser abdicates. Fritz Ebert becomes Chancellor.
11th November –
Armistice.
17th November – In a
widely reported incident Baader publicly shouts ‘Christus is uns wurscht!’
Arrested but released because of his certificate of no criminal responsibility.
3rd December - Novembergruppe meets for the first time. Hausmann,
Höch,
Grosz, Richter and Arp associate themselves.
12th December –
Freikorps set up.
24th December – Revolutionary
element of the Navy defeats government troops in Berlin fighting. Ebert’s
government insecure.
29th December to 1st
January 1919 – founding congress of Spartakusbund.
31st December – Grosz,
Heartfield and Herzfelde join the Communist Party (KPD).
1919 January – Communist riots in Berlin. Gustav Noske
becomes Minster of Defence.
15th
January – Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg murdered in Berlin by the
Freikorps. End of Berlin uprising.
19th January –
Re-election of socialist SPD.
6th February – Dada
meeting in the Kaisersaal des Rheingold:
Baader is proclaimed ‘Präsident des Weltballs’.
12th February – The
Ebert majority socialist government re-takes office.
15th February – Jedermann sein eigener Fussball (ed. Wieland
Herzefelde) sells 7600 copies on the Berlin streets before it is banned.
March – First issue of Die Pleite
(ed. Herzfelde). Last issue 1924.
“1st April” –
Proclamation of the Dada-Republic of Berlin to be inaugurated 1st
April.
3rd to 13th
March – Fighting in Berlin between Noske’s troops and workers as a result of
General Strike called by the Communists. On 10th March between 1500
and 2000 revolutionaries killed and 10000 wounded. Leo Jogisches, Charman of the KPD, is
murdered.
7th March – Herzfelde
arrested for editing Jedermann sein eigener Fussball. Imprisoned until
20th March.
April – First issue of Der
Gegner (ed. Julian Gumperz,
Herzefelde and Karl Otten). Last issue September 1922.
1st April – proclamation of Oberdada’s
death.
2nd April –
proclamation of Oberdada’s resurrection.
30th April – Dada
evening in I.B. Newmann’s Graphishes Kabinett, including Jefim Golyscheff’s
three part anti-symphony.
May – First exhibition of Dada
painting and sculpture in the Graphisches Kabinett.
Mid-May – Baader donates to the
German National Assembly a large picture of Schiller inscribed with the
prophecy that the Weimar Republic will be destroyed for despising the rights of
the spirit.
24th Masy – Dada
evening in the Meistersaal.
June – First issue of Der Dada
(ed. Hausmann, Grosz and Heartfield). Last issue April 1920.
23rd June – Treaty of
Versailles.
28th June – appearance
of Baader’s Hado scrapbook with commentary.
16th July – probable
date of Baader’s leaflet distribution at the Weimar National Assembly.
August – Huelsenbeck agrees to
produce Dadaco with help from Zurich and Paris.
30th November – Dada
Matinee at the Charlottenburger Tribune Theatre.
7th to the 13th
December – possible dates of further matinees at the Charlottenburger Tribune.
8th December – Max
Reinhardt’s caberet Schall und Rauch reopens at the Grosses
Schauspielhaus. First performance is Mehring’s Orestie with puppets by
Grosz.
1920 early January – Die Pleite banned.
19th
January – Hausmann, Huelsenbeck and Baader’s Dada-Tournée in the Saal der Kaufleuten,
Dresden.
February – Baader founds the
Deutsche Freiheitspartei.
12th February – Huelsenbeck
lectures on Dada in the Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich. Wolff cancels Dadaco.
18th
February – Hausmann and Baader – Dada-Tournée in the Curio-Haus, Hamburg.
24th
February – Hausmann, Huelsenbeck and Baader - Dada-Tournée in the Festsaal of the
Zentraltheater, Liepzig, before an audience of 2000.
26th
February - Dada-Tournée in the Kaiserbad, Teplitz-Schöenhau, Czechoslovakia.
1st
March - Dada-Tournée in the Bourse des Produits, Prague, before an audience
of 2500. Baader absconds with funds and half the script.
2nd March - Dada-Tournée
in the Mozarteum, Prague.
5th March - Dada-Tournée
in Karlsbad.
12th March – the Ehrhardt
Freikiorps march on Berlin wih swastikas on their helmets. The government flees
to Dresden and Stuttgart. The Freikorps try and fail to install Wolfgang Kopp.
Noske resigns.
15th March – 60 people
killed and 150 wounded in Dresden. A stray bullet hits a Rubens in Dresden Art
Gallery. Kokoschka recommends the people settle their petty squabbles
elsewhere. Grosz and Heartfield reply in Der Kunstlump published in Die
Aktion (12th June).
April – Huelsenbeck’s Dada seigt published.
4th to 5th April – Foundation of
splinter group from the KPD, the KAPD, of which Jung becomes a prominent member.
April-May – Grosz exhibition in Hans Goltz’ Galerie Neue Kunst, Munich.
Late April – Jung and Jan Appel
hijack the trawler Senator Schröder and sail to Murmansk.
24th June to 5th
August – First Grand International Dada Fair in Otto Burchard’s Gallery. As a result,
in April 1921, Burchard, Grosz, Herzfelde and Shlicter are summoned for
insulting the Reichswehr. All are fined. Grosz and Herzfelde get six weeks in
jail.
28th June – appearance
of Hado 2.
4th September – Baader’s
house is searched because of his involvement with the Dada Fair.
15th October – Erwin Piscator
opens the Proletarisches Theater.
15th December – Dada evening
in the Berliner Sezesion.
1921 20th January – Baader organises a Dada Ball
in Marmorsaal am Zoo, Berlin.
10th
February – Hausmann, Höch and Mynona lecture evening in the Berliner Sezession.
20th February to 13th
March – Grosz contributes to an exhibition in Hanover.
Late
June – Baader invites all those interested to take part in his First Grand Dada
Academy, Potsdam.
July –
Freiland Dada (ed. Baader, Potsdam).
6th
and 7th September – Hausmann, Höch and Schwitters organise
Dada -Tournées
in Prague entitled Anti-Dada-Merz.
16th
October – Baader gives a speech in Leipzig.
1922 – Hausmann’s Optophone.
April – Grosz exhibition in the Galerie
von Garvens, Hanover.
Summer – Grosz spends five
months in Russia.
30th September –
Schwitters, Arp, Tzara and Hausmann organise an evening called Dada-Revon in
the Galerie von Garvens, Hanover.
Autumn –
Baader moves to Stettin.
1st
October to 22nd November – Schwitters, Gleichmann and Grosz
exhibition in the Galerie von Garvens.
1923 – Grosz exhibits in the Kunsthandlung Würthle,
Vienna, and the Galerie Flechtheim, Berlin.
July –
First issue of G (ed. Hans Richter). Last issue May 1926.
December
– Hausmann and Schwitters stage a MERZ-Matinee in Hanover.
1924 November – Grosz exhibits in the Galerie Joseph Billet,
Paris.
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