A chilly evening in Zurich, Switzerland in the year 1916. It was the home of many ex-patriots amongst all the warring nations: artists from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy and France were represented. Two establishments, two different, but not dissimilar agendas, one common criticism: Künstlerkneipe Voltaire in the backroom of the Holländische Meierei and an unremarkable little Gaststätte, Zum Adler. One for the arts, the other for politics. The one, exceedingly amusing, the other frightfully serious.
Künstlerkneipe Voltaire was founded by the German couple Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings. It was conceived to be a center for artists, to offer performances on a permanent basis and be run collectively by artists, themselves. The two approached Ephraim Jan, the benefactor of the Holländische Meierei and met in the backroom of the establishment one evening. It was the new year, 1916, and Europe was engulfed in a deathly struggle amongst mortal enemies for dominance on the continent, nay, the entire world. So far went their megalomania. It was a conflict, of which the likes the world had never seen; through advancements, technology had leapfrogged human consciousness. These artists discerned all this and were able to express themselves as a sort of beacon of sanity, in an insane epoch.
“Guten Abend,” Ball greeted.
“Gruessli,” Jan returned.
Ball and Hennings took a seat.
“You know why we are here?” Hennings asked, sounding more like a statement than a question.
“Yes.”
“Since you sponsored the Pantagruel last year, we were wondering if you would support our new idea; to hold permanent events for the artistic community,” Ball continued.
“Yes, that was an interesting affair, Pantagruel.”
“Well, we’d like to create a space for artists on a permanent basis. Therefore, as a start, a genesis if you will, we’d like to have our first meeting here. In February.”
“Mm. Sounds like an interesting idea.
“How many people do you expect?”
“Difficult to say, but we should prepare for a few dozen.”
“The backroom’s available. Why not use it for your event?”
“Great idea! We already have a name and we will be contacting the newspaper about a press release. Now we can include an address.”
“Fine.”
So it was that the inauguration of Künstlerkneipe Voltaire, in the Spiegelgasse 1, took place on a wintery evening in Zurich. It was to be a place for modern art: a haven, if you prefer the term, where the two Modernist schools, Cubism from France and Futurism from Italy were welcome.
“Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to Künstlerkneipe Voltaire. Tonight, we shall experience our inaugural performances. But if anyone would like to discuss our intentions and/or goals, please come forward,” Ball greeted the audience.
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“I think we should discuss a few fundamental things,” Marcel Janco, a Romanian artist, now living in Zurich, spoke up authoritatively.
“Very well. What would you like to say?” Ball then replied.
“First of all, let’s get something straight. We are pacifists. We won’t support this madness, this imperialistic war…”
The crowd erupted in a loud applause. After all, many amongst the audience were refugees from the waring nations.
“Dressed up as national fervor and patriotism,” Janco continued after the applause died down.
“That is why modern art must shake things up,” Tristan Tzara, a Romanian-French writer added.
“These elites act as if everything is so rational, so aesthetic, so reasonable. The only way to attack this bourgeois mindset is to shake it up with ‘irrationality.’ The old mindset is a dead end,” Hennings put forth.
A murmur of concurrence could be heard echoing in the room.
“We need to promote reform. A new mindset of reform. Both the old order, which we see going through all the death throes and the new capitalist order, trying to succeed it. We must put a stop to it. Mass consumerism, robber baron capitalism…,” Hennings continued.
“That may be so; some speak of a third way. You know, between the capitalist order and the Communist one,” a member of the audience suggested.
“We are not politicians. We are artists. Our task is to present our realities and expose the hypocrisy of it all,” Tzara said with a wave of his hand toward the rest of the audience.
“It is for the politicians to act in the name of the people,” he continued.
“Exactly. We need to concentrate on art, and we need to focus on randomness of the universe,” Richard Huelsenbeck, a German psychiatrist attracted to the movement supplemented Tzara’s argument.
“What do you mean?” asked Hennings.
“We need a name for our movement. Let’s take out a dictionary and randomly select our name,” Huelsenbeck continued while supplying a French dictionary from the bookshelf.
“And then what?” someone from the audience inquired.
