Art in Action

Lajos Kassák’s Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum (1915–1927)

The Avant-Garde and Its Journals 3.
 Art in Action
Lajos Kassák’s Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum (1915–1927)

Edited by Eszter Balázs, Edit Sasvári and Merse Pál Szeredi

KASSÁK MÚZEUM

Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum

Kassák Foundation
Budapest, 2017
This volume accompanies the exhibition-series entitled KASSÁKISM organized
by the Petőfi Literary Museum, the Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum,
and the Gizi Bajor Actors’ Museum in 2017.

Copy editor: Zsuzsanna Kőrösi

Design: Klára Rudas

Prepress: Sára Dányádi, Bence György Pálinkás

Exhibition photos: Zsuzsanna Simon

© Text: Eszter Balázs, Hubert van den Berg, Gábor Dobó, Judit Galácz, Márton Pacsika,
Gergely Prőhle, Merse Pál Szeredi, György Tverdota
© English translation: Alan Campbell, Gwen Jones, Júlia Laki
© Texts and artworks of Lajos Kassák: Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum
© Reproductions: the heirs of the authors

The digital edition of Lajos Kassák’s avant-garde journals is available as a part

of the Digital Philology project of the Petőfi Literary Museum at digiphil.hu.

This volume was published as a part of the research project of the

Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum K-120779 entitled
“Lajos Kassák’s avant-garde journals from an interdisciplinary perspective (1915–1928)”,
supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office.

Responsible publisher: Gergely Prőhle, director of the Petőfi Literary Museum

Printed by the Pauker Nyomda

ISBN 978-615-5517-22-8
ISSN 2498-9215

Any usage and reproduction of the contents of the publication is available

only with the written permission of the authors.

The publication was supported by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary.

 Contents

7 Gergely Prőhle
Introduction

9 Hubert van den Berg

Lajos Kassák, the Viennese Edition of MA and the “International”
of Avant-Garde Journals in the 1920s

33 Eszter Balázs
Avant-Garde and Radical Anti-War Dissent in Hungary – A Tett (1915–1916)

54 / Signal to the World – War ⋂Avant-Garde⋂Kassák

71 Márton Pacsika
Purposeful Player of the New Instrument –
Lajos Kassák and the Budapest MA

90 / Imagining a Movement – MA in Budapest

107 Merse Pál Szeredi

Kassákism – MA in Vienna (1920–1925)

144 / New Art – The Vienna Edition of MA in the International Networks

of Avant-Garde (Kassákism 1.)

161 György Tverdota

2×2 – The Journal Edited by Lajos Kassák and Andor Németh (1922)

174 / The New Kassák – The Horse Dies and the Birds Fly Away (Kassákism 2.)

183 Judit Galácz

Avant-Garde Experiments Committed to Paper –
the MA “Music and Theatre Special Issue” (1924)

200 / New Drama, New Stage – Theatrical Experiments

of the Hungarian Avant-Garde (Kassákism 3.)

209 Gábor Dobó

Generation Change, Synthesis and a Programme for a New Society –
Dokumentum in Budapest (1926–1927)

234 / From Machines to Images – Themes and Interpretations in Dokumentum

5
Introduction

On the occasion of Lajos Kassák’s 130th birthday and the 50th anniversary of
his death, the Petőfi Literary Museum commemorated this versatile master
with a series of three interrelated exhibitions. In the past decades, the Kassák
Museum has played an important role in familiarizing the public with certain
periods of Kassák’s œuvre. However, its limited gallery space has not allowed
for a presentation of the scope that has now been realized in three different
but interlinked institutions (Petőfi Literary Museum, Kassák Museum, Gizi Ba-
jor Actors’ Museum), connected by an overarching theme. It has never been
easy to capture the versatility of Kassák’s work. While Kassák “the artist” was
almost invisible in socialist Hungary after 1945, he was famous in Western
Europe, where, in turn, Kassák “the poet” remained unknown. His impact on
avant-garde theatre was also relegated to the background. There are a num-
ber of reasons why his political work is still lesser-known: he was isolated dur-
ing the Horthy regime, his relationship with the Social Democrats was always
controversial, and from the Communist turn onwards – with the exception of
the “coalition years” between 1945 and 1948, when he played a significant role
in Hungary’s intellectual life – the authorities were increasingly incapable of
grasping and assessing the work of this independent thinker.
Vienna was a peculiar place in the 1920s. Once the globally significant center
of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it had become the capital of small Austria,
more and more regarded as the periphery of Western Europe. Everything was
in transition: once secure ways of life collapsed, a great number of clerks and
employees became impoverished, while social security improved the living
conditions of the working classes. The young republic’s capital was quick to
break with the traditions of the old imperial city, and this made a mark on
political relations as well as Vienna’s cultural and artistic life. The still familiar
expression “Red Vienna” was coined around this time, as the city was under
Social Democratic leadership from the May 1919 council elections until the
party was banned in 1934.
Following the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Leftist politicians
and artists fleeing to Western Europe found themselves on an island when
they arrived in Vienna, as the “red” city was isolated even within Austria itself.
At the same time, there it was possible for Hungarian emigrants to carry on
with a Central European way of life and connect to Western artistic and cul-
tural trends with the mediation of the German-language context. This colorful

7
milieu provided the ideal conditions for newcomers to explore their full poten-
tial (even when living in relative poverty), and also keep in touch with the ideas
of their Western contemporaries.
The exhibitions focusing on Kassák’s Vienna years highlight a period from
the œuvre that is highly significant from the point of view of Hungarian in-
tellectual history. Adaptation vs. independence and the relationship between
these two strategies is of course a dilemma faced not only by Kassák, and not
only there and then. In this period, Kassák’s choices, the transformation of his
style, voice, and political views turned him into a unique figure of 20th-century
Central Europe.
The volume follows the logic of the three exhibitions and traces this pro-
cess by demonstrating the power of individuality and presenting the work
of “Kassákism’s high priest”, yet simultaneously highlighting the importance
of networking. It emphasizes that contact with European artistic trends does
not automatically elevate one above the others, and that one can become an
epoch-making artist even if he or she was born in the Eastern half of Europe.
At the same time however, Kassák’s later fate and the reception of his work
also shows how difficult it is to stay consistent in this region, and how circum-
stances can overpower even the most original personality.

Gergely Prőhle
Director General of Petőfi Literary Museum

8
Hubert van den Berg
Lajos Kassák, the Viennese edition of MA and
the “International” of avant-garde journals in the 1920s

The movements we nowadays tend to call “historical” or “classical avant-garde”

were in many respects Europe-wide phenomena with a global outreach and a
profound transnational character. This holds true in particular for Constructiv-
ism1 with its manifold roots – in Russia, Holland, Switzerland and several others
countries – already going back to the period of the First World War. Where-
as the war impeded international exchange until 1919, in the first half of the
1920s, constructivist-minded artists throughout Europe and beyond started
to connect. In present-day terms, one might say that a constructivist network
emerged, with artists corresponding with each other, meeting and exhibit-
ing together and showing their allegiances in a plethora of “little magazines”
throughout Europe and beyond propagating geometrical-abstract “new art”
in one way or another.

“A kind of International”
The transnationality of the constructivist network had several dimensions.
Not only could partaking artists be found throughout Europe as well as around
the globe – outside Europe notably in the Americas and Japan – transcending
national, state, cultural and linguistic boundaries. Many of these artists lived
a rather nomadic life themselves. However, many travelled not only them-
selves from country to country, but sent also their journals – their main
means of communication – internationally around as well. Moreover, mani-
festos, programmatic texts, samples of poetry, typographic experiments and

1  The following contribution elaborates on previous publications, in particular: Hubert van

den Berg, ‘Übernationalität’ der Avantgarde – (Inter-)Nationalität der Forschung, Hinweis auf
den internationalen Konstruktivismus in der europäischen Literatur und die Problematik ihrer
literaturwissenschaftlichen Erfassung [‘Supranationality’ of the avant-garde – (Inter-)national-
ity of research, Reference to the international Constructivism in European literature and the
problem of its literary-scientific research], in Wolfgang Asholt–Walter Fähnders (eds.), Der Blick
vom Wolkenkratzer, Avantgarde – Avantgardekritik – Avantgardeforschung [The view from
the skyscraper, Avant-garde–avant-garde critique–avant-garde research], Rodopi, Amster-
dam–Atlanta, 2000, 255–291. Idem, Mapping Old Traces of the New, For a Historical Topography
of 20th-Century Avant-Garde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s), Arcadia, 41/2., 2006, 331–351.
Idem, Expressionism, Constructivism and the Transnationality of the Historical Avant-Garde, in
Idem–Lidia Głuchowska (eds.), Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood, European
Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Peeters, Leuven–Paris–Walpole, 2013,
23–42. General references concerning the historical avant-garde, transnationality and Construc-
tivism can be found here.

