Ulrike Draesner: Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters, writer, visual artist, commercial artist and one of the most influential Dadaists, was 49 when he was forced by the National Socialists to flee Hannover in 1937. Norway, London and finally the Lake District in Northern England were his places of exile, separated from his language, audience, work, parents and his wife Helma. Using different character voices, Ulrike Draesner traces Schwitters’ path to his last great work of art, the third Merzbau. Here he found a way to capture the sky and serenity, the sparkle of the meadows and the transparency of the air. The outcome is not a biography, but a virtuoso blend of fact and fiction, a novel about flight, exile and above all about the question: How does art come into being, and what is it capable of? How can the process of making art be expressed in language? In conversation with Frauke Meyer-Gosau.

Ulrike Draesner, born in Munich in 1962, lives in Berlin and Leipzig. Her most recent publications: Eine Frau wird älter. Ein Aufbruch (2018) and Kanalschwimmer (2019). Member of the Akademie der Künste since 2019.

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