“We’ll take this letter opener and use it to open up a page, while placing it at an angle so the opener chooses the name.”
“Ok, I’m game,” Ball exclaimed.
The audience muttered a sign of their affirmation.
Huelsenbeck proceeded to take the letter opener and slide it into the book, with the body of the blade only a third of the way immersed. He then opened the book quickly, being careful not to move the blade of the letter opener.
There it was! The letter opener was pointing to a word in the French dictionary, ‘Dada,’ a French colloquial term for a hobby horse a child might play with.
Ball took the limelight and began with a poem: it was what came to be known as a ‘Lautgedicht’ or ‘Sound Poem,’ with nonsensical words. Since the pounding of the drum and the abuse of language in 1914 sent the stirring citizens of the modern world into a mass psychosis called ‘war.’ ‘Art’ must respond was their sentiment, a new ‘Kunstverständnis.’
Afterwards, another artist took the stage and added a new poem in this new genre:
Wwwsh, shwwwsh, shwank, spicy sauce.
Hiss, bliss, ssss, the war, a colossal loss?
Rrrrroar, bore, tore, a bridge across.
Meow-meow, bow-wow, blah-blah,
A sound, a syllable, a word,
Burrrr, stir, occur, the herald can be heard.
Alone.
In the same street in Zurich, the Spiegelgasse, a different group of people met.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more famously know as Vladimir Lenin was sitting at a table with his wife and comrade, Nadezhda Krupskaya; lodgers in a small house with all the rest of society’s rejects. Their fellow travelers in fate included people down on their luck, criminals, and prostitutes.
The room included board, and Ilych was happy with his humble surroundings. He didn’t like anything ‘fancy’: not food, not clothing nor surroundings. Krupskaya noticed, their landlady, Frau Prelog, seemed more Viennese than Swiss, for she had acquired her culinary secrets in Vienna, modest as they were. The way the couple liked things.
Ilych was quite content with the company of his fellow lodgers because he found the salt of the Earth more interesting than the average bourgeois or nobleman. He had such contempt for all things of the old order. Nadia was influenced by the work of John Reed’s, ‘Daughter of the Revolution’ about the social plight of prostitutes.
“Ilyich, we must get going. We’re going to miss the beginning of the meeting,” Nadia scolded him.
“You are the keynote speaker, after all,” she said as if he needed reminding.
“Yes, yes. I’ll be ready in just a moment.”
The couple left the house and went around the corner to their local establishment, Zum Adler where meetings with committed revolutionaries of the cause were held. Ilych had been working on a pamphlet which later became a tome on his personal political philosophy of Marxism. This was the first big meeting with the Swiss chapter.
After all the members of the meeting, about forty in total, were ushered into the backroom, the leader of the Swiss workers’ movement, Fritz Platten approached Ilych.
“Gruessli,” Platten greeted Ilych.
“Guten Abend,” Ilych returned.
“We are so happy to welcome you. Please take your seats. I think this is going to be a memorable evening,” Ilych continued.
“We are very interested in hearing what you have to say. My comrades are eager to join you if we can get behind your platform. Most of us have only superficially heard Willi Munzenberg. You know, many of our comrades haven’t really met any of you, emigres.
“Swiss workers, workers of the world, unite. We must stop this imperialist war. I expect a lot of work and support from your movement, for we have all sought refuge here in Switzerland,” Ilych advised.
Ilych took the initiative and began a prepared speech; one he had been working on in the libraries of Zurich.
“Comrades! The European War has been raging for more than a year and a half. Capitalist declarations like the ‘defense of the Fatherland’ and the like are only their deceptions. The war is BETWEEN capitalists, big robber barons, if you may. They strive to find the largest number of peoples to suppress, enslave and exploit. It might sound strange to the Swiss working man, but it is nonetheless a fact in Russia that even some so-called Socialists have joined in with the capitalist robber barons. The same is for the Social Democrats in Germany. They have swallowed all the old order’s lies and support this war of aggression. All the Great Powers have been pursuing a predatory policy. None of the powers have the right to speak of ‘a war in defense of the Fatherland when in fact, they have been plotting to take advantage of weaker nations such as China, Persia, Armenia, and Galicia. It is nothing more than an imperialist, capitalist, predatory war, a war for the oppression of small nations and of the international working class. It is they who are profiting, amounting to billions, squeezing everything out of the appalling suffering of the masses, out of the blood of the proletariat…,” Ilych exclaimed, worked up in a passionate fever.