9
[1.] Advertisement for international avant-garde journals, MA, 8/1., [back cover], Vienna

10
 reproductions of their respective work circulated from journal to journal, wan-
dered from one review to another, sometimes in the original language, some-
times in translation. To facilitate this circulation and to reach a wider inter-
national audience directly, in particular journals mainly written in so-called
“small” languages and, hence, with a limited readership, be it Czech, Dutch or
Hungarian, often contained contributions written or translated in the major
European lingua francas of the period, German and French. Yet, periodicals,
which were basically published in these lingua francas, like Kurt Schwitters’s
Merz and Émile Malespine’s Manomètre [Manometer], contained contribu-
tions not only in German and French, but in other languages as well, some-
times mixing up different languages in one single texts to underpin their
trans- or, as in the case of these reviews even explicitly “polyglot and supra­
national” character.2
Transgression of national boundaries was undoubtedly one of the essen-
tial programmatic features of the constructivist network as transnation-
al conglomerate of artists throughout Europe and beyond – in pursuit of a
borderless transnational culture. Although “network” is rather a notion of the
late 20th and early 21st century, the term can found occasionally already in the
1920s. In one of the major journals involved, the Flemish review Het Overzicht
[The Overview], the editors Jozef Peeters and Fernant Berckelaers (the latter
better known under his pseudonym Michel Seuphor) presented a list of jour-
nals under the caption Het Netwerk [The Network] in one of the last issues of
their journal in January 1924.3
In as much as Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square might be seen as the icon-
ic hallmark of the constructivist avant-garde, a likewise square-shaped de-
sign by Lajos Kassák of the backside cover of the journal MA [Today] in Octo-
ber 1922 could well be regarded as a likewise iconic hallmark of the network
of avant-garde journals promoting constructivist abstraction in the 1920s.4
[Fig. 1] At least in more recent avant-garde historiography, Kassák’s advertise-
ment-like arrangement is often reproduced in publications to illustrate the

2  N. n. [Émile Malespine], ABCD, Manomètre, 1/2., 1922, 1–3. This and all other translations from
Dutch, French and German by the author. Cf., for Schwitters: Hubert van den Berg, ‘Übernation-
alität’ der Avantgarde, op. cit., 260–263. The same phrasing can be found as well in the editorial
of Zoltán Csuka in the first issue of Hungarian journal Út, published in Novi Sad. Cf., Dubravka
Djurić–Miško Šuvaković (eds.), Impossible Histories, Historic Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes,
and Post-Avant-Gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991, MIT Press, Cambridge–London, 2003, 307.
3  Het Netwerk [The network], Het Overzicht, 2/20., 1924, 136.
4  MA, 8/1., 1922, [12.]

11
network character of the avant-garde. Yet, already in the 1920s Kassák’s sam-
ple was copied in several other journals partaking in what Seuphor in the late
1950s in a history of abstract art described as “a kind of ‘International’ of mod-
ern art”.5
In this retrospective, Seuphor named some thirty journals, many of them
already mentioned in the network list in Het Overzicht in 1924, which, ac-
cording to Seuphor “were particularly remarkable for their courage and their
independent stance: Der Sturm [The Storm] and G (Gestaltung) [G (Material
for Elementary Design)] in Berlin; De Stijl [The Style], Mécano [Mechanic] and
The Next Call in Holland; Het Overzicht and Ça Ira! [It’ll be fine] in Antwerp;
Anthologie in Liège; Sept arts [Seven Arts] and L’Art libre [Free Art] in Brussels;
La Vie des Lettres et des Arts [The Life of Literature and the Arts], L’Esprit Nou-
veau [The New Spirit], Les feuilles libres [The Blank Pages], Orbes [Orbs], L’oeuf
dur [The hard egg], Cercle et Carré [Circle and Square], 391, Le Bulletin de l’Ef-
fort Moderne [Bulletin of the Modern Effort] and Le Mouvement accéléré [The
Accelerated Movement] in Paris; Zenit [Zenith] in Belgrade; Contimporanul
[Contemporary] and Punct [Point] in Bucharest; Zwrotnica [Switchpoints] and
Blok [Block] in Warsaw; MA in Vienna; Merz in Hanover; Pásmo [Zone], Disk
[Disc] and Stavba [Building] in Czechoslovakia; A. B. C. in Zurich”.6[Fig. 2]

“Avant-garde” as a Western Cold-War narrative

Michel Seuphor’s account of the “International” of modern art has its geo-
graphical centre of gravity in Western Europe, and in Western Europe in par-
ticular in Paris and the Low Countries. According to Seuphor in a following
paragraph, Paris was “the centre of abstract art”7 and to underpin the impor-
tance of Paris, his list mentions nine journals published on the shores of the
Seine. Paris is followed immediately by the Low Countries, though. Belgium
and Holland are represented by eight journals. Apart from Berlin, mentioned
at the start, the rest of Europe follows at the tail end of his line-up and certainly
not accidentally. In respect to MA and Lajos Kassák, it is noteworthy that MA
is named as one of the last journals. Moreover, Kassák has no entry of his own
in the encyclopaedic panorama of some five hundred abstract artists that fol-
lows in Seuphor’s survey of the avant-garde in pursuit of abstract art. Kassák

5  Michel Seuphor, Knaurs Lexikon abstrakter Malerei [Knaurs lexicon for abstract painting],
Droemersche–Knaur, München–Zürich, 1957, 60.
6  Ibid., 61. Seuphor located two journals in the wrong place: A. B. C. was published in Basel,
Zwrotnica in Krakow.
7  Ibid.

12
and MA are mentioned occasionally, but both have a rather marginal, periph-
eral status.

[2.] Het Netwerk [The Network], Het Overzicht, 2/20., 1924, 136., Antwerpen

There can be little doubt that the composition and line-up of the most
relevant journals according to Seuphor had a strong subjective element:
Seuphor came from Antwerp, from the Low Countries, and lived since the
mid-1920s in Paris. Yet, his panorama also represented a common perspec­
ti­ve on the avant-garde in the first decades after the Second World War, in
the hottest period of the Cold War. In this period, the East-West divide by
the “Iron Curtain” had an enormous impact on the narrative of the “historical
avant-garde” as “avant-garde”. In fact, only in the 1940s and 1950s and on a
larger scale in the 1960s and 1970s, it became common practice to refer to the
“isms” in pursuit of “new art” in the period before the Second World War as
“avant-garde”, meanwhile “historical avant-garde”,8 following an understand-
ing of “avant-garde” stemming from the late 1930s, formulated – among oth-
ers – by the influential American critic Clement Greenberg in his essay Avant-
Garde and Kitsch in the Partisan Review in 1939.

8  Paul Wood (ed.), The Challenge of the Avant-Garde, Yale UP–Open University, New Haven–
London, 1999, 10–11.

13
 In his essay, Greenberg identifies abstract “avant-garde art” as the only true
art, true to itself as art, only defined by (abstract) form. According to Green-
berg, the aesthetic avant-garde as artistic elite represented genuine, essential
culture in the early twentieth century and more than just that. It was “the
only living culture we now have”, Greenberg wrote in 1939, “demonstratively
uninterested in politics” and as such opposing to any use or abuse of art for
political purposes. Instead, the (true) artistic avant-garde sought “a path along
which it would be possible to keep culture moving in the midst of ideologi-
cal confusion and violence”. “Pure” art, as Greenberg saw it, was not just “ab-
stract” and “non-representational”, but as such also the counterpart and true
antidote to any conventionalism accommodating the popular mediocre taste
of the masses, in Greenberg eyes represented in particular by the “kitsch” of
Socialist Realism in its Stalinist variety – according to Greenberg the absolute
opposite of “avant-garde” art.9
In the years after the Second World War, the view represented by Green-
berg became the hegemonic narrative of a new history of modern art, initially
in a paradox way as the quasi-apolitical kernel of a highly politicized discourse
on “the avant-garde” in the Western hemisphere. In the 1950s and early 1960s,
abstract “avant-garde” art became an essential element in Western Cold-War
cultural propaganda, as artistic token of Western cultural liberalism.10 Where-
as abstract “avant-garde” art had quite a difficult stand as despicable bour-
geois “formalism” in the Eastern hemisphere under Stalinist rule, the narrative
and the consecration of “avant-garde” abstract art as the essential trajectory
of European modern art in pre-war period were initially a Western (-European
and American) affair. As far as abstract “avant-garde” art was concerned, this
led to a historiographic marginalisation of developments in Eastern Europe in
the avant-garde narrative. Since history was (and to a considerable extent still
is) written in a nationally parcelled way, even without any bad intentions, the
East-West divide turned “the avant-garde” into an – initially – Western phe-
nomenon.
In this context, De Stijl, for example, could already advance to one the “most
influential of modern art movements” in the late 1950s, when the leading
Dutch art historian H. L. C. Jaffe published a monograph on De Stijl with the

9  Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch, Partisan Review, 6/5., 1939, 34–49, all quota-
tions here 36.
10  David Caute, The Dancer Defects, The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold
War, Oxford UP, Oxford–New York, 2003, 539–567.

14
telling subtitle The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art.11 For sure, De Stijl played
an important role in the European avant-garde of the 1920s. However, there
can be little doubt either that its prominent position in the historiographic
narrative of the “historical avant-garde” as “avant-garde” was facilitated as well
by the circumstance that De Stijl had influential promotors, when this narra-
tive was formulated by art historians in the Western hemisphere.
Likewise, some artists from the countries in “Eastern Europe” received most
attention, when they had moved westward at some point, as several had done
to escape fascism in the 1930s. In this respect, apart from other factors, there
can be little doubt that this contributed not only in Seuphor’s book to the
foregrounding of László Moholy-Nagy, who emigrated to the United States in
the 1930s and had an entry of his own in Seuphor’s compendium. The fact that
Kassák returned from his Viennese exile to Budapest in 1926 and stayed in
Hungary the rest of his life, had also its impact on his role in the historiograph-
ic narrative of the “historical avant-garde”. Not only could he be overseen or
ignored easily from the other side of the “Iron Curtain”, Kassák’s difficult stand
in communist Hungary also contributed to quite some delay before Hungari-
an art history started to acknowledge and highlight Kassák and MA in similar
way as Jaffe and other Dutch art historians had done for De Stijl some twenty
years earlier. Kassák’s late inclusion in the meanwhile well-established and as
such in its basic storylines already fixated avant-garde narrative was definitely
not conductive to the role attributed to him in the still prevailing (Western)
story of modern abstract art.
Instructive for this persistence is a large network diagram to be found on
the website of the Museum of Modern Art in New York that accompanied a
major exhibition Inventing Abstraction in 2012.12 It presents some hundred key
actors in the avant-garde favouring an abstract idiom in their work with the
suggestion that the diagram presents the main protagonists and impresarios
of the avant-garde network involved in the development and promulgation of
abstract art in the 1910s and early 1920s. Neither Kassák nor MA can be found
in the diagram or could be seen at the exhibition with their point of gravity in
Western Europe and the United States. As in Seuphor’s book, the only Hungar-
ian artists mentioned are Moholy-Nagy and Vilmos Huszár, close associate of
Van Doesburg in De Stijl group. Old wine in new bottles, it seems.

