![The poem on the "Anna-Blume-Brunnen" by Max Sauk [de] at the Muhlenberger Markt, Muhlenberg (Hannover) [de]. An Anna Blume Merz-Gedicht von Kurt Schwitters von 1919; Anna-Blume-Brunnen von Max Sauk, 1986, Muhlenberger Markt, Hannover Muhlenberg.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/An_Anna_Blume_Merz-Gedicht_von_Kurt_Schwitters_von_1919%3B_Anna-Blume-Brunnen_von_Max_Sauk%2C_1986%2C_M%C3%BChlenberger_Markt%2C_Hannover_M%C3%BChlenberg.jpg/330px-An_Anna_Blume_Merz-Gedicht_von_Kurt_Schwitters_von_1919%3B_Anna-Blume-Brunnen_von_Max_Sauk%2C_1986%2C_M%C3%BChlenberger_Markt%2C_Hannover_M%C3%BChlenberg.jpg)
"An Anna Blume" ("To Anna Flower" also translated as "To Eve Blossom") is a poem written by the German artist Kurt Schwitters in 1919. It has been described as a parody of a love poem, an emblem of the chaos and madness of the era, and as a harbinger of a new poetic language. [1]
Originally published in Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm magazine in August 1919, the poem made Schwitters famous almost overnight. The poem was parodied in newspapers and magazines, and strongly polarized public opinion. [2]
Whilst Schwitters was never an official member of Berlin Dada, he was closely linked to many members of the group, in particular Raoul Hausmann and Hans Arp, and the poem is written in a dadaist style, using multiple perspectives, fragments of found text, and absurdist elements to mirror the fragmentation of the narrator's emotional state in the throes of love, or of Germany's political, military and economic collapse after the First World War.
"Elements of poetry are letters, syllables, words, sentences. Poetry arises from the interaction of those elements. Meaning is important only if it employed as one such factor. I play off sense against nonsense. I prefer nonsense, but that is a purely personal matter." Kurt Schwitters, 1920 [3]
The poem was the subject of a particularly well-orchestrated publicity campaign. Initially fly-posted in Hannover, then subject to a spoiler in Herwarth Walden's der Sturm magazine asking 'Who really is Anna Blume?' answered with 'Twited brain! He painted the image of the time and didn't know it. Now he kneels before the daisies and prays.' Christof Spengemann [4] The publication of the poem in September, two months after Schwitters' first one-man exhibition at Walden's Gallery in Berlin, cemented his reputation as a leading experimental collagist and poet. The poem became sufficiently famous to gain an English translation in 1922. It also provoked Berlin Dada into responding by exhibiting the effigy The Death Of Anna Blume, by Rudolf Schlichter at the First International Dada Fair, Berlin 1920. Richard Huelsenbeck in particular found the poem offensively sentimental and romantic;
"Dada rejects emphatically and as a matter of principle works like the famous 'Anna Blume' of Kurt Schwitters." [5]
Later in the year Schwitters would publish the poem in an artist's book called Anna Blume, Dichtungen. [6] The original book contains several poems and short stories, including Die Zwiebel (The Onion), a fairy story about the dismemberment of the narrator Alves Bäsenstiel, who, when reassembled, becomes the new King. The book also includes the poems Grünes Kind (Green Child) and Nächte (Nights).
The first edition was published by Verlag Paul Steegemann, Hannover, 1919. The second edition, published in 1920, was exactly the same but for 8 extra pages of adverts. The third edition, published in 1922, was substantially different, however. Noticeably smaller, but with more pages (88 compared to the original's 40) and a plain white sleeve with a pink border, the revised version only included nine of the original twenty pieces. The other twenty-seven pieces include English, French and Russian translations of Anna Blume, Le Grande Ardeur de Dada (Marche Funèbre), a brief critique of dada written in French ('Let me explain - dada is the great root of all the little roots...'), and a series of newer poems that would point the way toward Schwitter's later poetic style, using a dramatically reduced vocabulary with heavy repetition. Zwölf (Twelve), for instance, only uses the first eleven numerals to create an eleven-line poem. ('One Two Three Four Five / Five Four Three Two One / Two Three Four Five Six / Six Five Four Three Two / Seven Seven Seven Seven Seven......)
The same year, Schwitters also published Memoiren Anna Blumes in Bleie, a book that chronicled and parodied reactions to the original book.
In 1920 Schwitters published a second book in the same format, called Die Kathedrale (The Cathedral). Again published by Paul Steegemann, Hannover, the work contained 8 lithographs, and was published in an edition of c. 3000. [7] The lithographs are in the style of Schwitters' drawings of the period, using found elements, collage and stamps, along with scratchy pen and ink drawings.
