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theatre research international vol. 28 | no. 2 | pp143156 International Federation for Theatre Research 2003 Printed in the United Kingdom DOI:10.1017/S0307883303001020

Serious Fun: Berlin Dadas Tactical Engagement with German National Narration
leigh clemons

German Dada, particularly the Berlin performance practices of George Grosz and Richard H ulsenbeck, shifted the eternal history of the German Reich into the immediacy and annihilation of the postwar Berlin environment. These practitioners formed their social and political opinions into Dadas own German national narrative. The Weimar government responded by classifying Dada as obscene, putting its members on trial, and judging its practices to be detrimental to the reforming German nation. The issues raised by Berlin Dadas performance practices formed the basis for Berlin Dadas future historical treatment by its own members, who sought to establish the German cells primacy as both the singular heir to Hugo Balls Cabaret Voltaire and the only legitimate mode of Dada expression in Weimar Germany.

In 1921, the government of the Weimar Republic brought charges against several participants in Berlins First International Dada Fair (Erste Internationale DadaMesse) of 1920, including George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde, and Johannes Baader. The governments contention was that several of the exhibits in the fair, including the uniformed efgy of a Prussian ofcer with the head of a pig, denigrated the dignity of the Reichs armed forces: The Dada exhibition had set up a couple of gures of fun aimed at the gods of Prussia, its ofcers . . . which showed caricatural faces of such unprecedented brutality that the German army and its members felt themselves insulted.1 Although the other defendants were acquitted, Grosz was ned 300 dm and Herzfelde 600 dm for participation in the exhibition.2 Satirist Kurt Tucholsky, a great admirer of Grosz and Dada, believed that all the hullabaloo surrounding the exhibits only proved that the portraits were a bitingly accurate portrayal of Weimar society. Following the verdict, he wrote:
It will be observed that these proceedings have nothing to do with justice . . . We no longer have any condence in the penal justice of the country. In all such cases what is punished is not crime. What is punished, knowingly and consciously, is opinion.3

Opinion in this case was not merely punished, it was evaluated and silenced as part of a national narrative process designed to safeguard the mythic German values which had supported the war, values which the defeat of the empire and establishment of the socialist Weimar Republic placed in jeopardy from foreign elements. (A Captain Matth ai, who it was widely believed visited the Dada exhibition under orders from German military intelligence, thought Groszs portfolio of drawings entitled Gott mit

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uns was especially offensive because he observed that two foreigners attending the Dada Fair found it delightful.)4 The Dada Fair trial was not only instrumental in shaping Groszs future dealings with governmental institutions and other agents of national narration, it also positioned Dada as an ofcial subject within the narrative, by classifying it, putting it on trial, and judging its practices to be detrimental to the image of the German nation. The issues raised by Berlin Dadas performance practices, and the tactics by which Dadas practitioners formed these opinions into Dadas own German national narrative, shifted the eternal history of the German Reich into the immediacy and annihilation of the post-war Berlin environment. When Tucholsky wrote that what is punished, knowingly and consciously, is opinion, he could have said that what was punished was Dadas opinion of Germanys present circumstances, an opinion which directly conicted with the mythic narrative of the German nation. In his essay, DissemiNation, Homi K. Bhabha writes that nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the minds eye.5 Bhabha characterized national narration as a space created by the opening up of the pedagogical and the performative6 in which societies construct a mythic past within the space of the present. He speaks of the national narrative process, and of studying the nation through its narrative address, as a way of explicating the Janus-faced ambivalence of language in the construction of the Janus-faced discourse of the nation.7 Nations are always already in the process of constructing an eternal history while, simultaneously, those groups marginalized by or excluded from this history are engaging with it, probing its boundaries and spaces, and shifting the construction of the narrative whenever possible. These constructions of the past, however, are not xed and immutable; rather, it is in constant ux as competing forces vie to have their version of the national narrative legitimated as part of the nations history or identity. In the process of national narrative formation, there exists a split between the simultaneous functions of the pedagogical and performative in constructing the narrative of the nation. The pedagogical is a continuist, accumulative temporality and the performative is a repetitious, recursive strategy, each of which undercuts the function of the other in nation narration.8 The former focuses on the maintenance of ancient heroes, myths, and traditions to create and foster a sense of national history or identity for the people of the nation. The latter operates within the gaps created by these sanctioned discursive formations, engaging with certain aspects of those events in order to contest their interpretation and invert their meanings. Thus, the process of national narration is active and, more importantly, grounded in the representational practices of multivalent groups within a diverse cultural eld. The narration of Germany as a nation utilized multivalent strategies which focused on the production and dissemination of certain types of knowledge, often to the occlusion or erasure of other types. Its pedagogy created a history by grounding its discourses within the representation of seemingly xed, immutable symbols such as Blut , Boden, Volk , or Bildung .9 The performative sites actively disputed these historiographic constructs, attempting to redene their scope and replace them with practices which depict spaces not contained in the pedagogical narrative. Yet each practice contained within these elds is intrinsic to the overall discourse of the nation. It produces a narrative that is in