11  H. L. C. Jaffe, De Stijl 1917–1931, The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, Meulenhoff, Amster-
dam, 1956.
12  See www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?page=connections
[consulted 21 December 2017].

15
Kassák, MA and the constructivist “International”
Leaving historiography of the past half century for what is, a more pre-
cise look at Kassák’s role in the constructivist network of the European avant-
garde in the 1920s learns that he was anything but a negligible player in the
field. Even a superficial survey of the network of journals that constituted
the backbone of the “International”, a term used not only by Seuphor in his
retrospective, but also by Kassák in the 1920s,13 MA played a formidable, piv-
otal role in a manifold way in this configuration of “little magazines” and in
transnational Constructivism in the first half of the 1920s. Next to frequent
references to MA in other journals, its key role is maybe best illustrated by the
fact that the mentioned advertorial chart, which Kassák had designed in Fall
1922, was recreated and imitated in other journals in the mid-1920s. More­over,
MA was not just a journal, but also a press, publishing books in Hungarian as
well as in German. As for the international standing of MA as a leading voice
in the avant-garde, a panorama of the avant-garde edited by Kassák and
Moholy-Nagy and published in 1922 as well, both in Hungarian and German,
contributed considerably to the status of MA in European Constructivism: Új
művészek könyve / Buch neuer Künstler [Book of New Artists].14 Apart from a
brief introduction by Kassák, a mutus liber of “new artists” and “new art”, as
a picture book understandable even for those readers unable to understand
Hungarian or German.
There can be no doubt, that Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square was the ulti-
mate icon of Constructivism in its pertinent simplicity, frequently copied in
these constructivist journals, not just as a black square, but also in many varia-
tions. These variations indicated both allegiance with Malevich and his supre-
matist version of Constructivism and simultaneously differences in the often
indeed divergent understanding of Constructivism by the editors of the single
journals. Thus, the Berlin journal G (Material zur elementaren Gestaltung), ed-
ited by Hans Richter, as well as Theo van Doesburg’s De Stijl and Mécano allud-
ed to Malevich’s icon, but in form of a white square as reference to their own
brands of Constructivism. The editors of the Warsaw journal Blok combined
this white square with the word “construction”.15 Seuphor would combine the

13  Letter from Lajos Kassák to Theo van Doesburg, 30 September 1922. Published by Fer-
enc Csaplár (ed.), Kassák az európai avantgárd mozgalmakban, 1916–1928 [Lajos Kassák in
the European avant-garde movements, 1916–1928], Kassák Múzeum és Archívum, Budapest,
1994, 22–23.
14  Lajos Kassák–László Moholy-Nagy (eds.), Buch neuer Künstler [Book of new artists], Julius
Fischer Verlag, Wien, 1922.
15  Blok, 1/2., 1924, [8.]

16
 black square with a black circle in his journal Cercle et Carré. In Kurt Schwit-
ters’s journal Merz, both a black square and a white square appeared next to
icon-like square-shaped signs for Dada and for “Merz”, Schwitters’s personal
“Monstructivism”,16 as he occasionally called it – Kassák’s design of October 1922
might well be seen as another example following the same pattern.
The October 1922 issue of MA was the first issue of the journal in a new
shape. Instead of the common rectangular journal size used previously, from
than on MA appeared in square-shape format. Whereas this quite uncom-
mon paper size already hints in a subtle way at the icon of Constructivism, the
backside of the issue proclaims in a likewise sublimated, yet still unmistakable
way, Kassák’s allegiance to Constructivism. In form of an advertisement-like
arrangement of a dozen titles of other avant-garde journals, the association to
Constructivism is not only obvious from the choice of titles, but also in Kass-
ák’s design of the arrangement. What might look as an advertisement page,
was intended mostly certainly indeed both as a sample experiment in inno-
vative advertising design, neue Werbegestaltung, as it was called in German,
and as such from Kassák’s perspective already a sample of “constructive art”.17
Also in its lucid geometrical ordering the collage referred obviously to con-
structivist-abstract painting and design, evoking in a strongly stylized way ar-
rangements of journals on sale at newsstands, in kiosks or in bookstore win-

[3.] Advertisement of the St. Kočí bookshop in Brno, Pásmo, 1/5–6., 1924, 12., Brno

16  Serge Lemoine (éd.), Kurt Schwitters, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1994, 160–261.
17  Lajos Kassák, Die Reklame [Advertisements], Das Werk, 13/7., 226–228, here 228. English
translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, A Sourcebook of Cen-
tral-European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, LACMA–MIT Press, Cambridge–London, 2002, 621–623.

17
 dows or as intellectual pastime in some journal rack in a café or reading room.18
[Fig. 3] Together with the imprint of MA at the bottom of the page, in a way
as its foundation, in a way as its summary and bottom line, with the letters
“MA” highlighted in red, the ensemble assumes the iconic shape of a square
as well. Again, as in Buch neuer Künstler, apart from the names of the jour-
nals presented and the respective cities, where they were produced – virtually
without text, yet for any reader understandable. The ensemble was a clear-
cut programmatic statement, not just for the Hungarian readers, who might
have noticed a subtle change of the Hungarian subtitle of the journal, previ-
ously “activist journal for art and society”, from now on “international activist
art journal”, but also for an international readership, in particular for an avant-
garde minded audience.

Congenial, competing and quarrelling journals

Kassák’s abstract-stylised journal mosaic was a firstling, both in MA and in
the landscape of constructivist “little magazines”. Regular sections of “jour-
nals received” were common feature in many journals in those days as were
advertisements promoting congenial journals (and generating some takings
as well), yet not in MA. As far as MA contained advertisements, they made
“propaganda” for the journal itself, events organised by the editors and other
publications also produced with MA imprint. References to and contributions
stemming from other journals and groups could be found in MA as well, show-
ing in the years 1921–1922 a univocal turn to Constructivism (as well as to Dada
as a constructivist subsidiary).19
In this respect, Kassák’s advertorial ensemble was a novelty in MA and a
firstling of its kind as a chart being neither a section of “journals received” nor
a classic advertisement page, but rather a cautiously composed ensemble
that presented the allegiances of the journal with other like-minded journals.
In the following years, Kassák’s design was imitated and echoed by similar
charts in other journals in the constructivist network. Among others, the Ly-
onese Manomètre,20 the Polish Blok,21 Het Overzicht,22 the Yugoslavian Zenit,23

18  As in an advertisement of the Brno bookstore St. Kočí in Pásmo, 1/5–6., 1924, [12.]
19  Hubert van den Berg, Dada, Een geschiedenis [Dada, A history], Vantilt, Nijmegen, 2016,
103–119., 132–136.
20  From 1923 on, each issue of Manomètre contained a chart. Manomètre, [3]/5., 1924,
[back cover.]
21  Blok, 1/6–7., 1924, [23.]
22  Het Overzicht, 2/22–24., 1925, [back cover.]
23  Zenit, 4/25., 1924, [back cover.]

18
the Roman Noi [Us]24 and the Zurich based Das Werk [The Work]25 followed
Kassák’s example or rather examples: in following years, Kassák created new
charts himself as well in MA in 1923 and 1924 and later in Dokumentum [Doc-
ument] in 1926.26 In particular, the latter one echoed in turn in its composition
charts published in other journals in the meantime. [Figs. 4–12]

[4.] Advertisement for international avant-garde journals, Manomètre, 1/6., 1924, [unpaginated
after page 108], Lyon
[5.] Advertisement for international avant-garde journals, Blok, 1/6-7., 1924, [23.], Warsaw

Differences between the respective selections of journals in the single jour-

nals are obvious. One reason is the simple circumstance that many journals
did exist only for a short time, sometimes only appearing as a single issue.
Besides, many mention different journals that had only a local or regional, but
not a wider international circulation, like the Hungarian-written journal Út
[Road] from Novi Sad, mentioned in MA, or the Dutch journal Het Getij [The

24  From 1924 on, each issue of Noi contained a chart. Noi, 2/6–9., 1924, [back cover.]
25  Das Werk, 13/7., 1926, 235–236.
26  MA, 9/1., 1923 [12.] MA, 9/6., 1924, [16.] Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 52.

19
[6.] Tijdschriften – Revues modernistes [Journals – Modernist Journals], Het Overzicht, 2/22–24.,
1925, [back cover], Antwerpen
[7.] Revues [Journals], Zenit, 4/25., 1924 [back cover], Belgrade
[8.] Advertisement for international avant-garde journals, Noi, 2/6–9., 1924, [back cover], Rome

Tide] in the chart of Het Overzicht.27 Obvious as well are differences in the per-
sonal networks of individual editors, as in the case of Émile Malespine, who
included in his charts in Manomètre many journals from the Iberian Peninsu-
la and Latin America – a rare exception.28 Of course, differences in the charts
were an expression of individual preferences, critical reservations as well as
animosities, as there were many among the individual editors. Typical here is
the fact that Het Overzicht does not mention De Stijl – the editors could not
stand Van Doesburg, who, in turn, regarded Peters and Berckelaers as annoy-
ing regional competitors and bunglers.29 Although some charts were consid-
erably longer than others were – some competitive element seems likely, e.g.
when Blok presented in summer 1924 a chart with forty-seven titles, followed
a year later by a world map parading its global presence – there can be little
doubt that any of the charts pursued a complete mapping of the network.30
[Figs. 13–14] Their purpose was rather to signal preferences and allegiances.

