Elizabeth King Weimar Culture Senior Seminar/ Honors Thesis Berlin Dadaists and Charlie Chaplin: Medium, Mechanics and the Masses The Berlin Dadaists developed an expansive and insightful understanding of the art of Hollywood filmmaker and actor Charlie Chaplin, prior to seeing any of his films. The images and exhibition I contextualize point to Dada’s use of Chaplin as inspiration and subject. During World War I, Germany remained under martial law and censorship was pervasive. Undoubtedly, “tightening of control and a ban on imports went hand in hand with growing recognition of the vital propaganda and entertainment role of the cinema.”1 Hollywood films were banned until 1919 and feature-length Chaplin films until late 1923 with the release of the The Kid (1921) in Berlin. 2 But beginning in 1921 and 1922, one or two act shorts appeared in Germany such as The Tramp (1915), The Immigrant (1917), A Dog’s Life (1918), and The Rink (1916). 3 Leading up to these releases, Dada artists heard about Chaplin from traveling German film critics and notable French cultural and film critics. The French often created or commented on the nationalistic fervor for Chaplin, turning Charlie into their very own Charlot .4 Although Chaplin films would continue to play in Germany until 1931, when war approached and German domestic production began to take off, this paper will take a more focused look at Dada works created within one to two years before Germany’s actual mass exposure to his films. 5 This window during which artistic output flourished, highlights German reliance on initial accounts from European cultural 1 Thomas J. Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin: American cinema and Weimar Germany , (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 26. 2 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 57, 296. 3 Ibid, 173. 4 Libby Murphy, "Charlot Français: Charlie Chaplin, The First World War, and the Construction of a National Hero," Contemporary French & Francophone Studies 14 (2010): 421-429. 5 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 222. 1 critics. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish the figure that the Dadaists sought out from the Charlot of the French. Berlin Dadaists’ appeals to, and representations of Chaplin revealed a strong conviction in the power of cinema, in its ability to change perceptions across society and in the magnitude of the questions Chaplin’s work, and “mass culture,” raised in the aftermath of WWI. Cinema provided both an opportunity and outlet for the people. In the Reich in 1920, there were roughly 1,000 film theaters and by 1920 there were 3,731. 6 By the mid 1920s, theaters were visited by one to two million people daily. 7 The Dadaists did not want the government preventing cinema’s accessibility and potential. The opportunity to view what was considered a representation of America was of interest to them, particularly the work of Chaplin who appeared to circumvent the capitalist system while working in it. “Berlin Dada’s radical redefinition of art, which negated the schism between ‘fine art’ and mass media, between ‘high’ culture and popular art” was initiated by an Americanism that Chaplin played a considerable role in. 8 French critics provided Germany’s first textual exposure to Chaplin in Ivan Goll’s cinema-poem, Die Chapliniade (1920).” 9 Cultural historian Sabine Hake writes that Goll “speculates on his importance as a figure of reconciliation between art and technology, high culture and mass society.” 10 This conjecture, most importantly the bridge between art and technology, suggests Chaplin united the same poles the Berlin Dadaists sought to transcend and would have greatly appealed to their efforts. French film critic Louis Delluc offered a broader, yet more reflexive view of the possibilities posed by cinema. In 1917, he wrote in an article that 6 Ibid, 20, 23. 7 Ibid, 24. 8 Beeke Sell Tower, eds. Busch Reisinger Museum et al., Envisioning America: Prints, drawings, and photographs by George Grosz and his contemporaries, 1915-1933 (Cambridge, MA: Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, 1990), 65. 9 Sabine Hake, “Chaplin Reception in Weimar Germany,” New German Critique 51 (1990): 88. 10 Ibid, 89. 2 dealt largely with Chaplin, “The cinema will make us all comprehend the things of this world as well as force us to recognize ourselves.” 11 As a foreign mediator, Chaplin offered a subtle, disseminated and international analysis on society, operating at a more removed distance than the Dadaists. When finally available for viewing, German critics’ reception was varied, salutary and skeptical yet highly critical on all fronts, while admitting, “German audiences laughed hysterically.” 12 German Critic Hans Siemsen wrote the second article published on Chaplin in Germany titled “Two Postcards and a Book,” in 1920. 13 In many of his writings, he focused on Chaplin’s “personal discovery and exploitation of the laws of the medium,” while also delighting in the playful and hopeful aspects of his films.14 He writes, “This funny little clown is the best a human being can be: a starry-eyed idealist. God Bless Him!” 15 Chaplin’s thorough development of writing, directing and acting merited him the title “first authentic artist of the cinema,” according to Siemsen. 