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constant motion, shifting and changing within the discursive practices of the moment, degenerating and regenerating itself with each new move. What follows is an analysis of some of the Dada performance practices which constituted those narrative shifts, as well as attempts by members of the Berlin cell (namely Richard H ulsenbeck) to craft a distinctly German Dada narrative from these myriad practices once Dada had lost its power to engage performatively within the milieu of Weimar Berlin.
The times are ready for Dada. They will rise with Dada and fall with Dada.10

If Dada was indeed based in the spirit of the time, its instability, chaos, and antagonism were reections of the events of that time. The Kaisers abdication and the seizure of power by workers and soldiers councils in November 1918 paved the way for the establishment of a new form of German government, a necessary step in peace negotiations with the victorious Allied powers. The simplicity of this previous sentence belies the myriad of manuverings, ploys, counter-ploys, reversals, conicts, and bloody clashes which make up the early months of the Weimar Republic.11 It is within this complex eld of relations that the antagonistic practices of Dada came into being. It is somewhat difcult to think of Dada as a national movement. It rst appeared in the neutral wartime geography of Zurich, and aesthetic practices bearing the name dada appeared in some form throughout most countries in Europe and in America during the 1910s and 1920s. The Zurich Dadaists, most of whom were escaping military service, came from a multitude of countries. Finally, the artists involved in various forms of Dada focused, in many instances, on the creation of non-representational works and the destruction of traditional forms of artistic expression (which were often linked to a nations identity through their perpetuation in art academies and public buildings). Within this framework, Dada ranked as one of the movements primarily against exclusionist national narratives, particularly those of the type that spawned the First World War. Yet Dada exhibited some connections with practices of national narration, even when it was trying to subvert such notions. Within each specic geographical location in which it ourished, Dada achieved a form particular to its surroundings, drawing on the eld of national relations of which it was a part. Each Dada cell developed a distinct set of regionalized practices, unique and specic to the participants own interpretation of Dada.12 While the essence of German Dada is usually associated with Berlin, that city was in fact but one of many Dada sites in Germany. In addition to cells in Berlin and Cologne, as well as Schwitters MERZ-art in Hanover, German Dadaists travelled extensively throughout Germany and Eastern Europe promoting their own brand of Dada. Berlin Dada ared up during the Weimar government and post-war political upheaval, whereas the Dadaists in Cologne had to deal with the spectre of British occupation of the Rhineland. Although German Dada began in Berlin, the Hanover and Cologne cells were not its offshoots but distinct Dada practices in their own right. There were complex interrelationships between the three groups, which sometimes welded together and at other times ripped apart any alliances which they might have formed.

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Yet things German were always a point of reference for early Dada. Hugo Ball, the founder of Dada who left Germany in 1915 never to return,13 often mused over his homeland and its mindset, which had led to the war:
In Germany the will and design are emphasized too much. There is even value attached to being coarse and ungracious, and thus unproductive. And thus one obligates oneself to nobody and nds no sympathy.14

According to Ball, Wilhelm IIs desire to replicate the imperial glory of his grandfathers day ultimately had shattered Germanys potential to embrace the growing cultural internationalism of n-de-si ecle Europe: Once upon a time in the heart of Europe there was a land that seemed to have a perfect breeding ground ready for an unselsh ideology. Germany will never be forgiven for ending this dream.15 Like many of the Berlin Dadaists after him, Ball believed that only a scathing criticism of Germanys militant attitudes could reverse its course down the path towards destruction.16 He wrote that Nietzsche knows a Germanity with a front and a back; with a mask and a true face; a Germanity for the people with God for emperor and fatherland, and a Germanity of scholars and philosophers, who know about the stage setting and the deception, but even then will believe only in pretence and mask even when the German mask falls.17 Inuenced, while living in Munich prior to the war, by Wassily Kandinskys theories on the amalgamation of colour/sound/movement, Ball desired to create a work of total integration the Gesamtkunstwerk in order to achieve, as he put it, a sense of harmony which would save the German people, rather than to engage in any type of social critique:
We Germans are a nation of musicians, full of an unbounded faith in the omnipotence of harmony. That may then serve us as a passport to all kinds of temptations and experiments, to all kinds of boldness and deviation. Whether we begin with major or minor and strike the most daring dissonances, we still believe at the end, in the fugue, the darkest, most brittle discord must give way and yield. It can be said, then, that harmony is the Germans Messiah; it will come to deliver its people from the multiplicity of resounding contradiction.18