27  MA, 8/1., 1922 [12.] MA, 9/1., 1923 [12.] Het Overzicht, 2/22–24., 1925, [back cover.]
28  Cf. Manomètre, [4]/8., 1925, [opposite to page 140.]
29  Cf. August Hans den Boef–Sjoerd van Faassen, Van De Stijl en Het Overzicht tot De Driehoek,
Belgisch-Nederlandse netwerken in het modernistische interbellum [From De Stijl through Het
Overzicht to De Driehoek, Belgian-Dutch networks in the modernist interwar period], Garant,
Antwerpen, 2013.
30  Blok, [1]/3–4, 1924, [11.] Blok, [2]/10., 1925, [cover.]

20
[9.] Einige zeitgemässe Zeitschriften [A few contemporary journals], Das Werk, 13/7., 1926, 235.,
Zürich

21
To some extent, an exception here was a very extensive list of journals pub-
lished by Theo van Doesburg in De Stijl in 1924.31 The list was still definitely
not complete, but Van Doesburg’s ambition is clear not only to suggest that
he and he only had the ultimate overview. Parading his worldwide contacts,
comparable with the global map in Blok, he staged himself simultaneously as
the ultimate constructivist authority by adding little crosses and/or squares to
a selection of titles indicating, whether they were basically interesting or be-
longed to his constructivist pantheon.

[10.] Az új művészet reprezentatív lapjai [Representative journals of new art], Dokumentum, 1/1.,
1926, 52., Budapest

In a similar way, such a ranking can be observed in other journals as well,

since they often contained not only charts in the footsteps of Kassák, but also
– sometimes far extensive – long lists of “journals received”, sometimes pub-
lished together on the same page or in the same issue. By exception, maybe
in response to the longlists and shortlists in other journals, Kassák published
such a list once combined with a new chart that appeared in MA in 1924.32
Between his longlist of “received journals” and the shortlist presented as ge-
ometrical arranged chart again remarkable discrepancies are apparent. Apart

31  Theo van Doesburg, Alphabetische informatie, Tijdschriften–boeken–artikelen enz. [Alpha-

betical information, Journals–books–articles etc.], De Stijl, 6/8., 1924, 410–414.
32  MA, 9/6., 1924, [16.]

22
from G (Material zur elementaren Gestaltung), all titles in the shortlist chart
are mentioned in the longlist of “journals received” as well. Already this longlist
is only selection, as can be taken from Kassák’s estate, in which many more
journals can be found, like e.g. the Danish journal Pressen [The Press], men-
tioned in longlists in Zenit and other journals, but in Kassák’s eyes apparently
not worth mentioning at all. In similar way, several of the journals mentioned
in Kassák’s longlist can be found in the charts of virtually all other journals, but
did apparently not qualify for Kassák either, at least not for a privileged double
reference, both in the longlist of “journals received” and in his shortlist chart
highlighting his favourites.

Central Europe relocated

Slightly puzzling from a present-day perspective is the absence of sever-
al Eastern-European journals, which could found in many charts, but not in
Kassák’s charts in MA: the Polish journals Zwrotnica and Blok, the Romanian
journal Contimporanul as well as the Moravian journal Pásmo, nowadays of-
ten mentioned in one breath with MA as the kernel of some “Central-Euro­
pean avant-garde”.33 The latter three appear next to several Hungarian journals
in Kassák’s 1924 longlist, but not in his shortlist, which names from (Eastern)
Central Europe only the Czech review Stavba. Whereas Zenit was mentioned
in the first chart in MA in 1922, it only returns in 1926-1927 in Dokumentum in
Kassák’s list of favourite journals, here next to Stavba, Pásmo, Contimporanul
and the new Romanian journal Integral as well as the new Slovak journal DAV.34
Polish journals remain unmentioned. Dokumentum appeared after Kassák’s
return to Budapest and he, obviously, wanted to connect with avant-garde in
neighbouring countries, all with a Hungarian population, next to other jour-
nals and groups elsewhere in Europe.
Before, still in Vienna, however, Kassák’s network had definitely a “Cen-
tral-European” character as well, however, “Central-European” not as it is de-
fined today in old Cold-War Western terms as the satellite states in the former
Eastern Bloc (or maybe more precisely: the Eastern Bloc to be) relabelled in
recent decades as “Central-Europe” to detach them from Russia. In the first
decades of the 20th century, “Central Europe” extended far more to the West,

33  E.g., Timothy O. Benson (ed.), Central European Avant-Gardes, Exchange and Transforma-
tion, 1910–1930, LACMA–MIT Press, Cambridge–London, 2002. Remarkable is here, that in Blok,
Contimporanul and Pásmo frequent references to MA can be found and texts and reproduc-
tions of art works by Kassák and other MA collaborators were reproduced.
34  Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 52.

23
[11.] Advertisement for international avant-garde journals, MA, 9/1., 1923, [back cover], Vienna

24
[12.] Advertisement for international avant-garde journals, MA, 9/6–7., 1924, [back cover], Vienna

25
[13.] Przegląd pism modernistycznych polskich i zagranicznych [An overview of Polish and
international modernist journals], Blok, 1/3–4., 1924 11., Warsaw
[14.] Dokąd Dociera Blok [Blok’s reach], Blok, 2/10., 1925, [front cover], Warsaw

26
 reaching out to the shores of the North Sea as well as to the Adriatic, as it
comprised not only the territories of the German and Austrian-Hungarian em-
pires, but still included in a common understanding of “Central Europe” the
Low Countries as well. Illustrative is a map published in Joseph Partsch’s Cen-
tral Europe in 1903,35 but also a lecture by the famous Dutch historian Johan
Huizinga thirty years later, addressing the question, whether the Netherlands
belonged to Western Europe, to Central Europe or – as he saw it then – should
be regarded as bridge in between, “as mediator between Western and Central
Europe”.36 [Fig. 15] The East-West divide of the Cold War might have turned
the Low Countries once and for all into Western-European countries and, thus,
the historical avant-garde from these countries into Western-Europe avant-
garde. The fact that Partsch’s map of Central Europe covers almost complete-
ly Kassák’s network in his Viennese years, with Paris as the exclave it was for
Central-European artists in those days, suggests that Kassák was definitely
“Central European” in contemporary terms, in the mind-set of the early-twen-
tieth century. As his explicit allegiances in his charts in MA in the years 1922–
1924 suggest, the region of “Central Europe” as some other Europe behind
some imaginary “Iron Curtain”, envisaged in the interwar period by the Pol-

[15.] Map of Central Europe, Joseph F. M. Partsch, Central Europe, Heinemann, London, 1903,
[frontispiece.]

35  Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, Heinemann, London, 1903, [frontispiece.]

36  Johan Huizinga, Dutch Civilisation in the 17th Century and other essays, Fontana–Collins,
London–Glasgow, 1968, 138–157.

27
 ish dictator Józef Piłsudski as “Intermarium”, was most certainly indeed not
Kassák’s piece of cake. In their avant-garde allegiances, Kassák and MA were
– in terms of Huizinga – rather bridge in-between. Mediating were Kassák and
MA also in other respects.

“Avant-garde” versus “avant-garde”

In 1922, several attempts had been made to establish a “Constructivist Inter­
national” as an organisational umbrella to unite different groups and journals
with constructivist leanings, initially at a meeting in Düsseldorf, where the lo-
cal modern artist’s association The Joung Rheinland, together with a consor-
tium of other artist’s German associations had organised an international and
congress to come to a “Union of international progressive artists” in Düsseldorf
in May 1922.37 Constructivist minded groups, with artists around De Stijl, the
Russian journal Вещь/Objet/Gegenstand [Object] published in Berlin and MA
as initiators tried to use the opportunity of the meeting to come to a “Con-
structivist International”.38 This attempt failed and second attempt in form of
an “international congress of constructivists and dadaists” organised by Theo
van Doesburg on the doorsteps of the Bauhaus in Weimar was no success
either.39
The attempts to establish a “Constructivist International” in 1922 did fail
largely as a result of conflicting opinions concerning the question, how this ar-
tistic “International” had to be positioned next to the communist “Third Inter-
national”, which claimed to be the ultimate “avant-garde” both in politics and
in cultural affairs as well. The question, to what extent, art in general and Con-
structivism in particular had to be subordinate to the “dictatorship of the prole-
tariat” and to follow instructions from the communist party as the “avant-gar-
de of working class” in Leninist terms, led to fierce debate and a fundamental

37  Bernd Finkeldey–Kai-Uwe Hemken–Maria Müller–Rainer Stommer (eds.), K.I. Konstruktivis-

tische Internationale schöpferische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (1922–1927), Utopien für eine europäis-
che Kultur [K.I. Constructivist international creative working community (1922–1927), Utopias for
a European culture], Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen–Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Düs-
seldorf–Halle, 1992.
38  Cf. De Stijl, “Congress issue”, 5/4., 1922; De Stijl, “Constructivist International issue”, 5/8., 1922.
39  Gerda Wendermann, Der Internationale Kongress der Konstruktivisten und Dadaisten
in Weimar im September 1922, Versuch einer Chronologie der Ereignisse [The international
congress of constructivists and Dadaists in Weimar in September 1922, Attempt at a chronology
of events], in Hellmut Seemann (ed.), Europa in Weimar, Visionen eines Kontinents [Europe in
Weimar, Visions of a continent], Wallstein, Göttingen, 2008, 375–398.

