It all began in 1912 with a chance encounter: Hugo Ball, working for the Munich Kammerspiele, meets Emmy Hennings, eccentric diseuse, addicted to drugs, muse to important men, who has just published her first poems. The dazzling masque-actress, darling of the Bohemia in Munich and Berlin, and the rebellious poet, reeling between actionism and anarchism, find each other in times of war and begin their mutual »Game of Making Books«. Paradise was what Hugo Ball promised Emmy, but it was to be a...
It all began in 1912 with a chance encounter: Hugo Ball, working for the Munich Kammerspiele, meets Emmy Hennings, eccentric diseuse, addicted to drugs, muse to important men, who has just published her first poems. The dazzling masque-actress, darling of the Bohemia in Munich and Berlin, and the rebellious poet, reeling between actionism and anarchism, find each other in times of war and begin their mutual »Game of Making Books«. Paradise was what Hugo Ball promised Emmy, but it was to be a hard journey that would lead the extravagant couple into the centre of literary modernism.
The book follows Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings from the provincial stuffiness of childhood and youth to the avant-garde scenes of Berlin and Munich, their emigration to Switzerland in 1915 where they founded the »Cabaret Voltaire«, the nucleus of Dadaism, in Zurich in 1916, and finally to seclusion in rural Tessin where the couple nurtured a close friendship with Hermann Hesse, up until Hugo Ball’s death in 1927: in her biography on an exceptional couple, Bärbel Reetz revives a time in which much was asked, but more was risked.
»An insightful double portrait« neues deutschland
»Reetz documents the fascinating co-existence of the intellectual contradictions that shaped Hugo Ball’s life with so-far unachieved accuracy.« Die Rheinpfalz
»Due to its extent and informative content, as well as a broad research foundation, the book by Reetz is without a doubt the most important biographical, comprehensive portrayal of both Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings available, and with her smooth style she may rightly lay claim to many readers’ interest« Martin Ingenfeld, literaturkritik.de
»An insightful double portrait« neues deutschland
»Reetz documents the fascinating co-existence of the intellectual contradictions that shaped Hugo Ball’s life with so-far unachieved accuracy.« Die Rheinpfalz
»Due to its extent and informative content, as well as a broad research foundation, the book by Reetz is without a doubt the most important biographical, comprehensive portrayal of both Hugo Ball and Emmy...
Bärbel Reetz, born in 1942, lives in Berlin. She has won several literary prizes for her works including the Bettina von Arnim Prize in 1994.
Bärbel Reetz, born in 1942, lives in Berlin. She has won several literary prizes for her works including the Bettina von Arnim Prize in...
Spanish world rights (Circe), Korea (Jaeum&Moeum), Slovakia (Petrus)