Page 44 - Studio International - April 1971

Dada especially indulged in pranks, which were retrograde attitude was the internal circumstance intransigent existence, for he paid attention to
sometimes by chance well in the line of rebellion. for the death of Dada. nothing but the unwinding of his cellular clock
Thus he went by himself to the National `Whoever eats of Dada without being dada and nothing or nobody could do anything to
Assembly at Weimar where he interrupted the shall die of it.' make him abandon his 'tricks', forever fraught
session, demanding the replacement of the And that's that. with lack of constraint.
government by the Dada group, and threw down `To seek the new' does not translate as The 'Journey between the sewing machine
his pamphlet Grüne Leiche which announced the 'épater la bourgeoisie'. and typewriter' executed by Grosz and Mehring
arrival of Ober-Dada on the 'white horse' of the The members of Club Dada were jealous of was clearly very funny, just as was their dialogue
Supreme Arbiter of the Last Judgment and the each other and sometimes indulged in rather between two men behind a screen; but the most
threat that Parliament would be blown up. shabby fights. important demonstrations were those where
This caused an immense scandal which all The Heartfield-Herzfelde brothers and thousands of people, mad with rage, were set on
the press reported and which is preserved in the Mehring adored George Grosz, that pseudo- killing us—for they had understood that Dada
official records. revolutionary. Huelsenbeck adored Huelsenbeck threatened their welfare and their most sacred
This affair may still be regarded today as one and although he produced with me the majority ideas.
of the first 'happenings'. of our dozen demonstrations he came to veer Simply our presence had provoked this
I was always making new projects for the towards the Groszists. danger. At the matinees I gave in Hamburg
soirees, but I was not offended if the other On the other hand, I formed an alliance with Baader it took forty armed soldiers to clear
Dadaists didn't accept them. So much the aside with Baader, who was, unhappily, too the hall. And the soirees in Dresden, Leipzig
worse for them. often obsessed by his religious paranoiac ideas. and Prague were also very disorderly.
Literary concepts were no longer in fashion. The quasi-astronomic constellation of his Everywhere tempers boiled, but we would
Simply by wishing to break conventions one was eccentric constitution made Ober-Dada a remain calm.
bound not to fall into the conventional; this mixture of ordered and at the same time In the spring of 1919 a young Russian joined

8 Raoul Hausmann
Watercolour 1919
26.9 x 17.6 cm
Coll : Marthe Prévot, Limoges
9 Raoul Hausmann
The spirit of our time (Mechanical Head) 1919
Sculpture in wood, leather and metal
10 Raoul Hausmann
ABCD 1923
Collage
39.5 x 26.8 cm
Coll : the artist

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