To Ball, harmony was a means of saving the soul of the nation by connecting individual souls fractured by the wars effects. This harmony, however, was not to be based in traditional aesthetic rules dissonance ending in consonance, chords, carefully structured sentences, ultimate meanings but instead in tactics of incongruity, diversication, and dissimilarity. Despite their seeming lack of internal cohesion, these disparate parts were bound together by virtue of their presence within the same space, be it sound poetry, odd costumes, chansons, improvised rhythm music, or the pictures hanging on the walls. Through these tactics, Ball and the other Dadaists at the Cabaret Voltaire created a new space of performance in Zurichs liminal neutrality which both shattered the boundaries of resemblance-based aesthetics and condemned the practices which had enticed Germany into war. Zurich Dada was its own form of activism, a performative critique of the effects that Germanys militaristic nationalism had on its inhabitants and neighbours. Ball carried the spiritual abstraction, the harmonious

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integration of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the notion of inner expression away with him into exile. Richard H ulsenbeck brought it home to Berlin. H ulsenbecks forging of the Dada legacy was couched from the beginning in issues of things German. Since Tzara had beaten H ulsenbeck into print with La premi` ere aventure c eleste de M. Antipyrine in July 1916, H ulsenbeck promoted his poems as the rst dadaist ulsenbeck claimed verse in the German language upon their issue later that year.19 H that, while Dada had many forms, his Dada was a distinctly German process:
While the Dadaists of the Allied countries, under the leadership of Tristan Tzara, still make no great distinction between Dadaism and lart abstrait, in Germany, where the psychological background of our type of activity is entirely different from that in Switzerland, France, and Italy, Dada assumed a very denite political character.20

This characterization extended to language, to such a degree that, years later, when he was interviewed in the United States about Berlin Dada, he insisted on speaking German, since in his words, German Dadaists spoke German. Berlin Dada performances ranged from the overtly political to the socially controversial to the ridiculous. Into all of these categories would fall Walter Mehrings puppet play Simply Classical! An Oresteia with a Happy Ending , which opened 8 December 1919 at the Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke) cabaret beneath the Groes Schauspielhaus in tandem with Reinhardts revamped Oresteia.21 On a microcosmic level, the play satirized the goings-on upstairs, with references to actors and special effects in Reinhardts production: Go to Reinhardt when he curses/It is classic how he rehearses/Smoothly runs the Oresteia/All with his machinery.22 It also, however, contained blatant commentary on German political machinations of the past few years, including the war, the armistice, and Dadaist agitation:
Theres no more crown and no more throne, In short, its just not worth a bone. Werefel or Rolland might be your name, But brains wont win you points in this game. If you try hang out with intellectual men, The Dadaists stage a putsch right then.23

Mehrings production was an amalgamation of various theatrical talents, several of which were associated with Berlin Dada. The puppets themselves were designed by George Grosz and constructed by John Hearteld, both of whom were afliated with Dada. The author, Mehring, was also a member of the Berlin cell, and cabaret artist Friedrich Holl ander composed the music. Mehrings version followed the same basic story as Aeschylus: Agamemnon returns home from the war, is dispatched by Clytemnestra in favour of Aegisthus, both of whom in turn are killed by Orestes. The puppets, however, were caricatures of prominent German and Allied political gures: Agamemnon was a Prussian general; Aegisthus was a writer and professional moralist who establishes a democratic government following Agamemnons demise; Orestes wore the uniform of an Attic Freikorps member.24 The Chorus of the Press, which menaces Agammemnon, Clytemnestra, and their paramours in the opening scene, doubles as the Tax Eumenidies

