Emmy Hennings

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Hanns Bolz : Portrait of Emmy Hennings , 1911

Emmy Hennings or Emma Maria Ball-Hennings (born January 17, 1885 in Flensburg , † August 10, 1948 in Sorengo near Lugano ) was a German writer , actress , singer and cabaret artist . She is one of the founders of Dadaism .

Live and act

Emmy Hennings was the daughter of the taker Ernst Friedrich Matthias Cordsen and grew up in Flensburg. There she also attended elementary school and then worked as a maid. At the age of 18, she married an amateur actor in 1903, with whom she joined a traveling theater. Their daughter grew up with their grandparents in Flensburg in the first few years.

In 1904, Emmy Hennings got divorced and trundled through Germany alone as a lecturer. In 1905 she joined the Schmidt-Agte theater company in Elmshorn and played there and in Kappeln . At that time she was probably in a relationship with the actor Wilhelm Vio, who also belonged to the troupe. From 1906 to 1908 she was part of Oskar Ludwig Georg Brönner's drama troupe, who played in the province of Schleswig-Holstein .

Although unskilled, Emmy was apparently able to achieve some success in the troupe, because Brönner organized a benefit event for her at the end of the season in the most popular locations (Tondern, Marne, Plön) . In 1909 Hennings appeared in Berlin in the Neopathetic Cabaret of the New Club . During this time she met the journalist and writer Ferdinand Hardekopf , with whom she went on a trip through France in 1910. A short time later, Emmy Hennings separated from him because he had forced her into prostitution. Years of alternating stays in Berlin and Munich followed. In Berlin she performed temporarily together with Claire Waldoff , in Munich she worked as a diseuse in the artist bar Simpl , where she met her future husband Hugo Ball , the painter and illustrator Hanns Bolz and numerous other artists.

Grave of Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings in Gentilino

In 1914 she was imprisoned in a Munich prison for several months for theft and suspicion of help in desertion. In 1915, shortly after her release, she first traveled to Berlin before emigrating to Switzerland with Hugo Ball. In 1916 she founded the Cabaret Voltaire , the birthplace of Dadaism, with Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara , Marcel Janco and Hans Arp in Zurich . There she performed almost every evening as a singer, performer and diseuse there for months, often accompanied by Hugo Ball on the piano. In order to create more space for the visual arts, the group of Dadaists, which had grown in the meantime, founded the Dada gallery in 1917 , in which Hennings was actively involved.

Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball married in 1920. During their time in Ticino, both turned away from Dadaism and dealt intensively with Catholicism . A close friendship with Hermann Hesse , which lasted until her death, began at that time . After Hugo Ball's death in 1927, Hennings took care of his estate and wrote autobiographical works, stories, fairy tales and legends. She was buried at the side of her husband in Gentilino .

The joint library of Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings is now in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.

In Flensburg the Emmy-Ball-Henningsstraße is named after her.

Quotes

"An upset stomach is much easier to cure than a mental overload."

- (Ball-Hennings, 1938)

Fonts

  • The final joy. Poems ( Judgment Day 5). Wolff, Leipzig 1913.
  • Jail. Novel. Reiss, Berlin 1919.
  • The brand. A diary. Reiss, Berlin 1920.
  • Bright night. Poems. Reiss, Berlin 1922.
  • The eternal song. Reiss, Berlin 1923.
  • The walk to love. A book of cities, churches and saints. Kösel & Pustet, Munich 1926.
  • Hugo Ball. His life in letters and poems. With a foreword by Hermann Hesse. Fischer, Berlin 1930.
  • Hugo Ball's way to God. A book of memory ... Kösel & Pustet, Munich 1931.
  • The birth of Jesus. Told for children. Glock, Nuremberg 1932.
  • Flower and flame. Story of a youth. Benziger, Einsiedeln / Cologne 1938.
  • The wreath. Poems. Benziger, Einsiedeln / Cologne 1939.
  • The fleeting game. Paths and detours of a woman. Benziger, Einsiedeln / Cologne 1940.
  • Fairy tale by the fireplace. Benziger, Einsiedeln / Cologne 1943.
  • The earthly paradise and other legends. Stocker, Lucerne 1945.
  • Shout and echo. My life with Hugo Ball. Benziger, Einsiedeln / Zurich / Cologne 1953.
  • Letters to Hermann Hesse. Edited by Annemarie Schütt-Hennings. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1956.
  • Beloved Ticino. With drawings by Lis Boehner. Die Arche, Zurich 1976. ISBN 3-7160-1554-7 .
  • Christmas joy. Stories. Die Arche, Zurich 1976, ISBN 3-7160-1567-9 .
  • Prison - The Gray House - The House in the Shadows. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2016. ISBN 978-3-8353-1834-2 .
  • The brand - the eternal song. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017. ISBN 978-3-8353-3040-5 .
  • Names want iron chains. Poems and texts. Calambac Verlag, Saarbrücken 2019. ISBN 978-3-943117-04-2

Performances (selection)

Radio plays

  • The fairy tale is over. Approaches to Emmy Hennings . A radio play on 3 CDs. Andreas Karmers, Hamburg 2012.

literature

Graphic novel

Fernando González Viñas (text), José Lázaro (drawings): Everything is Dada. Emmy Ball-Hennings . Translation from the Spanish André Höchemer, Avant Verlag, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-96445-034-0 .

Web links

Commons : Emmy Hennings  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Emmy Hennings  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. Dieter Pust: "... Marne is one of the first in the theater of our province with its small town theater." Emmy Ball-Hennings as an actress in Marne 1906 to 1908. In: Dithmarschen: Landeskunde - Kultur - Natur . Issue 2, June 2002, pp. 53-62.
  2. Whether Becher, Hesse, Hoddis, Heym or Mühsam all loved Emmy Hennings, one of the most dazzling female figures of the modern age: pathos of a multiple generation. In: Berliner Zeitung , June 19, 1999.
  3. Quoted from Fembio's web link .
  4. ^ Dagmar Jank: Libraries of women: a lexicon . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2019 (contributions to books and libraries; 64), ISBN 9783447112000 , p. 18.
  5. Flensburger Tageblatt : Stadtgeschichte: Unique: Flensburger street names , from: April 5, 2018; Retrieved on: April 5, 2018
  6. Your world was the bohemian audio book review by Deutschlandfunk , May 31, 2015.