Ilych continued with his speech for a further three-quarters of an hour. Finally, he came to a crescendo before his summation.
“Rising discontent of the masses, incoming strikes, demonstrations, and protests against this war. This is taking place WORLDWIDE! This is the guarantee that the European War will lead to the proletarian revolution!” Ilych recapitulated.
Nadia couldn’t hear over the grumbling, demonstrating the crowd’s displeasure. She glanced at the group and spotted a lot of frowns and crossed arms in the audience.
“What about the Swiss workers?” a person in the crowd, associated with Platten cried.
“Yeah, that sounds all fine and dandy, but WE are not at war,” another one shouted.
“We came here because we thought you could help us with OUR political battles,” a third person joined in.
“Wait a moment, just one moment. If we don’t internationalize the movement, then nothing will ever get done. We must avoid our parochial interests,” Ilych claimed, responding to the crowd.
“That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t fill the stew pot,” a Swiss member shrieked.
“You don’t know what it’s like with children screaming due to hunger,” another interjected.
“You are just in it for yourselves. You don’t care about the Swiss worker, really,” a third chimed in.
Ilych and Nadia left the meeting, somewhat dismayed, but not dejected. On the contrary, it inspired Ilych to spend much of the time in the libraries of Zurich in order to complete his work.
In the spring, another conference was held, but this time, the Swiss were mostly absent. The more radical views were adopted. Ilych wrote,
”…based on the idea that in order to establish a lasting peace, a capitalist society is unable to provide the conditions for the fulfillment of the proletariat. Therefore, private property must be abolished as well as the national oppression of the proletariat. Hence, the struggle for lasting peace can only be a struggle for the realization of socialism.”
This pamphlet was distributed amongst the waring nations, leading to three German officers and thirty-two soldiers being shot for possessing the revolutionary material in the trenches.
Meanwhile, Ilych and Nadia sat down to another meal at their landlady, Frau Prelog’s place in the Spiegelgasse. They had just read the news about the execution of the German soldiers.
“This proves the German government fears nothing more than the awakened masses,” Nadia said, while putting a hand on Ilych’s shoulder while he quietly and contemplatively ate his soup.
The two movements, one migrated East again while the other, spread North and West. In two years, Ilych and his comrades would take charge of Russia and would sign a peace treaty with the Germans, whom he also met in Switzerland to pre-negotiate the treaty. The new Soviet Union was the first socialist state on planet Earth.
Dada, on the other hand had gone to New York and after 1919, to Berlin, where it found fertile soil to flourish and had its first exhibition in June, 1920. This continued throughout the decade. Until 1933. Then everything changed and the reactionaries to Modernism assumed power, thus forcing most artists to flee and find refuge in other countries.
Just a short 18 months earlier, young men went marching off to war with a song on their lips and a parting glance from young maidens, garnishing them with flowers. This was their traditions which ran full into the modernity of technology; how the dreams of glory turned into a hellish nightmare. For all intents and purposes, the end of the Great War in 1918 marked the true beginning of the 20th century.
At this point in time, however, in 1919, Modernism seemed to have won out; the archaic monarchies of Russia, Germany and Austria had all fallen. Notwithstanding the apparent victory, the vigorous forces of anti-Modernity lay dormant like a leopard waiting for its prey, biding its time patiently until it was ready to pounce again. Earlier in Italy, but eventually also in Germany. In the meantime, it was time for Modernity to celebrate and the following decade reflected this sentiment accordingly.
©2023 Daniel Weiss
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Daniel Weiss …
… was born in Hollywood, CA, graduated as a psychology major from
the University of California, Santa Cruz. Received his PhD at the Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet, Kiel Germany in linguistics. He has been a community organizer, musician and Waldorf teacher.
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