28
split among constructivist artists throughout Europe.40 It also caused a split
between Kassák and other editors of MA, who started new journals, Akasz-
tott ember [The Hanged Man] and Egység [Unity], promoting “proletarian art”.
Kassák countered their move by a single-issue journal entitled 2×2, certainly
not accidentally to be found in the middle of his first chart in MA in October
1922. 2×2, co-edited with Andor Németh, contained the Hungarian translation
of an article by the German anarchist Gustav Landauer. Published originally
in Landauer’s journal Der Sozialist [The Socialist] in 1911 as a polemical con-
tribution on the question, whether engaged art should subordinate to pro-
letarian taste – an issue in the socialist movement already a decade before.41
Landauer’s stand was unequivocal: he rejected any “dilettantism” to meet
the popular taste of uneducated masses, proletarian or otherwise. Landauer
had been People’s Commissar for Education and Cultural Affairs [Volksbeauf-
tragten für Volksaufklärung] in the First Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and
was murdered by a right-wing militia during the suppression of the commu-
nist ruled Second Soviet Republic in the same year. Landauer had always been
very critical about Marxist Socialism and authoritarian tendencies in the social-
ist movement. Both Németh and Kassák were undoubtedly aware of Landau-
er’s political stand and the choice to translate his article from 1911, reprinted in
1921 in the book Der werdende Mensch [The Expectant Man], edited by Martin
Buber, was certainly consciously chosen.42 No less consciously chosen were
the names of three journals in the advertorial ensemble of October 1922, which
did not have a constructivist character: Die Aktion [The Action], Der Gegner
[The Opponent], and Clarté [Clarity]. All were devoted to socially engaged art
and all three representing different strands of left-wing politics with a revolu-
tionary tendency. Der Gegner as journal of the Malik Press was closely related
to the German Communist Party, Die Aktion, originally an expressionist jour-
nal, had transformed itself in a platform for a council-communism critical of
the authoritarian course in Soviet Russia. Clarté was the journal of a French-

40  Cf. Hubert van den Berg, The Import of Nothing, How Dada came, saw and vanished in
the Low Countries (1915–1925), G. K. Hall, New York, 2002, 163–171. Oliver A. I. Botar, From the
Avant-Garde to ‘Proletarian Art’. The Émigré Hungarian Journals Egység and Akasztott ember,
1922–23, Art Journal, 52/1., 1993, 34–45. Whereas Botar’s title suggests an opposition between
“avant-garde” and “proletarian” art, also the proponents of the latter understood their concep-
tions of art as “avant-garde” – even more “avant-garde” than the “pure art” proposed by their
opponents.
41  Gustav Landauer, Vom Dilettantismus [On dilettantism], Der Sozialist, 3/2., 1911, 13–16.
Gustav Landauer, A dilettantizmusról [On dilettantism], 2×2, 1/1., 1922, 3–4.
42  Gustav Landauer, Der werdende Mensch [The Expectant man], Kiepenheuer, Potsdam,
1921, 311–341.

29
based, but internationally active movement advocating progressive interna-
tionalism in a more independent way, yet close to Communism. In particular,
Clarté is not a journal nowadays regarded as avant-garde journal anymore.
Again, similar to the case of “Central Europe”, a major difference between
artistic “avant-garde” in our present-day understanding (basically following
the definition by Greenberg as movements involved in aesthetic “formal” ex-
perimentation and abstraction) and “avant-garde” as it was conceived in the
early 1920s.

Aesthetic and social avant-garde reconciled?

In one of the first comprehensive accounts of the contemporary artistic
“avant-garde” as “avant-garde”, published as a series of articles, Revue der
avant-garde [Review of avant-garde], in the Dutch journal Het Getij in 1921–
1922, Theo van Doesburg defines “avant-garde” not a utopian project and an
“international of the spirit”.43 “Avant-garde! Vanguard!” was, according to Van
Doesburg, the slogan and battle cry “under which all modern and ultramodern
groups of the whole world are marching towards a completely new expression
in all forms of art”. This “unorderly” international, as he put it, “possesses no
other code of order than the inner urge, to give life an ideal-realist expression
and interpret in art life in a purely aesthetic way”. Here, Van Doesburg’s con-
ception might seem close to Greenberg’s. However, Van Doesburg believed
that “pure art” could and would achieve its utopian mission by advancing a
better future to humankind. In other words, “pure art” still had a political mis-
sion and was not just self-referential art for art’s sake. Moreover, Van Doesburg
conceded that he and other artists pursuing “pure art” were just one wing of a
much broader movement. In this movement, he argued, “avant-garde” served
as “the collective denomination for all revolutionary artist’s groups”, “both on
social and on aesthetic terrain”.44 “One can divide the whole avant-garde in
two major formations, one constituting the aesthetic, and one the social wing”,
Van Doesburg stressed, borrowing a distinction made by Maurice Wullens,
editor of the French literary journal Les Humbles [The Humble]. Wullens re-
ferred to the aesthetic wing as “avant-garde of pure art” and the social wing
as “avant-garde of ideas” with many artists somewhere in the middle, as Van
Doesburg added.45

43  Theo van Doesburg: Revue der avant-garde [Review of avant-garde], Het Getij, 6/1., 1921,
109–112, here 109.
44  Ibid.
45  Ibid., 110.

30
 Nowadays accounts of the “historical avant-garde” would rarely refer to Les
Humbles, a literary journal with a focus on social critique and a platform of
the Clarté movement, as an “avant-garde” journal. Next to Les Humbles, Van
Doesburg likewise mentions Clarté, Die Aktion and Der Gegner as journals
of the “social avant-garde”.46 Here it might be obvious that Kassák is one of
the artists somewhere in between the “aesthetic” and “social” wings, regard-
ing himself a “social artist” creating “constructive art”, as he proclaimed in his
essay on advertising in Das Werk in 1926.47 The advertorial chart of October
1922 documents the same ambition to reconcile and reunite both wings in
and through his journal. Whether Kassák managed to accommodate the so-
cial and aesthetic wings of the “International of the spirit” in MA might seem
doubtful. In another way, he was more successful to create some cohesion in
the “unorderly International”.
The failure to establish a “Constructivist International” after the Düssel-
dorf congress or in Weimar was certainly not only due to different opinions
on politics and aesthetics, but also to a clash of oversized egos and conflict-
ing leadership ambitions. Here, one could argue that Kassák succeeded with
his advertorial of October 1922 and the impact it had, where initiatives in the
preceding months had failed. Instead of a single organisation, in which individ-
ual (groups around) journals had to give up their autonomy and subordinate
under some overarching leadership, his chart replaced this impossible project
by a first declaration of intent, cautiously avoiding any suggestion to usurp
other groups, journals or initiatives. Echoing Kassák’s sample, similar decla-
rations of intent in the form of similar charts in other journals led to the for-
mation of a loosely associated, but still firmly connected “International” with
a network character. The fact that Kassák’s sample was echoed in many other
journals in the following and the fact that MA can be found in charts through-
out the network of constructivist journals, also in journals not mentioned by
Kassák in his own charts, are undoubtedly indicative for his pivotal role in this
“International”. Not in some supreme leadership role as Van Doesburg had as-
pired in his plans of a “Constructivist International”, but rather by launching an
“International” of a different kind in a more subtle way and participating in this
“International” as a “social artist” next to others in pursuit of “constructive art”.

46  Ibid., 111. Theo van Doesburg, Revue der avant-garde, Duitschland [Review of avant-garde,
Germany], Het Getij, 6/2., 1921, 193–200, here 199.
47  Lajos Kassák, Die Reklame, op. cit., 228.

31
[1.] Die Aktion, 4/42–43., 1914, [front cover with Egon Schiele’s portrait of the poet Charles
Péguy, who was killed at the beginning of the First World War], Berlin
[2.] Dénes Rónai, Portrait of Lajos Kassák, Budapest, 1915, photograph, Petőfi Literary Museum
(PIM)–Kassák Museum, Budapest
[3.] Unknown photographer, Portrait of Emil Szittya, Paris [?], around 1906, photograph, Zoltán
Földvári’s collection, Budapest
[4.] Új Nemzedék, 1/45., 1914, [front cover], Budapest

32
Eszter Balázs
Avant-garde and radical anti-war dissent in Hungary –
A Tett (1915–1916)

Kassák launched his first journal, A Tett [The Action], on 1 November 1915. It was
the first Hungarian-language avant-garde journal, and it took a radically anti-
war stance. The choice of the name for an art-based journal ironically echoed
the usage of the same word in the war-party discourse, where the “act of war”
(battlefield) was contrasted with the “word” (hinterland). For A Tett, it alluded to
the creative nature of the artistic process, the way art connects to ordinary life
and helps shape society, and the anti-war stance of the editors. By taking up the
international orientation of pre-war modernism, the journal was a rare exam-
ple of resistance to the intellectual isolationism encouraged by the wartime at-
mosphere. Its direct source of inspiration may be traced to the German Expres-
sionist and anti-militarist weekly Die Aktion [The Action].1 [Fig. 1] A Tett’s founder,
editor-in-chief and publisher, Lajos Kassák, was already well-known in lit-
erary circles for his poetry and short stories. [Fig. 2] The journal’s editorial
staff included several young poets, critics and social scientists at the start
of the careers, although some were already quite well known. They includ-
ed Mátyás György, Aladár Komját, József Lengyel, János Mácza, Tivadar
Raith, Vilmos Rozványi, Imre Vajda, and Kassák’s sister Erzsi Újvári. Its read-
ers were mainly freethinking-radical young people, some with a Marxist
orientation, who had gathered together to agitate against the war in the
Galileo Circle. The journal had a print run of 500–1000 and maintained it-
self almost exclusively from the cover price, as it had almost no advertisers.
The authorities first imposed restrictions on its distribution, and after a year
of publication, in autumn 1916, when censorship was tightened in wartime
Hungary, finally banned it.

