Hugo Ball
Germany (1886—1927)Originally from Germany, he studied sociology and philosophy in Munich and Heidelberg before moving to Berlin to study acting. At the onset of the First World War, he fled to Zürich, where in 1916 he wrote the Dada Manifesto, a politically charged statement about society. That same year, he wrote the poem Karawane, made up of nonsensical words and marking the beginning of sound poetry. He was also a co-founder of Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich and a key member of the Zürich Dadaist community. His poetic works include 7 Schizophrene Sonette, the drama Die Nase des Michelangelo, and Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary. Allegedly, he named the movement Dada by randomly picking words from a dictionary. His involvement with Dada lasted only two years, after which he collaborated with the newspaper Die Freie Zeitung before retiring to Ticino, where he died at the age of 41.
