Hugo Ball

Born on February 22nd, 1886 in Pirmasens (Germany) - Died on September 14th, 1927 with Sant' Abbondio (Swiss).
Writer and poet Hobby-horse.

Biography

Childhood within an enthusiastic and strict catholic family dominated by the severe faith of the mother. Following a nervous breakdown, the young person Hugo Ball is authorized to leave a station of apprentice in a leather factory to be registered at the university of Munich. He studies there the German literature, philosophy and the history. Seeking a " direction philosophique" in its life, it is interested in Russian anarchism, the incipient psychoanalysis, the Hindu mystic.

In 1910, it enters to the school of dramatic art of max Reinhardt, then works as director and manager of theater. He writes parts, poems and articles for newspapers expressionnists . He meets a writer expressionnist Hans Leybold with whom he writes signed poems of the pseudonym ha Hu Baley . In 1913, it meets the painter Vassili Kandinsky, leader of the group expressionnist Der Blaue Reiter and a medical student Richard Huelsenbeck.

In 1914, Hugo Ball is reformed military service for health reason. In the last months of the same year, it goes, with personal capacity, on the face to Belgium. On its return, it leaves Munich for Berlin and the theater for political philosophy. He discovers the writings of the anarchists Petr Kropotkine and Mikhaïl Bakounine on which he begins the writing of a book (that he will not complete). He attends the " Coffee of Westens" and meets young poets such as Johannes Becher, Georg Heym, Klabund. It finds Richard Huelsenbeck there and, together, they organize demonstrations against the war and in remembering the poets killed with the combat of which his/her friend Hans Leybold.

At the time of a stay in Munich, it becomes acquainted with a singer of cabaret, Emmy Hennings. They leave Berlin for Zurich and work for companies of théâtre.
February 5th, 1916 marks the birth of the movement Dada by the grace of the poets Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara and of the painters Jean Arp, Marcel Janco, Sophie Taeuber and a page of dictionary taken randomly. They invest a tavern of Spiegelstrasse, transform it into coffee literary and artistic and rename it " Cabaret Voltaire ". Under cover to want to perpetuate the Berliner and Parisian tradition cabarets of pre-war period to gain the confidence of the owner of the places, Hugo Ball posts other more radical ambitions, a spirit of negation and derision: voluntary destruction of the language, creation of another noncorrupted language by conventions, invention of sound poetry and onomatopoeical at the same time stressed and shouted in new getups such this costume out of rigid and silver plated paperboard appearing a phallus in érection.
The program of the evening of July 17th, 1916 announces, inter alia, the collective and simultaneous participation of Ball, Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara for a poem " simultan" “ the Fever puérpérale ” and of the “ negro Songs ”, a presentation of masks carried out by Janco accompanying a continuation by poems " mouvementique" , " bruitiste" and concert of vowels, and finally, “ Der Drei Hobby-horse-Tänze ” on a music of Hugo Ball.
" What we call Dada is a set of insane in the vacuum, which implied all the major problems a such gesture of gladiator; a play with poor remainders execution of morality prétendue" , letter with Huelsenbeck of November 28th, 1916.
In March 1917, with the collaboration of Tristan Tzara and Huelsenbeck, it opens the Gallery Dada which proposes conferences, spectacles and visits of exposures in teaching matter. It did not join Tzara on the ambition to widen Dada in a vast international movement.

It leaves Zurich for Bern in May 1917 and breaks definitively with the dadaïstes for a journalistic activity (collaboration with " Die Freie Zeitung" (The free Newspaper)) and policy. Taking again a work started in 1915, it publishes “ Critique German intelligentsia ” against nationalist enthusiasm and Prussian militarism.

In 1920, he marries Emmy Hennings and withdraws himself in a Swiss village. Consequently, it is not interested any more that in the study of Christianity of the beginnings and prepares a life of the saints of V° and VI° centuries. In 1927, it publishes its diary of the period 1910-1921 pennies the title “ the escape out of time ”.

Works

“ Karawane ”, poem, 1917
“ Flametti ”, novel, 1918
“ Zur Kritik der Deutschen Intelligenz (Critical of German intelligentsia) ”, 1919
“ Tenderenda, der Phantast ”, collection of poems, 1911-1922
“ Die Flucht aus der Zeit (the Escape out of time) ”, 1927

Random links: