DADA Berlin

The estate of Hannah Höch (1889 – 1978) and the part-estate of Raoul Hausmann (1886 – 1971), which are both to be found in the Berlinische Galerie, form a collection concerning the Berlin DADA movement unique in terms of size and quality. They document the intellectual foundation to the Dadaist revolt in words and pictures, as well as cataloguing the numerous activities of the DADA protagonists, whose socially motivated “anti-art” was a critical impulse which helped define the development of modernism.

Hannah Höch's estate, which the Berlinische Galerie acquired as early as 1979, comprises a total of 12,000 documents and works. In its entirety, it not only provides information about Berlin's regional art and cultural history but also about German and European intellectual history as a whole. The partial estate of Raoul Hausmann, which came into the museum's possession in 1992, encompasses complete evidence of the artist's life and work in Berlin before his emigration in 1933.

Both estates have been indexed scientifically and published in annotated editions, “Hannah Höch. Eine Lebenscollage” (Vols. 1-3, 1989-2001) and “Scharfrichter der bürgerlichen Seele. Raoul Hausmann in Berlin 1900 – 1933” (1998). However, to date it has not been possible to realise a digital indexing of the estates. For that reason, plans are in place to register all of the collections in MuseumPlus, including links to high-quality scans of the works and archival items. The aim of the digital indexing and collation of the two estates is to establish and make available online a digital archive about the DADA movement in Berlin, which will be unique in this form internationally.