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(whose job it is to ensure that millionaires use the eld road and leave behind their money when exiting the country), and the state court established by Woodrow Apollo of the Fourteen Points which indicts Orestes. The president/god withdraws his leadership, however, and leaves it all to the government, paving the way for Orestes military takeover and advance on the Baltic states which concludes the play.25 The dialogue also mocked recent and current events in German society, referencing the fall of the Empire, the struggles between communism and the Weimar government, and the failure of artistic movements such as expressionism.26 In the opening monologue, the guard laments the onset of the new times, in which women are liberated, artistic classicism is dead, and The laurel wreath one gets today second hand/So to speak from the Empires old stores/Sold underhand at the Alexanderplatz/With all the wigs and costumes.27 Like most Dada evenings, the performance blended diverse media, forms, and spaces; it also destroyed traditional representative boundaries through the manipulation of its subject matter. Electra, dressed as a Salvation Army worker, carried with her on the stage a phonograph playing popular music of the day, and accompanied Henny Pythia in her song during the lm interlude following the death of Aegisthus. Unlike most of the Berlin Dada soir ees, however, the show at the Schall und Rauch concentrated on the satirical aspects of the performance venue, rooms formerly used as animal-holding pens when the Groes Schauspielhaus was a circus, and surrounding social circumstances instead of attempting direct audience agitation. Simply Classical! deconstructed both a traditional Berlin performance space, the Schauspielhaus, and contemporary Berlin political space within the same frame of reference, merging satire of recent cultural trends with a self-reexive critique of the war and revolution. The text and its manner of presentation critiqued the national myths of Germany put forward by both the Left and the Right. Yet even when their works appeared in a more formalized cabaret atmosphere, Dadaists like Mehring wasted no opportunity to satirize the very conventions of the venue in which they were operating. A January 1920 programme at the Schall und Rauch included his antichanson Das kesse Lied (The Saucy Song), in which Mehring made fun not only of the chanson format, with its endlessly repeated refrain, but also of the current political content of most postwar cabaret songs: But the refrain the refrain the refrain/Oh, miss, there is something about Noske in it/And something about making love.28 Other Berlin Dada events utilized disharmony and provocation in order to solicit direct audience reaction, including the harassment and criticism of the staid postwar remnants of imperial culture. The ability to incite the audience to activity, however negative, was central to Berlin Dadas process. H ulsenbeck wrote that Dada engages in a kind of anti-cultural propaganda, out of honesty, out of loathing, out of profoundest disgust at the lofty airs put on by the conrmed cultural bourgeoisie.29 In order to respond to accusations or critiques of their actions by members of the press, Berlin Dada also manipulated the press for its own ends, by planting fake announcements in local newspapers and publishing manifestos which were a mixture of the humorous and the critical. Dadas use of photomontage physically manipulated the end result of the press the published newspaper or magazine to serve Dadas aims. The

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use of photomontage allowed members of Berlin Dada to construct images of Weimar society that both employed the simulated images generated by contemporary materials and deconstructed their meanings. Bodies were constructed from an amalgamation of parts from various photographs, as well as pictures of bicycles, machine parts, and artfully snipped and glued pieces of text. Hannah H ochs giant photomontage Cut With the Kitchen Knife superimposes images of political gures, machines, artists (including her own portrait), and phrases within an immense artistic space (for the time). The juxtaposition of politics and bathing-suited bodies, of machines and Dada-like phrases, all created from an ephemeral, easily-destroyed source newspapers and magazines abolished the sense of the German past even as it articulated the multivalent concerns of Berlins present.30 The controversial First International Dada Fair art exhibit was another example of Dadas tactical engagement with the cultural institutions of Weimar Germany, as well as an example of the impact such practices had on Weimar society. In addition to the Prussian Archangel (the pig in the ofcers uniform), the exhibit included Groszs Germany, A Winters Tale (a painting which critiqued the collusion between the military, big business, and the socialist government) photomontages by Hausmann and Hannah H och (including Cut With The Kitchen Knife ), as well as paintings by Arp and Dix, and H och, and typographical works magazine and newspaper covers by members of the group. Each of these works deconstructed traditional German conceptions of history, politics, and art, preventing their spread within the postwar Berlin environment and opening the eld for newer, more relevant representational practices. However, Dadas deconstructive tactics were so continually active, so all-pervasive that they left no space in which any form of representation, German or otherwise, could be reformed and solidied. This created, in effect, a eld of empty play devoid of any referents or relations.31 It made it difcult for anyone, group members included, to dene exactly what constituted a Dada moment. When facing an audience, H ulsenbeck claimed that not even the Dadaists always knew what Dada was all about:
Ladies and gentlemen my politesse was emphatic, my voice formal if you think we have come here to sing, or play, or recite something, then you are victims of an unfortunate error . . . The initial silence was followed by more or less noisy protests. People called out that they wanted to see Dada. Dada is nothing, I said. We ourselves dont know what Dada is . . . 32

Different members of the cell had their own opinions about what did, or did not, make an event part of Dada. H ulsenbeck considered a Dada evening successful when we annoyed and bewildered our audiences, who then responded in the moment with direct (often physical) participation:
In Prague, we had several thousand raging spectators. It was like the outbreak of a revolution, the mob was crying havoc. People were shouting for swords, chair legs and re extinguishers. It was the raucous bellow of a furious mass . . . Sometimes (chiey in smaller auditoriums) we managed to calm the people down; but sometimes, for instance, in Leipzig and Prague, the whole affair instantly turned into a brawl.33

