A Brief History of Nothing (Part III): From Dada, to Dachau, to Davos

“While seemingly contrary in ‘theory,’ the great totalitarian systems—fascism and communism—would have a great deal in common in practice. Both are manifestations of the human Ego flailing about in a world reduced to Nothing.”

“I shall take up dominoes again in my spare time.”

—Czar Nicholas II in March, 1917

In 1916, several young men and women from a variety of European countries made their way over the mountains into neutral Switzerland. They were mostly artists and poets, alienated by what they perceived as the madness of war and the cultural collapse of Europe. They refused to fight, wrote German poet Richard Huelsenbeck, for “…the idea of a nation which at best is a cartel of pelt merchants…at worst, a cultural association of psychopaths.”

The refugees would regularly congregate at a café in Zurich called Cabaret Voltaire. They discussed art and politics and staged satirical skits on current affairs. They called themselves “Dadaists.” The nonsense word “dada” was emblematic of an artistic movement that reflected the times. Exactly what “dada” stood for was unclear—a nonsense word for nonsensical times.

What Dadaists had in common was an experience of annihilation, chaos, meaninglessness, and a general disgust with (and resentment of) the dominant bourgeois morality. “DADA is the voluntary destruction of the bourgeois world of ideas,” said one slogan; otherwise, wrote Huelsenbeck, they “actually had no idea what they really wanted.” They were not even sure as to what art was any more or what it should be or could be. “Art just was. There were artists and there were bourgeois. You had to love one and hate the other.”