Page 37 - Studio International - January 1972

This was an evening which for the first time couldn't say it to anybody because they would
produced Negro songs which always ended with have thought I was a terrible liar and bourgeois.
umbah umbah umbah and the whole thing got In the morning he goes to the University and at
into turmoil and was really the first Dada night he makes umbah—umbah. Then one day Mr
evening—the public tried to attack the lecturers Ephraim came to us and he said: 'Ladies and
and the lecturers attacked the public and it gentlemen, I must speak to you in a very serious
ended in complete chaos. That was 1916, during way' —we were quite astonished as there was
the war, in Berlin. Then Hugo Ball all of a nothing serious about the cabaret—and then he
sudden left for Switzerland. I was then with said, 'It is very simple, we are bankrupt. Nobody
some girl that I liked very much and didn't pays the entrance fee. The students break the
follow him immediately, but after a while I chairs and the tables. No person of any respect
followed him there and we met again at the and dignity has ever been seen in this cabaret,
Spiegelgasse. Now we come to the famous it cannot go on this way. We had very bad
Spiegelgasse. In the Spiegelgasse there was a reviews in the Zurich press—somebody said
house which belonged to a Jewish sailor. Now these people are all bums and the best thing
Jewish sailors at this time were rather rare. would be to drive them out of the country.'
Why this sailor had thrown out his anchor at (Simple men like Ephraim are very much
this time in Zurich I don't know. Anyhow, he impressed by what the newspapers say.) 'Now
had bought a house, his activity as a sailor must something,' he said, 'will have to be done to
have been profitable, and he had a cabaret make a regular good cabaret out of it, otherwise
which was extremely boring. We went there, I have to close it.' So we tried to hire a real
Ball and his wife, whom he had married in songstress —that's what he had proposed—who
Berlin; they had gone through a terrible time, could sing these nice little songs, and we put an
they didn't have any money at all, and one night ad in the newspaper and a girl by the name of
he got a kind of a nervous breakdown. He and Madame Lurois came and said she would be
his wife were sitting beside a lake in Zurich and willing to sing in our cabaret for a salary. So one
Ball said to his wife that he couldn't go on. In afternoon on a Sunday I came to Ball's place,
his hand he had a carton which he tried to throw he lived in a very poor place, and we decided
in the lake but his wife prevented him from that Madame Lurois sounded too respectable
doing so as there was something falling out—it and we wanted to give her a new name. So Ball
was a tuxedo. So, she said, all was not lost, they said, 'What name shall we give to her ?' So I took
had a tuxedo, and so Ball was employed as a the Larousse Dictionary and I opened it and
pianist and Emmy, his wife, sang her nice little my fingers came down on the word Dada: so I
songs and they went from one cabaret to another. said 'Ball, I have it, we call her Dada' and he
So then at least they had something to live on. said okay. The funny thing is that this girl
This happened before I came to Zurich. After a never showed up any more. So we were left
while Ball thought of founding a cabaret of his with the word Dada without any person behind
own. With this in mind he came to this Jewish it. So we told Arp, lanko and Tzara about this
sailor Ephraim. He asked him if he could rent and then we became more violent, more critical
his cabaret and do things of his own there. The about Germany and the war, more critical
sailor agreed to it. And I used to sing my Negro about literature—Swiss literature we didn't
songs there. When I came to the cabaret the know—a few literary people came to us now
original Dadaists were already there — Arp, and then, they were nice people, but what they
Ianko, Tzara and Emmy, Ball and myself. They wrote was old-style novels—and we became more
had come together but the whole thing had no and more of a revolutionary, political as well as
real push, there was no unified effort. Emmy literary, group. And Ball, who later on converted
sang songs, I made my umbah—umbahs, and I to mystical catholicism, wrote very famous
had a little stick in my hand which I used all books. One of them has just reappeared in
the time. Ball in his famous book The Flight Germany, The Critique of German Intelligence,
from Time describes me there as a young, in which he is violently addressing himself
aggressive, disagreeable person who always against that type of Germany that we were so
attacks the public, who spits at it, and always as much against, against the classics, against the
his third word says his umbah—umbah. It cannot Hegelian dialectic philosophy, against many
go on in this way, something will have to be other things. And so this book has just appeared
done about it sooner or later if he does not dis-
continue that. So we went on. Our public was
very strange—it consisted of drunken students,
they had a big place there near to our cabaret,
and there they had a kind of an organization.
Anyhow, at the time that the cabaret started
they all came over and all were drunk, and they
attacked us on the stage and we attacked them r Poem from Richard Huelsenbeck's Phantastische
from the stage, and the whole thing ended up in Gebete' (`Fantastic Prayers'), 1916.
a terrible chaos. The meaning of chaos, that's 2 Bookjacket for Dada r, July 1917.
what I'm going to talk about. That went on for a 3 Dr Richard Huelsenbeck, Berlin, 1917.
month or two and I secretly went to the 4 Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and Hans Richter, Zurich,
University and started studying medicine. I 1917-18.

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