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Conversely, commercially popular Dada evenings, or those in which the audience members were able to organize and classify what they saw within a frame of reference, occurred when Dada failed to deliver its message. An event staged at the Tribune Theater in Berlin on 7 December 1919 was a triumph with both the audience and the press, and the resulting positive enthusiasm so unnerved the Dadaists that they immediately accepted an invitation by the Tribune for a repeat performance, in which they changed the entire format of the presentation. The critical reaction to the second show was considerably more pleasing to the Dadaists.34 Raoul Hausmann related a similar occurrence in his account of a Dadatour to Dresden in 1920. After much hullabaloo, including verbal and physical attacks by the audience,
we experienced a little joy: the poet Baron von L ucken had climbed up on the stage and shouted back to the audience, I nd Dada wonderful, and this has been a very lovely evening! Therefore, I will now donate to the Dadas all the money that I have on me ve Marks.35

While the show of support and the money were welcome, the evening came to an end soon after, since, Hausmann declared, this Dada could no longer be Superdada. Von L uckens donation had validated the performance, provided a frame of reference for the events on stage, and quieted the rowdy audience, which soon dispersed. While many of its creators may not have been certain about what Dada was , they harboured strong opinions as to what it was not . In his writings, H ulsenbeck was adamant about those practices which did not constitute German Dada, namely anything which abstracted or obfuscated political or social commentary. Kurt Schwitters, briey afliated with Waldens Expressionist group Der Sturm, approached H ulsenbeck and Hausmann in Berlin about joining their cell, but the former spurned Schwitters work as too abstract. He later singled Schwitters out for direct criticism in the Dada Almanac : Dada fundamentally and emphatically rejects such works as the famous Anna Blume ulsenbeck wrote by Mr Kurt Schwitters.36 In his memoirs, H
The infamous Anna Blume struck me as a typical product of an idealism made dainty by madness. These poems had neither cantalina nor anything of the art of lamentation that Ball speaks about . . . It was the sort of comical banality one nds at small-town sewing bees.37

Schwitters, on the other hand, saw H ulsenbecks Dada as too politically oriented:
H ulsendadaism is oriented towards politics and against art and against culture. I am tolerant and allow every man his own view of the world, but I am compelled to state that such an outlook is alien to Merz. As a matter of principal, Merz aims only at art, because no man can serve two masters.38

In response to H ulsenbecks rejection, Schwitters had founded his own movement, MERZ. MERZ shared tactical similarities with Berlin Dada; Schwitters utilized photomontage, collage, manifestos, techniques of disruption, and other approaches favoured by H ulsenbeck and Hausmann. Yet he believed that a work of art was an interior

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totality, a process composed of disparate parts which, through their deconstruction and juxtaposition, created a new sense of harmony:
I demand the total combination of all artistic forces to achieve the total work of art. I demand the equality in principal of all materials . . . take everything from the emperors screw to a ne ladys hairnet, in each case of a size in conformity with the work . . . I demand unity in the forming of space. I demand unity in the molding of time.39

Like Kandinsky and Ball, Schwitters believed that the penultimate expression of MERZ principles would occur in performance, where the active participation of audience and performers would bring about cultural regeneration. He called for the immediate establishment of an international experimental stage for the working out of the MERZ total work of art, [and] the establishment of MERZ theatres in every sizable town . . . (Children Half-Price).40 MERZ also extended into architectural representation. Schwitters MERZ-Bau, an ongoing three-dimensional structure was made of found materials including train tickets, programmes, wire, cancelled stamps, cardboard, spools, doorknobs, playing cards, etc.41 By focusing on creation of a unied, complete work by utilizing objects and forms in ways which broke down and negated their original function, Schwitters ideas more closely mirrored the abstraction found in Balls work in Zurich, and the expressionist ideas of Walden and Der Sturm. He transformed the throwaway bits of German society into the artistic focal point by placing them on display. Also, by demanding a specically international focus to his performance experiments, he both distanced himself from the culturally based performances of German Berlin Dada, and offered a critique of Dadas implicit debts to German culture. Another individual whose practices, according to H ulsenbeck, lay outside the realm of Dada was Johannes Baader, the Oberdada. Baader was a very active Dadaist. In addition to his participation in the First International Dada Fair and the resulting trial, he also disrupted both cathedral services and the rst meeting of the Weimar Assembly with yers and speeches, and also led Dada tours to Eastern Europe. One famous story has him abandoning H ulsenbeck and Hausmann in front of an unruly crowd in Prague in 1920, when he ed with the manuscripts and the till, leaving the other two men to placate the audience.42 Since Baader had been certied insane in 1917,43 H ulsenbeck (himself a trained psychiatrist) always cast him as the victim of a peculiar mental afiction, whose spurious actions served only to compromise the seriousness of Dadas intentions:
Baader . . . was a kind of itinerant preacher . . . , a mixture of Anabaptist and circus owner. While we wavered between inhibition and the lack thereof, Baader was imbued with psychotic exhibitionism and impulsiveness, I still cant gure out whether he was ghting for a renewal of Christianity, an improvement in public schooling, or dada.44