Kassák’s road to launching A Tett

Leaving school early, Kassák started work as an apprentice blacksmith at
the age of twelve, and between 1905 and 1909 worked in factories in Győr and
the outer districts of Budapest, Újpest and Angyalföld. He joined one of the
workers’ associations of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, but according

1  The German expressionist journal Die Aktion (1911–1932) was the most prominent anti-mili-
tarist press organ in the First World War. Its founding editor was Franz Pfemfert. The inference
that it was the main intellectual model for Kassák and associates is drawn mainly from writing
published in A Tett.

33
 War culture(s)
The ‘war culture’ is a concept coined by the historians of the Péronne His-
torial Museum of the Great War in France (Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and
Annette Becker).1 It refers to the totalization of war promoted by the dis-
courses, representations, behaviours and practices that characterized the
societies involved in the First World War. The main themes of the ‘war cul-
ture’ are glorification of the homeland, elevation of patriotic values, praise of
allies, legitimation of violence and hatred between nations. Recently, how-
ever, it has become more usual to talk of ‘war culture(s)’, the plural allowing
us to develop a more differentiated picture of how different nations, social
groups or even individuals related to the war. Although the ‘war culture’ or
‘war cultures’ took general hold almost from one day to the next, we also
find examples – very few, at first – of rejection of war rhetoric and opposition
to the war. Kassák himself initially helped to shape the ‘war culture’, like
the majority of intellectuals in Hungary and, indeed, all over Europe. Only a
few months later, however, he turned his back on war-spurring rhetoric and
progressively took up combative anti-militarism. This was to pervade the
whole mentality of his journal. Despite its tiny circulation and – set against
the enormous power of the press and institutions promoting the ‘war cul-
ture’ – its presumably almost imperceptible influence on public opinion, the
government could not tolerate even this tiny level of dissent and banned
the journal in 1916. After Kassák launched his next journal, MA [Today], in
autumn the same year, things began to change. Over the next two years,
war fever gradually subsided all over Europe and the desire for peace, even
in Hungary, became more openly expressed. MA ran without disturbance
until the end of the war.

1  See, e.g., Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau–Annette Becker, 1914–1918, Understanding the Great

War, Profile, London, 2002, 102–103.

34
to his autobiography, was highly critical of the party’s rigidity and political
opportunism. In 1909, disillusioned with workers’ institutions and workers’
groups, he set off – on foot, and with no money – for Paris. On his way, he met
Emil Szittya, a Hungarian vagabond, who was well informed in politics and
the arts and knew his way around Europe. [Fig. 3] He was later to be involved
in the launch of A Tett by providing the idea and the launch funding for the
journal.2 On his return from Paris, Kassák was unable to fit back into his old life
of work and activism. Instead of manual labour performed in fixed working
hours, he saw informal creative activity as the key to freedom.3 His guiding
vision from that time onwards was of an organic and dynamic, but not regu-
lated, group of men and women. He rebelled against the social order and con-
ventional artistic ideals, whether these stemmed from the “bourgeois world”
or the ideology of the Social Democratic Party. After a great workers’ demon-
stration in Budapest came to a bloody end in 1912, he finally turned away from
workers-movement politics and felt that he could best continue the strug-
gle in the literary arena. He attended lectures at the Társadalomtudományok
Szabad Iskolája [Social Sciences Free School], and submitted his first writing
to literary journals and the socialist press.4 The success of these attempts
led, just before the outbreak of the First World War, to an invitation by István
Milotay to publish in Új Nemzedék [New Generation],5 a political, economic
and literary weekly that had been launched in 1913. [Fig. 4] Új Nemzedék linked
the demands of independence with those of democracy, but also gave space
to Anti-Semitic voices, and these strengthened during the First World War.
Although it was not a war-party newspaper at the beginning, it accepted the
war as an irrevocable fact and, after a while, started to support the war effort.
Kassák adapted to the spirit of Új Nemzedék, and the subjects, style and phra-

2  Emil Szittya, born Adolf Schenk (1886–1964) was a writer, graphic artist and painter. He pub-
lished together with Hugo Kersten an anti-war journal in Switzerland in 1915, Der Mistral (Jour-
nal littéraire de guerre). See Zoltán Rockenbauer, Szittya Emil és a képzőművészet [Emil Szittya
and art], Enigma, 24/90., 2017, 89–104. Magdolna Gucsa, Szittya Emil – a határsértés mint élet-
modell [Emil Szittya – crossing borders as a life model], Helikon, 63/1., 2017, 110–117.
3  Eszter Balázs, Baloldaliság és munkásszubkultúra Kassák Egy ember élete című önélet­
írásában az első világháborúig [Left-wing sympathies and workers’ subculture in Kassák’s auto-
biography The Life of a Man up to the First World War], Múltunk, 58/2., 2013, 83–105.
4  Founded in 1906, the Social Sciences Free School combined the workers’ courses ran by the
“bourgeois democrats”and Oszkár Jászi’s sociological studies (all of them were founders of the
Bourgeois Radical Party in 1914). It consisted of weekly lectures, mainly for workers and, after
1912, for young people of the Galileo Circle.
5  Letter from István Milotay to Lajos Kassák, Budapest, 14 July 1914. KM-lev. 323. Petőfi Literary
Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest. Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete [The Life of a Man], vol. II.,
Magvető, Budapest, 1983, 218.

35
 seology of the pro-war popular press of that time all show up in his writing. In
September 1914, he still expected a sweeping success for the Central Powers,
“turbulence” in Russia and the collapse of the French Republic.6 In an editorial
of 4 October 1914, he spoke openly of victory for the Central Powers, and had
a vision of the crumbling of all “Latin” Europe. He wrote of Germany as be-
ing the ideal state “against Tsarist barbarism and French decadence”, with a
strong sense of community, youthful strength and social solidarity.7 Echoing
the war-party press of Europe, Kassák stood on the side of the Germans in the
French-German civilizational conflict, but praised Paris for its universalism, in
contrast with rural France, just as Endre Ady had done in the leading mod-
ernist literary journal, Nyugat [West] in September 1914.8 Like all of his phrases,
this drew on the ‘war culture’ rhetoric that Hungarian intellectuals had made
their own, and echoed the language of Hungarian Paris-admirers like the poet
Endre Ady and the writer György Bölöni, who continued to uphold the vir-
tues of French culture in the early months of war euphoria. This distinguished
them from several writers, such as Géza Laczkó, Dezső Kosztolányi and Ferenc
Herczeg, who compromised themselves by denouncing the French culture of
which they had been prominent conduits for many years.
Kassák’s early writing displays war rhetoric that matched the public mood.
It was not free of incitement to hatred, talking of the war as a struggle that is
“ridding us of the constantly discontented barbarian eccentrics”, a reference
to Serbia, the enemy that attracted the most hatred in Hungary at the start
of the war.9 At the beginning, therefore, Kassák followed many other left-wing
intellectuals in backing the war-propaganda arguments (and hope for a better
society by the end the conflict). He sometimes even took positions similar to
those of war-party writers who were close to the government and had a fun-
damentally different outlook from his own.
Kassák’s pro-war journalistic writing in this period stands in striking con-
tradiction to the critical tone he struck in his poetry. In October 1914, at the
same time as his article Antwerpen, which ardently stoked hopes of military

6  Lajos Kassák, Az orosz forradalom lehetősége [The possibility of a Russian revolution], Új

Nemzedék, 1/38., 1914, 5–6. Lajos Kassák, Egy új francia forradalom perspektívájában [Prospects
for a new French revolution], Új Nemzedék, 1/39., 1914, 6–8.
7  Lajos Kassák, A háború értéke nálunk és – náluk [The value of the war for us – and for them],
Új Nemzedék, 1/41., 1914, 1–3.
8  Lajos Kassák, Egy csavargó noteszkönyvéből I. (A német és francia csavargó-világ) [From a
vagabond’s notebook I. (The world of vagabonds in Germany and France)], Új Nemzedék, 1/45.,
1914, 8–9.
9  Lajos Kassák, A háború értéke nálunk és – náluk, op. cit., 3.

36
victory,10 his expressionist poem Marsisten nyája [The Herd of the God Mars]
showed signs of his contradictory feelings towards the war.11 Two issues lat-
er, in Harangok éneke [The Song of the Bells], he completely overcame his
doubts and asserted the incompatibility of poetry and war.12 In spring 1915,
he published a whole book of poems he had written since the start of the
war.13 The title poem Éposz Wagner maszkjában [Epic in Wagner’s Mask],
featuring a series of expressionist images, places the emphasis, in line with
the avant-garde programme, on the process of artistic creation. [Fig. 5] These
poems also demonstrate how, in the early months of the conflict, the differ-
ent kinds of expression inherent in two literary genres – journalism and poet-
ry – could allow the same author to manifest divergent attitudes to the war.
Several authors, despite supporting specific war efforts in their journalistic writ-

[5.] Lajos Kassák, Éposz Wagner maszkjában [Epic in Wagner’s Mask], Hunnia, Budapest, 1915,
[front cover with József Sztanek’s illustration]

10  K. L. [Lajos Kassák], Följegyzések, Antwerpen [Notes, Antwerp], Új Nemzedék, 1/42., 1914, 4–5.
11  Lajos Kassák, Marsisten nyája [The herd of the god Mars], Ibid., 7–8.
12  Lajos Kassák, Harangok éneke [The song of the bells], Új Nemzedék, 1/44., 1914, 9.
13  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit., 186–188.

