Women of the Dada and Their Timnes

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4589
Date Written:  2016-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21367

Thinking about Dada today, it is astonishing that such a small, obscure group should have become such an influence. It was the laboratory for new ideas and unrestrained, uninhibited, playful activity and their works still find joyful resonance in our hearts.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Emmy Hennings was born in Flensburg on the coast of Germany, the daughter of a seaman. In 1906 she lost her child and was deserted by her husband; she took to the road, joining a traveling theater company. She had another child whom she left with her mother and continued as a vagabond performer appearing in road shows, light opera and nightclubs in Cologne, Budapest, Moscow and beyond.

A poet and writer, she wrote for Pan and Die Aktion, Left and anarchist journals. She and participated in the magazine Revolution which was founded by Hugo Ball and Hans Leybold. She was a star performer in Munich and met Hugo Ball while singing at Cafe Simplizissimus. Hugo Ball knew the gentle and elderly anarchist Gustav Landauer, active there, a fine writer especially notable for his theory of play.

In 1914 she spent time in prison charged with forging passports for those wishing to escape the war. She identified with the pacifists, not like some of the avant-guardists who supported the war. John Elerfield, editor of Flight Out of Time by Hugo Ball, claims she was implicated in a murder. She and Ball left for Zurich in 1915 to escape the madness.