Baader himself repudiated such claims in the papers. Following his 17 November 1918 disruption of church services at Berlins main cathedral, he responded to allegations and

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misrepresentations of his actions by the press with the following statement in the Berliner Tageblatt :
If you read the text of my speech, which is in your possession, it becomes quite clear that the words I spoke yesterday have an entirely different meaning from that imputed to them by the Berliner Morgenzeitung today. The other assertion in the papers, according to which a mentally ill person was involved, seems to me to be one of the dirty tricks employed nowadays when anyone becomes troublesome.45

H ulsenbecks early training as a psychiatrist permitted him to apply the self-same categories and labels to Baaders work that the Berlin public was applying to Dada. By classifying Baader as insane and insisting that his performances were not part of Berlin Dada, H ulsenbeck kept open avenues of movement for his own tactical engagements with German culture and society. During the Weimar era, Berlin Dada was a process of experience, existing in the moment, directly concerned with stimulating the spectators into instantaneous response. Its tactics created direct social and cultural references specic to the performative moment in which a particular event was operating: references to Noske, the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and other political scandals, the rise and continued power of the Freikorps, etc. Dada performed a German national narrative which demanded focus on the present and did not allow for continual dwelling on a nostalgic, idealized past. It challenged not only what audiences saw but also the manner in which it was presented. Deconstruction of traditional aesthetics left the realm of ephemeral abstraction and became practical demolition, the creation of an art that ulsenbeck wrote in 1918, brands the essence of life into our esh.46 As H
I would like to say that Dada belongs on the stage and in the street, where the noise of the wheels and the automobile horns surround it. Everything in it breaks forth into life; it abjures quiet. It is an international concern, and the Dadaists are convinced that, in the foreseeable future, artistic opinions in all parts of the world will go in for our point of view.47

The practices of abstraction and diversity in which H ulsenbeck had participated in Zurich now acquired direct, practical applications. By poking fun at the social and cultural icons of Berlin society, Berlin Dada not only attempted to point up their shortcomings but also to break down the demarcations between frivolity and serious business, both in art and politics. Some of the Dadas most scathing political indictments appeared swaddled in the bandages of humour: the efgy of a Prussian ofcer with the head of a pig, created by Hearteld and Grosz and hung from the ceiling at the First International Dada Fair; Groszs caricature drawings, including Germany, A Winters Tale (a title borrowed from Heine); and Mehrings plays Simply Classical! and Der Kaufmann von Berlin. Yet Dada also excelled at nonsense for its own sake, by creating irreconcilable works designed to shatter the boundaries between art and inanity. More often than not, their own works fell into the latter category, since those evaluating them followed the artistic precepts of old. By incorporating modern images, fears, and ideals into incongruous performative and visual spaces of representation, Dada was able to make them seem trivial and foreign.

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Art and cultural critics realized the potential of Dadas performative national narrative. Most were in agreement that Dada was more than a simple mode of artistic expression:
Dada is thus not an art movement; it is the conrmation of a feeling of independence, a distrust of society, of everything which smacks of the herd, it is the protest against the development of humanity along the Chinese model, against its transformation from a wild beast to a tame pet of blue-eyed gentleness.48

Yet even those critics who saw potential in Dadas ideas were often critical of its tactics, nding them overbearing and primitive. Theatre critic Alfred Kerr wrote that the aim of Dada is good: fun with a world-view. But the world-view alone doesnt cover up the decient strength of the fun.49 Even Tucholsky, a supporter of the Dadaists, admitted that Dadas practices brought out a supercilious tone in its critics: The comical dolls in the [Dada] exhibition were regarded as practical jokes brought on by beer drinking.50 By relegating Dada to the category of serious fun it was easier for irate critics, enraged audiences and mystied supporters to isolate it as a subject and dismiss it, thereby rendering its tactical engagements impotent. When Dada did manage to evade the impact of these critiques, German social and political institutions did not hesitate to bring out the heavy artillery, as in the trial stemming from the First International Dada Fair. As Dada lost its ability to manuvre within the postwar Berlin landscape, H ulsenbeck set out to dene Dadas parameters from within the cell, both for the benet of the Weimar public and for posterity. Drawing on the authority of the medical institution invested in him as a psychiatrist, H ulsenbeck utilized German national narrative procedures in order to demarcate Berlin Dada from other Dada cells in Europe and its Zurich roots. His attempts to control the history of Dada and dene whose particular practices fell within the purview of DADA, as well as his ongoing debates with Tzara, Schwitters, and Baader are indicative of more macroscopic procedures of national narration. H ulsenbeck wished to dene not only Dada, but German Dada as a direct font sprung from the well of Hugo Ball and Zurichs Cabaret Voltaire, making the Berlin Dadaists the descendants and heirs apparent to the mantle of Dada, while more abstract or frivolous forms of Dada were missing the point. Balls seemingly unremitting concern with Germany in his diaries helped to shape H ulsenbecks debate into a national one, particularly in the wake of the German defeat in 1918. Berlin Dadas tactical engagements with German society combined audience agitation with the creation of new artistic representational practices designed to alter the relationship between the performer and his work. Its practices took the abstract expression of the individuals soul and merged it with the demands of the present moment. For the Dadaists, art did not exist in a vacuum lled with a pedagogical continuum of German narrative structures, but rather engaged with society in a performative process, venting the rage and frustration of those persons critical of German policy. It repudiated traditional perceptions of events and searched for new modes of seeing within them. The use of images symbolic of the old system and contemporary materials placed the Dadaist critique in the present moment of German time, but also

