Dada – Rag-time – Cabaret: Artistic Internationalism and Multilingual Writing in Walter Mehring’s Work
Résumé
The poet, writer and journalist Walter Mehring (1896-1981) was an emblematic artist in 1920s Berlin Cabaret. His contribution to the art of the cabaret flawlessly illustrates the hybrid character of Weimar culture. His songs and poems fell between popular and high culture and formed a part of the contemporary project of an international form of communication in the arts, allying many European and American influences, from the Dada movement all the way to jazz. This article mainly focuses on Mehring’s multilingual poems which were written between 1919 and 1924. It aims to underline two central ideas which the author defended at the time: that of “international literary artwork” (internationales Sprachkunstwerk), largely based on multilingual writing, and that of “literary ‘rag-time’” (Sprachen-‘Rag-Time’) born from the influence of the first wave of jazz in Europe.