The book uses the cathedral as a metaphor, a theme common amongst Expressionists such as Lyonel Feininger, and was to become a central feature of the organisation of the Bauhaus, with its system of Masters teaching 'apprentices' and 'journeymen' trades such as mural painting and weaving. [8]
The title of Schwitters's book, Die Kathedrale, reflects the Expressionists' embrace of the Gothic cathedral as an emblem of unification in the arts. The white square of paper on the cover, part of a wraparound seal added by Schwitters, declares, "Beware: Anti-Dada." [9]
Schwitters' style became more constructivist after this, under the influence of El Lissitzky and De Stijl, the Dutch group co-founded by Theo van Doesburg, who was to become a close friend and collaborator. A memoir about Anna Blume (Anna Blume's Lead Memoirs in Bleie. An Easy-to-Understand Method for Everyone of How To Learn Madness) was published in 1922 with a markedly cleaner cover in a constructivist style, and this was followed by a series of periodicals, still called Merz, which continued to publish Schwitters' work, within the context of the emerging International Modernism.
Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire. New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until c. the mid 1920s.
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement. Under the influence of Adrian Maniu, the adolescent Tzara became interested in Symbolism and co-founded the magazine Simbolul with Ion Vinea and painter Marcel Janco. During World War I, after briefly collaborating on Vinea's Chemarea, he joined Janco in Switzerland. There, Tzara's shows at the Cabaret Voltaire and Zunfthaus zur Waag, as well as his poetry and art manifestos, became a main feature of early Dadaism. His work represented Dada's nihilistic side, in contrast with the more moderate approach favored by Hugo Ball.
Hans Richter was a German painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland.
Raoul Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I.
— Opening lines from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, first published this year
Der Sturm was a German art and literary magazine founded by Herwarth Walden, covering Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, among other artistic movements. It was published between 1910 and 1932.
—From A Prayer for My Daughter by W. B. Yeats, written on the birth of his daughter Anne on February 26
Universal War is an artist's book by Aleksei Kruchenykh published in Petrograd at the beginning of 1916. Despite being produced in an edition of 100 of which only 12 are known to survive, the book has become one of the most famous examples of Russian Futurist book production, and is considered a seminal example of avant-garde art from the beginning of the twentieth century.
Punct is a Romanian art and literary magazine published from 1924 to 1925.
Otto Nebel was a German painter born in Berlin, Germany.
Leah Dickerman is the Director of Editorial & Content Strategy at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Serving most recently as the Museum’s first Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, a post endowed in 2015, Dickerman previously held the positions of Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA (2008-2015), Acting Head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington, D.C. (2007), and Associate Curator in Modern and Contemporary Art at the NGA (2001-2007). Over the course of her career, Dickerman has organized or co-organized a series of exhibitions including One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Works (2015), Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 (2012-2013), Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art (2011-2012), Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity (2009-2010), Dada (2005-2006), and Aleksandr Rodchenko (1998).
Dragan Aleksić was a Serbian Dadaist poet, author, journalist and filmmaker. He was the founder of the Yugoslavian branch of Dadaism, termed "Yugo-Dada".
Merz is a synonym for the more common expression and term Dada, and traces back to Kurt Schwitters.
Ludwig Bäumer was a German writer and Communist activist.
Dadaglobe was an anthology of the Dada movement slated for publication in 1921, but abandoned for financial and other reasons and never published. At 160 pages with over a hundred reproductions of artworks and over a hundred texts by some fifty artists in ten countries, Dadaglobe was to have documented Dada's apogee as an artistic and literary movement of international breadth. Edited by Dada co-founder Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) in Paris, Dadaglobe was not conceived as a summary of the movement since its founding in 1916, but rather meant to be a snapshot of its expanded incarnation at war's end. Not merely a vehicle for existing works, the project functioned as one of Dada's most generative catalysts for the production of new works.
Salomo Friedlaender was a German-Jewish philosopher, poet, satirist and author of grotesque and fantastic literature. He published his literary work under the pseudonym Mynona, which is the German word for “anonymous” spelled backward. He is known for his philosophical ideas on dualism drawing on Immanuel Kant, and his avant garde poetry and fiction. Almost none of his work has been translated into English.
Hanne Bergius is a German art historian and Professor for Art History with emphases on art, photography, modern design and architecture.
Dada Tank was a Yugoslav Dadaist single issue publication published in Zagreb in June 1922 and edited by Dragan Aleksić. Aleksić published Dada Tank as a response to Branko Ve Poljanski and his brother Ljubomir Micić's anti-Dada publication Dada-Jok from May 1922.
Nelly Anna Charlotta Walden was a Swedish painter, art collector, and writer. A key figure in the activities of Berlin-based avant-garde magazine Der Sturm, Walden was a pioneer of abstract art and was married to German writer Herwarth Walden.