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abstracted it into non-realistic pictures that called the validity of the objects being used into question. Through their satirical and critical artworks, the Berlin Dadaists deconstructed the lingering values and structures of the German Empire which prohibited real social change during the early years of the Weimar Republic. Their new forms of performance, from Balls and H ulsenbecks sound poems to Hausmanns dance-texts to Schwitters MERZ-Bau, created a new aesthetic space which regenerated German art, building on the ruins of language and refuse of the streets left behind by war and defeat.

NOTES

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12

13

14

Kurt Tucholsky, quoted in Marc Dachy, The Dada Movement, 19151923 (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), p. 110. Beth Irwin Lewis, George Grosz : Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), p. 218. Tucholsky, quoted in Dachy, Dada Movement , p. 110. Lewis, George Grosz , p. 216. Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 1. Ibid., p. 305. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 297. For more on these concepts, see, among others, James J. Sheehan, German History, 17701866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 204, 36875; Gerhard Masur, Imperial Berlin (New York: Dorset, 1970), pp. 32, 345; Alan Menhennet, Order and Freedom: Literature and Society in Germany from 1720 to 1805 (London: Weidenfeld, 1973), pp. 502; and George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Schocken, 1981), chapters 1 and 3. Richard H ulsenbeck, ed., Introduction, Dada Almanac (Berlin, 1920; New York: Atlas Press, 1993), p. 14. There are many excellent texts which discuss and analyse the formation of the Weimar Republic and its fteen-year lifespan. Among them are Helmut Heiber, Die Republik von Weimar/The Weimar Republic (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1966; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993); Eberhard Kolb, Die Weimarer Republik/The Weimar Republic (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1984; Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1988); A. J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler , 2nd edn (New York: St Martins Press, 1968); and most recently Detlev J. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik/The Weimar Republic (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987; New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). For a specic account of Prussias role in the early Weimar years see Deitrich Orlow, Weimar Prussia, 19181925: The Unlikely Rock of Democracy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986). The Georgian Dada troupe H2 SO4 , for example, clung more closely to the practices of Malevichs Constructivism and the work of the Russian Cubo-Futurists, avoiding the direct political commentary and the total abstraction common to other forms of Dada in Germany and France but ideologically dangerous in the Soviet Union. For more information on the Georgians, see John E. Bowlt, H2SO4: Dada in Russia, in Stephen C. Foster, ed., Dada/Dimensions (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985), pp. 22148; for a more general overview of Dada in Russia, see Andrei B. Nakov, (Da)Da=Njet, Dada Ruland, in Eberhard Roters and Hanne Bergius, eds., Dada in Europe: Werke und Dokumente (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1977), pp. 3/963/100. Ball had volunteered for military service at the outbreak of the war, but was rejected for health reasons. He sneaked to the front anyway, and recoiled after his rst taste of the horrors of modern warfare. See John Eldereld, Introduction, in Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), p. xviii. Ball, Flight , pp. 80, 121.

