Hugo Ball (German: [bal]; 22 February 1886 – 14 September 1927) was a German author, poet, dramatist, and journalist, and one of the principal founders of the Dada movement in European art in Zürich in 1916. Among other accomplishments, he was a pioneer in the development of sound poetry. With the poet and cabaret performer Emmy Hennings, whom he later married, he founded the Cabaret Voltaire, around which the Zürich Dada group formed.
Ball's career extended beyond Dada. Before the First World War he participated in German Expressionist theatre and literature; during the war he became a pacifist and was influenced by anarchist thought. After withdrawing from Dada, he worked as a political journalist and cultural critic. Following his return to Catholicism in 1920, he increasingly devoted himself to Christian mysticism, hagiography, theology, and the history of German intellectual culture.
His best known works include the "Dada Manifesto", the Dadaist nonsense poem "Karawane," the poetry collection 7 schizophrene Sonette, the edited diary Flight out of Time, the Christian anarchist polemic book Critique of the German Intelligentsia and the novels Flametti, or The Dandyism of the Poor and Tenderenda the Fantast. His later works include Byzantinisches Christentum (1923), devoted to three early Christian saints and mystical writers, and a biography of his friend Hermann Hesse (1927).
Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany, and was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. His father was a shoe manufacturer.
From 1895 to 1901 Ball attended the Königliches Progymnasium in Pirmasens. At his parents' wishes he subsequently began an apprenticeship with a leather merchant, but abandoned it for health reasons. He then completed the qualifications necessary for university study at the humanistic gymnasium in Zweibrücken.
He studied sociology and philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Heidelberg University, beginning his studies in 1906. His university studies also included German literature and history. In Heidelberg he attended lectures on Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche and developed a dissertation project entitled Nietzsche in Basel. Although he worked on the project for several years, he did not submit it, and left university without a degree in 1910. The dissertation manuscript was eventually published in 1978. Nietzsche remained an important influence on Ball's early thought.
In 1910, Ball moved to Berlin in order to become an actor and collaborated with Max Reinhardt. He studied at the acting school associated with Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater, where his training encompassed acting, directing, dramaturgy, and theatre administration. Ball later recalled the period from 1910 to 1914 as one in which virtually everything in his life was connected with theatre.
His first book, the tragicomedy Die Nase des Michelangelo, was published by Ernst Rowohlt in 1911. During the 1911–12 season Ball worked as a dramaturg at the municipal theatre in Plauen. He then joined the Munich Lustspielhaus, subsequently known as the Münchner Kammerspiele, where he worked between 1912 and 1914. According to the Hugo Ball Society, the theatre adopted the name Münchener Kammerspiele at Ball's suggestion.
Ball became part of the German Expressionist literary and theatrical milieu. Among the figures important to his development were the dramatist Frank Wedekind, the painter Wassily Kandinsky, and the poet Hans Leybold. He became personally acquainted with Wedekind through the Munich production of Franziska and promoted contemporary theatrical work while employed as a dramaturg.
With Leybold, a close friend, Ball wrote collaborative poems under the composite pseudonym Ha Hu Baley. He published poetry, prose, criticism, and theatrical writing in magazines including Revolution, Die Neue Kunst, Die Aktion, Jugend, and Phöbus.
Ball and Kandinsky planned an almanac intended to supplement or continue the artistic programme associated with Der Blaue Reiter, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented the project from being completed.
Ball met Richard Huelsenbeck in the Munich avant-garde milieu and also became acquainted with Emmy Hennings, a poet, actress, and cabaret performer.
At the beginning of World War I, Ball tried joining the army as a volunteer, but was denied enlistment for medical reasons. Later in 1914, intending to visit a wounded friend at Lunéville, he travelled toward the war zone and gained a direct impression of conditions near the front. His experiences intensified his disillusionment with the war. He later wrote: "The war is founded on a glaring mistake – men have been confused with machines."
Following the wartime closure of the Münchner Kammerspiele, Ball returned to Berlin, where he worked as an editor and journalist. His political interests became increasingly radical. He read Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin, and developed a particular interest in Bakunin's critique of the state.
Ball also worked on a book of translations of works by Bakunin, which never got published during his lifetime. Material from this project was eventually issued as Michael Bakunin. Ein Brevier in the scholarly edition of Ball's works.
In Berlin, Ball and Huelsenbeck organized literary events with an increasingly anti-war character. Ball's pacifism was strengthened by the deaths of writers and friends in the conflict, including Leybold. The two participated in a broader Expressionist and bohemian milieu centred partly on venues such as the Café des Westens.
Although interested in anarchist philosophy, Ball nonetheless rejected it for its militant aspects, and viewed it as only a means to his personal goal of socio-political enlightenment. Anarchist ideas nevertheless remained important to his criticism of militarism, nationalism, political centralization, and the modern state.
In May 1915 Ball emigrated with Emmy Hennings to neutral Switzerland. Ball later explained to his sister that he had left Germany because he wished to continue developing abroad and because the war and contemporary "patriotism" contradicted his convictions. The couple settled initially in Zürich and lived in considerable poverty.