37
 ing, had no trouble in giving expression to doubts – and even criticism of war in
general – in their poetry. Amidst the ‘war culture’ rhetoric that dominated the
public discourse, poetry was more suitable than journalistic writing – which
was easier to censor – as a medium for expressing doubts on the current state
of the war. (Nonetheless, poems judged by the censor to be encouraging re-
fusal to serve at the front, such as Mihály Babits’ Játszottam a kezével [I Played
with her Hand], set off scandals at this time.14) Kassák was not the only writer
– several Nyugat contributors were among them – who found poetry to be the
best medium for criticizing the war in public, and letters for doing so in private.
Correspondence of writers and intellectuals bear this out. Kassák, for example,
in his correspondence with writer Dezső Szabó in April 1915, described himself
as “cowering, friendless and alone, in the roaring torrent of blood”.15

The radical anti-war stance of A Tett

It was with the launch of his own journal, A Tett, in autumn 1915, that Kassák
became a radical anti-militarist. He perceptively realized that he needed a
channel of his own to develop the principles of his anti-war programme, which
involved a line of thought that could not be integrated into existing periodi-
cals, or only at the expense of compromises. Kassák and his co-editors also set
the direct objective of transforming society by artistic means, and this directly
implied their anti-war stance. [Figs. 6–7]
Even in the first issue, Kassák and his associates interpreted the slaughter of
the war – which the war-party press was trying to present as proof of the Hun-
garian people’s preparedness to make sacrifices – as destruction. In his prose
poem Fejfa [Epitaph], Kassák described war as a periodic catastrophe.16 This
voice and attitude may be regarded as one of the first signs of intellectual de-
mobilization, a loss of enthusiasm for the war that took place throughout Eu-
rope, but only in a few cases – like Kassák’s – did it go so far as public rejection.17
Although the fundamental values of life come into focus during every
armed conflict, and the simultaneous portrayal of eros and thanatos during
the First World War was not a new phenomenon, the themes of libido, sexual-
ity and death took on a special significance then, as reflected by many articles
in A Tett. Bodily suffering was much more widespread and painful in the First
14  Mihály Babits, Játszottam a kezével [I played with her hand], Nyugat, 8/16., 1915, 884–885.
15  Letter from Lajos Kassák to Dezső Szabó, Budapest, 15 April 1915. KM-lev. 381/1.
Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest.
16  Tamás Föld [Lajos Kassák], Fejfa [Epitaph], A Tett, 1/1., 1915, 11–12.
17  See, e.g., Peter Parent, German Encounters with Modernism, 1840–1945, Cambridge UP,
Cambridge, 2001, 140.

38
 World War than ever before, and the new combat techniques took destruction
to new levels. The aesthetic of heroism and the slogans of battlefield courage
lost their credibility for many people. Kassák’s journal signalled a change that
was going on throughout Europe. The suffering of the male and – to a less-
er extent – the female body became the subject of many poems and stories.
Writing that looked on erotica and the body as a source of vitality and energy
inherently rejected a favourite theme in the official war-party discourse – the
juxtaposition of the masculine front and the feminine hinterland. By giving
women authors the opportunity to express themselves and write opinions in
the journal, Kassák and associates were representing, in the cataclysm of war,
“a new model of companionable relations between the sexes”.18 This openness
was a great step towards publishing women authors on equal terms, but it
was not free of contradictions. For example, Kassák and other authors some-
times resorted to misogynist rhetoric in their rejection of “bourgeois art”, call-
ing it “feminine”, and thus of less value.
The editorial staff of A Tett also drew lessons from the overwhelming public
influence of war-party writers and intellectuals through their domination of
the press and other channels of mass communication. This was a pan-Euro-
pean phenomenon. Kassák and associates attempted to stand up to them
and to voice dissent against the ‘war culture’ in general. In autumn 1915, when
the editor Jenő Rákosi launched a campaign against writers and intellectuals
having the audacity to criticize the war (the Ady–Rákosi dispute), the poet and
journalist Zoltán Franyó, who happened to be on leave from the front, wrote
an article for A Tett defending Rákosi’s targets (the censor deleted a part of the
text).19 Similarly, Károly Gallovich satirized the heroic cult surrounding intellec-
tuals who fell on the battlefield.20
A Tett authors steadfastly attacked art that was put into the service of Hun-
garian war propaganda, and regularly targeted what they saw as intellectual

18  On this pattern, see Birthe Kundrus, Gender Wars, The First World War and the Construc-
tion of Gender Relations in the Weimar Republic, in Karen Hagemann–Stefanie Schüler-Sprin-
gorum (eds.), Home/Front, The Military, War and Gender in 20th Century Germany, Berg,
Oxford–New York, 2002, 167. Györgyi Földes, Avantgárd, nők, háború, Ujvári Erzsi és Réti Irén az
aktivista folyóiratokban [Avant-garde, women, war, Erzsi Ujvári and Irén Réti in activist journals],
in András Kappanyos (ed.), Emlékezés egy nyár-éjszakára, Interdiszciplináris tanulmányok 1914
mikrotörténelméről [Memories of a summer night, Interdisciplinary essays on the micro-history
of 1914], MTA, Budapest, 2015, 195–208. György Kálmán C., Élharcok és arcélek [Front lines and
profiles], Balassi, Budapest, 2008, 32–49.
19  Zoltán Franyó, Néhány gorombaság az igazság nevében [Some coarseness in the name of
truth], A Tett, 1/1., 1915, 18–19.
20  Károly Gallovich, Még egyszer Zubolyról [On Zuboly, once again], Ibid., 19–20.

39
conformism. The Expressionist painter Béla Uitz rejected the revision of Hun-
garian painting to meet war-party demands.21 Kassák reproached the Fiatalok
[the Young Ones] artists’ group for being apolitical and for displaying a con-
formism that was incongruent with their chosen name.22 At the Spring Exhi-
bition of 1916, Uitz attacked the same group for dilettantism and shallowness.23
The journal also put much effort into exposing war patriotism that exploited
the cult of Shakespeare. As in Germany, “official” writers and intellectuals used
the widespread appreciation of Shakespeare, which had a long history in Hun-
gary, to argue against accusations of barbarism.24 All of the warring countries
set themselves up as the defenders of European values, but particularly after
the German invasion of Belgium, the Central Powers were regularly described
in the press of Entente and neutral countries as being “barbaric”, prompting
attempts to rid themselves of this label. Scholarly bodies in Hungary took an
enthusiastic part in devising and deploying a strategy by which Shakespeare
was commandeered for purposes of the war. The primary message was that,
because England had sunk into barbarism, the countries worthy of repre-
senting the great figure of world literature were the Central Powers. In A Tett,
the critic Imre Wirkmann scorned the anniversary celebrations planned by
the academic Kisfaludy Society’s Shakespeare Committee as an “extravagan-
za” and “fireworks”. Instead of “nauseating glorification”, he urged a scholarly
approach.25
A Tett articles were silent on war-party authors, whose propagandist output
was probably regarded as beneath comment. The aestheticist writers whom
Kassák and his fellow writers labelled “the Impressionists”, such as Tamás
Emőd, Ákos Dutka and Ernő Szép,26 were denounced as “conformist” for their
war-related work, and Béla Balázs, who had formerly been close to Nyugat,

21  Béla Uitz, A Fiatalok két tárlaton [The “Young ones” at two exhibitions], A Tett, 1/4., 1915, 68.
22  Kassák Lajos, Politika? Művészet? [Politics? Art?], A Tett, 2/12., 1916, 185–187.
23  Béla Uitz, Czigány és Csaba a tavaszi tárlaton [Czigány and Csaba at the spring exhibition],
Ibid., 200.
24  On the wartime cult of Shakespeare, see Eszter Balázs, “War Stars at Us like an Ominous
Sphynx”, Hungarian Intellectuals, Literature and the Image of the Other (1914–1915), in Lawrence
Rosenthal–Vesna Rodic (eds.), The New Nationalism and the First World War, Palgrave Macmil-
lan, New York, 2015, 99–102.
25  Imre Wirkmann, A Kisfaludysták Shakespeare-cécójához [To the Kisfaludyists’ Shake-
speare-extravaganza], A Tett, 2/14., 1916, 225–227.
26  Imre Wirkmann, Emőd Tamás: Dicséret, dicsőség és Dutka Ákos: Az yperni Krisztus előtt
[Review of Tamás Emőd: Praise, glory and Ákos Dutka: Before the Christ of Ypres], A Tett, 2/11.,
1916, 184. Imre Wirkmann, Szép Ernő: Élet, halál [Review of Ernő Szép: Life, death], A Tett, 2/13.,
1916, 224.