16 The Dadaists personified a balance between the critical inquiry of, and public interest in Chaplin. They sought to underscore the aspects of Chaplin’s manipulation of the film medium, and the resulting inflection and influence that could be generated in the mass audience. His screen persona was in the service of a greater whole, the way the shots taken and edited were in the service of the final film, and the way Dada built up its own montages in a piece-meal fashion. Protesting the ban, Berlin Dadaists “elevated Chaplin to Ehrendada (Honorary Dada) and declared themselves ‘Chaplinists.’ To be a ‘Chaplinist’ meant a link, however tenuous, to an 11 Louis Delluc, “Beauty in the Cinema,” in French Film Theory and Criticism: A History and Anthology, 1907- 1939 , ed. Richard Abel, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 139. 12 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 174. 13 Sherwin Simmons, “Chaplin smiles on the wall: Berlin dada and wish-images of popular culture,” New German Critique 84 (2001): 9. 14 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 178. 15 Hans Siemsen, Charlie Chaplin, trans. Sabine Hake in New German Critique 51 (1990): 100. 16 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 178. 3 international avant-garde, among whom Chaplin had already become something of a cult figure.” 17 This paper will point to those fractures in the link through its strict comparison of the qualities of Chaplin’s art that Dadaist art engaged with, as opposed to an attempt to ignite a nationalistic discourse characteristic of the international avant-garde. While critics focused on his persona, Dadaists saw him more as a vehicle; as exemplified by their own use of his face, name, and connotations in the works I chose for this paper. All the works highlight Chaplin’s affinities with, and appropriateness for Dada, through Dada’s discernment of both his acclaim and controversy. Figure 1: Otto Schmalhausen, Cover of ‘DADA-ALMANACH’ Berlin, 1920 http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/artwork/huelsenbeck.shtm#null On the cover of a 1920 issue of DADA-ALMANACHA is an image of a plastic bust of Beethoven altered by Dadaist Otto Schmalhausen. Richard Huelsenbeck edited the publication, “a summary of the group’s ideas.” 18 It is speculated the changes were made so the mask of a past, intellectual icon, would resemble Chaplin, an emerging, notably “physical,” cultural icon of 17 Tower, Envisioning America , 68. 18 Ibid. 4 contemporaneous times.19 (Figure 1) All Chaplin’s features were imposed on the reproduced photograph of the mask: “Schmalhausen added blue pupils within its heavily lined eyes, as well as a small, squarish mustache and unruly forelock of real hair, which resembled Charlie Chaplin.” 20 The basic premise in each role Chaplin played in his early films contributed to his rise to an international symbol. While Germans respected and enjoyed notable Germanic actors, Chaplin’s the “little tramp” was the same articulated and identifiable character in each film. “It afforded audiences a sense of security and intimacy that they could not experience with character actors, given their changing identities.” 21 Chaplin’s consistency was a stability that any European could have welcomed after WWI. He represented a lower class citizen in society who through caricature was made all the more real. The role social status played in relations between people was appropriately at the forefront of each film. This work by Schmalhausen takes Chaplin’s representational qualities in another direction, as well. The Beethoven mask was a common prop for artists appropriated in numerous ways, by various artists prior to the Dada Fair and the DADA-ALMANACHA publication. Franz Klein originally cast the mask in 1812, from Ludwig van Beethoven’s face. 22 The use of a copy of a mask that had already gained circulation within the art world, in order to appropriate and then reproduce it in an even more widely accessible form of dissemination, suggests a shift away from older forms of culture towards new technologies and likewise new forms and means of culture. This shift was taking place through the interest of critics, on the pages of international publications. The mask’s new reproduction would therefore occur in the same manner as the 19 Ibid, 82. 20 Simmons, “Chaplin smiles on the wall,” 7-8. 21 Hake, Chaplin Reception , 90. 22 Simmons, “Chaplin smiles on the wall,” 7. 5 writings on Chaplin that would characterize him by those features. The physical mask was on display at the First International Dada Fair (Erste International Dada-Messe). In the exhibition catalogue, author Wieland Herzfelde, without mention of Chaplin, simply “stressed the way these additions rescued Beethoven from the bourgeois respectability of white plaster and suggest the difficult role of a living artist in society.”23 A move away from “bourgeois respectability” was a move the Dadaists openly and adamantly made.