Emmy Hennings

Emmy Hennings

Emmy Hennings was a German performer, poet, and cabaret artist associated with early 20th-century avant-garde movements, notably Dada. Born in Flensburg, she became a key figure in European cabaret scenes in cities such as Munich, Vienna, Zurich, and Berlin, interacting with contemporaries across literature, theater, and visual arts.

Early life and background

Hennings was born in Flensburg during the German Empire, contemporaneous with figures like Kaiser Wilhelm II, Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Mahler, Thomas Mann, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Her formative years overlapped with cultural developments in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna, and with institutions such as the Hohenzollern monarchy and events like the Franco-Prussian War aftermath that shaped German society. She moved through urban milieus connected to publishers and salons frequented by Herwarth Walden, Alfred Kerr, Max Reinhardt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Stefan Zweig. Early influences included performers and writers associated with venues and movements like Die Bühne, Simultan, Expressionism, Jugendstil, and the Burgtheater circle.

Career and artistic work

Hennings developed a career as a cabaret artist and poet, appearing in venues linked to the cultural networks of Münchner Kammerspiele, Schall und Rauch, Kabarett der Komiker, Volkstheater Wien, and the Zurich cabaret scene that included figures from Kurt Schwitters to Tristan Tzara. Her repertoire and publications intersected with contemporaneous writers and artists such as Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, Gottfried Benn, Georg Heym, Else Lasker-Schüler, Alfred Döblin, and Karl Kraus. She collaborated with musicians and composers tied to cabaret traditions like Erik Satie, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, and Paul Hindemith, and her performances resonated with theatrical innovations from Max Reinhardt, Erwin Piscator, and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Hennings also circulated among publishers and magazines associated with Die Aktion, Der Sturm, S. Fischer Verlag, Rowohlt Verlag, and Verlag der Neue Sachlichkeit.

Involvement with Dada and Berlin avant-garde

Hennings's association with Dada placed her in the orbit of Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, Kurt Schwitters, and Raoul Hausmann within Zurich and Berlin salons and cabaret stages. She performed in events alongside visual artists and composers such as Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, and Paul Klee. Her circle included poets and theorists like Marcel Janco, Hans Arp, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, and she was linked by association to periodicals and manifestos produced by Cabaret Voltaire, Die Weltbühne, Merz, and Der Dada. Hennings's performances intersected with avant-garde exhibitions and happenings connected to institutions like the Kunsthalle Zürich, Berlin Secession, Galerie Der Sturm, and events such as the First World War-era artistic responses and postwar cultural shifts involving Weimar Republic scenography.

Personal life and relationships

Hennings formed important personal and artistic partnerships with prominent figures including Hugo Ball and other Dadaists, moving within social networks that included T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Amedeo Modigliani. Her friendships and correspondences touched literary circles spanning Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan Zweig, Else Lasker-Schüler, Käthe Kollwitz, and Clara Zetkin. She encountered theatrical contemporaries like Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser, Friedrich Schiller-influenced dramatists, and performers in cabaret and variety traditions such as Josephine Baker, Marta Husemann, Lotte Lenya, and Marlene Dietrich. These relationships brought her into contact with political and cultural actors like Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and activists tied to events like the German Revolution of 1918–19.

Later years and legacy

In her later years Hennings lived in Zurich and continued to influence artists, writers, and performers who shaped mid-20th-century culture, overlapping with figures such as Bertolt Brecht, Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Paul Celan, and Ingeborg Bachmann. Her legacy is discussed alongside institutions and retrospectives at museums and archives connected to Kunsthaus Zürich, Deutsches Theatermuseum, Berlinische Galerie, Museum Ludwig, and research centers focusing on Dada and Expressionism. Contemporary scholarship situates her among early modernists and cabaret pioneers linked to Cultural history of Germany, Modernist literature, and exhibitions referencing Documenta and the historiography advanced by critics like Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Ernst Bloch, and Siegfried Kracauer. Hennings's impact endures in studies of performance, periodicals, and archives maintained by institutions such as Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, ETH Zürich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and university departments at University of Zurich, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Freie Universität Berlin.

Category:German performers Category:Dadaists