Concerning the opening of the Cabaret Voltaire, the Dadaists appealed “to Zurich’s young artists to attend and make suggestions and contributions regardless of a special art movement” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Züricher Post). Emmy Hennings’s letter to her artist colleague Reinhold Rudolf Junghanns in Munich from late January, early February 1916 was also written with the intention of interesting artists for the Cabaret and obtaining contributions from them. Hennings had met Junghanns in Munich in 1911 and modelled for him until 1914. The portfolio mentioned in the letter was probably not exhibited. The portfolio Variationen über ein weibliches Thema (Variations on a Female Theme, 1913) published by Kurt Wolff comprised partly shocking portrait drawings of the artist’s “emsi model.” Art critics described the works as studies of a hysterical woman which pitilessly render the subject’s fits and perversity. Junghanns, for his part, saw Hennings as a “‘fantastic model’ in the purest sense of the word, anything but well-behaved, yet extraordinarily stimulating.” He also made drawings depicting the dancers Mary Wigman and Clotilde von Derp, both of whom were in touch with the Dadaists. Henning’s request for a doll from Lotte Pritzel expressed in the letter stands to reason: she had met Pritzel in Munich’s circle of bohemians, and also made puppets (depicted in Cabaret Voltaire), which she presented at Dada events.

The handwritten addition at the end of the letter is a praise of the typewriter: “It’s fun to write because it’s so fast.” The speed and cursory nature of typing are also evident in a typed notebook of poems dating from 1916. Not every stroke has hit home, characters jump, and the paper feed seems to have proven tricky. The new technical device inspired Hugo Ball’s poem Piffalamozza designed as a picture and Christian Schad’s typewriter picture Porträt Dada Walter Serner made in Geneva. The relevance and particular nature of the typewriter become clear when we recall Ball and Hennings’ flight after their difficulties at the Galerie Dada: the author Friedrich Glauser, who accompanied them into the remotest part of the Maggia Valley, carried not only his suitcase but also a typewriter on his wooden pack frame with willow twigs as straps on his back for four long hours.

Typescript with handwritten addition in pencil by Emmy Hennings: «lieber Junghans [sic], ich hab in meinem Zimmer eine Schreibmaschine, und es macht mir Spass zu schreiben, weil es so schnell geht. Deine emmy hennings» (dear junghans [sic!], I have a typewriter in my room, and it’s fun to write because it’s so fast. Yours, emmy hennings.) Provenance: The typescript was part of the lot of miscellanies “Reinhold Rudolf Junghanns” which the Kunsthaus Zürich acquired from Irma Thaler, Zurich from the artist’s estate in 1985.

→ Emmy Hennings, Gedichte [Poems], DADA II:1
→ Cabaret Voltaire, DADA III:37