clemons Serious Fun: Berlin Dadas Tactical Engagement with German National Narration 155
15 16 Ibid., p. 27. It was during his time in Switzerland that he wrote Kritik zur deutschen Intelligenz , an assessment of German culture which included his indictment of Prussian militarism. See Eldereld, Introduction, p. xix). Ball, Flight , p. 121. Ibid., p. 37. Richard H ulsenbeck, Dada siegt! Ein Bilanz und Geschichte des Dadaismus (Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1920), p. 21. Richard H ulsenbeck, Ein Avant Dada, in Robert Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology , 2nd edition 1951 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981), p. 24. John Willett, The Theatre of the Weimar Republic (New York: Holmes, 1988), p. 76. Walter Mehring, Simply Classical! An Oresteia with a Happy Ending , translated by Henry Marx, in Mel Gordon, ed., Dada Performance (New York: PAJ, 1987), p. 71. Walter Mehring, quoted in Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 143. Mehring, Classical! , in Gordon, Dada, p. 66. Ibid., pp. 779. The entire production was part of a larger cabaret evening focused on political criticism staged at the Schall und Rauch. Other events featured in the performance included a short animated lm depicting a day in the life of Reich President Ebert, and the recitation of satirical political verses written by Mehring and Kurt Tucholsky, the latter under one of his pseudonyms, Theobald Tiger. See Andrew DeShong, The Theatrical Designs of George Grosz (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982), p. 19. Mehring, Classical! , in Gordon, Dada, p. 67. Walter Mehring, Das kesse Lied, Das Politische Cabaret : Chansons Songs Couplets (Dresden: Rudolph K ummerer, 1920), pp. 402. H ulsenbeck, ed., Introduction, Almanac , p. 11. There has been a growth of interest in the works of Hannah H och, especially her Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Epoch of Germany (191920), since she was one of the few women directly involved in Dada. For more information on H ochs work, see the exhibition catalogue, Maria Makela and Peter Boswell, eds., The Photomontages of Hannah H och (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1996). Within such a framework of continually deconstructed representation, one can seek only closure, or the circular limit within which the repetition of difference innitely repeats itself . . . [in other words,] its playing space. See, Jacques Derrida, The Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation, Writing and Difference , translated and introduced by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 250. Richard H ulsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer , translated by Joachim Neugroschel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 68. Ibid., pp. 68, 70. The events are described by Hausmann in a letter to Georges Hugnet, cited in Dictionnaire du dadaisme, 19161922 (Paris: Jean-Claude Simoen, 1976), pp. 2212. Hausmann talks of a riot among the patrons and the performers eeing the scene. Raoul Hausmann, Dadatour, in Gordon, Dada, p. 88. H ulsenbeck, ed., Introduction, Almanac , p. 14. H ulsenbeck, Drummer , p. 64. Even decades later, H ulsenbeck never considered any of Schwitters practices indicative of Dada although he claimed to have great esteem for Schwitters as an artist. Werner Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters (New York: Abrams, 1967), p. 46. Kurt Schwitters, To All the Theatres of the World I Demand the MERZ-Stage, in Gordon, Dada, pp. 99100.

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

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40 41 42 43 Schwitters, MERZ, pp. 1001. John D. Erickson, Dada: Performance, Poetry and Art (Boston: Twayne, 1984), p. 49. Ibid., p. 41. Baader apparently undertook a campaign against Wilhelm II and his Prussian generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff that resulted in his incarceration in an insane asylum, according to Erickson (Dada Performance , p. 41). Stephen Foster states that Baaders surprisingly skillful execution of the role of Dadas fool was made easier by the legal immunity he had won by the 1917 certication of his insanity. See Foster, ed., Dada/Dimensions , p. 252. Also, Marc Dachy states that he carried on him, like a safe-conduct, the certicate issued by the German military authorities stating that he was not responsible for his acts! The President of the League of Intertelluric Superdadaist Nations was in the position of a monarch standing beyond the reach of civil liability. See Dachy, Dada Movement , p. 109. H ulsenbeck, Drummer , p. 67. Baader, quoted in Dachy, Dada Movement , p. 99. H ulsenbeck, ed., Expressionism, Almanac , p. 45. Richard H ulsenbeck, Der Dadaismus (1918), in Herbert Kapfer, ed., Wozu Dada: Texte, 19161936 (Giessen: Anabus, 1994), p. 25. Hulsenbeck later traced the beginnings of all German political theatrical expression in Weimar to Dada; Brecht, Piscator, Mehring all of their practices were indebted, he claimed, to Dadas inuence. See H ulsenbeck, Drummer , pp. 713. Berliner Mittagszeitung (6 May 1919); quoted in H ulsenbeck, ed., Almanac , p. 50. Alfred Kerr, Dada: Tribune (1 Dezember 1919), in Hugo Fetting, ed., Mit Scheufe und Harfe: Theaterkritiken aus drei Jahrzehnten (Berlin: Severin und Siedler, 1981), p. 170. Tucholsky, quoted in Dachy, Dada Movement , p. 110.

44 45 46 47

48 49 50

leigh clemons is Assistant Professor of Theatre History, Theory and Criticism, and Dramatic Literature in the Department of Theatre at Louisiana State University. She has published articles and reviews in Theatre Survey, Theatre History Studies, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Journal, Theatre Studies, and Theatre Forum. Her major research interest lies in the relationship between theatre and national identity in early twentieth-century Germany, the state of Texas, and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.