40
was attacked for aestheticizing the war.27 Kassák and associates thus criticized
modernist writers not just on aesthetic grounds, but also for contributing to
the ‘war culture’.
Aladár Komját’s verses ironically adjusted army songs and poems, items of
popular culture that identified with the culture of sacrifice.28 The war-party in-
tellectuals looked on these as evidence of the public willingness to make sac-
rifices, and private and government funds were made available for systematic
collection of the songs. A Tett also pilloried the glorification of the heroism of
the Hungarian peasants. The sociologist Imre Vajda, for example, satirized this
theme in the work of “conservative poets”.29
Other pieces caricatured the favourite subjects of official war-party literary
journals. One of these was the “fall of individualism” in favour of communality,
widely seen as a beneficial consequence of the war. It is significant that the
author of the journal’s opening article was Dezső Szabó, who was known for
his criticism of individualism.30 Kassák’s choice of Szabó betrays his own con-
tradictory views on the subject, stemming in part from his ideas for building
a movement. Several other articles denied the failure of individualism,31 and
after a while, Kassák – as is borne out by his manifesto of March 1916 – reso-
lutely stood up for individual values and thus for the ideal of artistic freedom.32
He asserted the international nature of literature and the arts and put forward
the idea of “new art”, a reference to the “new literature” previously propagat-
ed by Nyugat, but extended to other branches of the arts. He also outlined
his programme for “non-party political commitment”33 and autonomy of the
arts, coupled with a demand for an influential role in public affairs.34 Kassák
also designated for his own movement the points of orientation characteris-

27  Ferenc Koszoru, Balázs Béla: Lélek a háborúban [Review of Béla Balázs: The soul in war],
A Tett, 2/14., 1916, 246.
28  Aladár Komját, Katonadalok 1916-ban (Iskolai olvasókönyvek számára) [Army songs in 1916
(For school readers)], A Tett, 2/12., 1916, 188–189. Dániel Szabó, Katonadalok és az első világháború
[Army songs and the First World War], Aetas, 22/1., 2007, 44–62.
29  Imre Vajda, Dózsa György ébresztése [The awakening of György Dózsa], A Tett, 2/7., 1916,
101–102.
30  See, e.g., Dezső Szabó, A francia pszichéhez [On the French psyche], Huszadik Század, 16/1.,
1915, 38–44. Idem, Az individualizmus csődje [The collapse of individualism], Huszadik Század,
16/8., 1915, 81–94.
31  Zoltán Haraszti, A betűktől az istenig [From the alphabet to God], A Tett, 1/3., 1915, 38. Imre
Vajda, Dózsa György ébresztése, op. cit., 101–102.
32  Lajos Kassák, Programm [Program], A Tett, 2/10., 1916, 153–155. English translation in Timo-
thy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, A Sourcebook of Central-European Avant-
Gardes, 1910–1930, LACMA–MIT Press, Cambridge–London, 2002, 160–162.
33  György Kálmán C., Élharcok és arcélek, op. cit., 23.
34  Kassák Lajos, Programm, op. cit., 155.

41
tic of contemporary avant-garde movements: the search for the transcendent
and the scientific approach. This implied openness to the sciences, but also
to spiritualism, eroticism and technical developments, and the need to help
society and individuals release their creative strengths.

The international horizon of A Tett

A Tett gave space for representatives of current Western ‘isms’ ranging from
French Post-Symbolism to Italian Futurism and German Expressionism,35 re-
gardless of their stances regarding the war. Walt Whitman, the father of free
verse, was also an important intellectual point of reference for the journal.36
The journal’s internationalism clearly declared its affinity to the European
avant-garde networks, although it was not connected to them.
Kassák considered the sweeping vitality shared by representatives of all
the ‘isms’ to be a force that counteracted the extreme regulation of society.
He based this view primarily on the anti-rationalist philosophy of Henri Berg-
son, the idea that everything was under the influence of the dynamics of en-
ergy and flow. As Merse Pál Szeredi has shown, the originals of many of the
translations published in A Tett had been published before the war. Their pres-
ence reflects Kassák’s interest in the intellectual currents of the French avant-
garde around 1909, connected with Post-Symbolism and Henri Bergson’s Anti-
Rationalism.37 The journal even gave space to the Futurists: Libero Altomare
and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose 1911–1912 poem Csata (Súly+Szag) [Bat-
tle (Weight+Smell)] celebrating the Italo-Turkish War appeared without any
critical comments.38 By omitting to introduce Marinetti to readers or even give
the name of the translator, Kassák displayed a contradictory attitude to Fu-
turism and to Marinetti: he was attracted by this new form of artistic expres-
sion, but rejected its militarism.39 Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, the critic
of French Cubist painters and avant-garde poet, also appeared in the journal,
but his wartime patriotism, unlike that of Marinetti, was probably unknown
to Kassák.40 The Polish-born Apollinaire entered the French army in return for

(eds.), Signal to the World, War ⋂ Avant-Garde ⋂ Kassák, Kassák Foundation, Budapest, 2016, 70.
35  Merse Pál Szeredi, The international horizon of A Tett, in Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi

36  Walt Whitman, Könnyek [Tears], translated by Andor Halasi, A Tett, 1/4., 1915, 62.
37  Merse Pál Szeredi, The international horizon of A Tett, op. cit., 71–72.
38  F. T. Marinetti, Csata (Súly+Szag) [Battle (Weight+Smell)], [translated by Aladár Komját],
A Tett, 2/15., 1916, 251–253.
39  Kassák Lajos, Programm, op. cit., 154.
40  Guillaume Apollinaire, Saint-Merry muzsikusa [The musician of Saint-Merry], translated by
Tivadar Raith, A Tett, 1/1., 1915, 8–10. Lajos Kassák, A magyar avantgard három folyóirata [Three
journals of the Hungarian avant-garde], Helikon, 10/2–3., 1964, 221.

42
[6.] A Tett, 1/1., 1915, [front cover with Pál Pátzay’s illustration], Budapest

43
 French citizenship, and his poems sent from the front both applauded and
criticized the war.41
On 2 October 1916, A Tett was banned under a 1912 law (Act LXIII.) on the
grounds that it “endangered the interests of warfare”.42 The offending articles
had appeared a few months previously in the “International issue”, an attempt
by Kassák “to present the journal as part of an international pacifist network
(citing Romain Rolland, Hall Caine and Karl Liebknecht)”.43 The inclusion of
three Russians (Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Artsybashev, Nikolai Kulbin), two
French (Paul Fort, Georges Duhamel), a Belgian (Émile Verhaeren), a “South
Slav” (Ivan Meštrović), a “Brit” (Bernard Shaw), an Italian (Libero Altomare) and
a German anti-war activist (Ludwig Rubiner) was in itself a courageous act
and a combative stance against the war, because all except one were citizens
of countries at war with the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy or neutral countries
sympathetic to its enemies.44
There were also reproductions of three foreign artworks in the ill-fated issue:
The Dispute, a graphic work by the Russian Futurist Nikolai Kulbin, a Pietà by
the Croatian-born Ivan Meštrović (who was described as “Serbian” in A Tett),45
and an African tribal mask, reproduced after the cover of Negerplastik [Negro
Sculpture] by the German art critic Carl Einstein.46 In addition to emphasizing
the equal rank and contemporariness of so-called “primitive cultures”, these
confronted the ‘war culture’ that pervaded the governments and press of the
Central Powers. The press of the Central Powers had been scathing about the
hundreds of thousands of soldiers enlisted from the Entente colonies, using
them as a means of throwing back the accusation of barbarism. Although the
Pietà was a favourite theme of religious patriotism during the war, the term
“Serbian” referred to an enemy against whom fighting was in progress and
must have seemed deliberately provocative to the Hungarian censors.
The publication of such scandalous works of art had already resulted in
sanctions for A Tett. In the second issue, the Expressionist picture showing the

41  Kenneth E. Silver, Esprits de corps, The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World
War, 1914–1925, Thames and Hudson, London, 1989, 38–43.
42  On the prosecutor’s ruling that imposed the ban, see 5484/1914 M.E. KM-an. 10/1. Petőfi
Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest.
43  Merse Pál Szeredi, The international horizon of A Tett, op. cit., 71.
44  Lajos Kassák, A magyar avantgard három folyóirata, op. cit., 221.
45  Ivan Meštrović supported the Serbian war effort by intermediating between the Entente
powers and the South Slavic politicians. He represented South Slavic heroism through religious
subjects, and the Pietà published in A Tett was an example of this. Ilona Bundev-Todorov, Ivan
Meštrović, Gondolat, Budapest, 1993, 14.
46  Merse Pál Szeredi, The international horizon of A Tett, op. cit., 75.

44
[7.] A Tett, 2/16., 1916, [front cover with Béla Uitz’s illustration], Budapest

45
 Lamentation of Christ by the painter Péter Dobrovits, “a distinctive strategy
of pacifist-oriented Expressionism”,47 jarred with the interpretation of similar
religious themes as war sacrificiality.48 [Figs. 8–9] This caught the eye of the
authorities, who prevented distribution of the issue on the grounds of – as
Kassák remembered in his autobiographical novel Egy ember élete [The Life
of a Man] – “vilification of religion and class incitement committed in a pic-
ture and two articles”.49 This clearly refers to the picture of Dobrovits, and the
offending articles have been identified by literary historian Ilona Illés as one
by Andor Halasi entitled Új irodalmi lehetőségek [New literary opportunities]
and a short story by Kassák inspired by Carlo D. Carrà’s painting The Funeral
of the Anarchist Galli.50 Challenging this to some extent is a comment in the
November 1915 issue of Pesti Hírlap [Pest News] that the ban was because of
Kassák’s short story and Tivadar Raith’s story A jópofa öregúr [The comical old
gent].51 There were no court proceedings,52 and censorship was so chaotic that
Kassák was able to print the Dobrovits picture and his own short story, without
official permission, in subsequent issues.53
The “International issue” caused a much greater stir. The “Serbian Pietà”, the
“negro mask”, Kassák’s bold anti-war and pro-revolutionary editorial entitled
Jelzés a világba [Signal to the World],54 other pacifist writings, the inclusion
of Russian, Serbian, Belgian, French and British “hostile artists” and even a
red cover evoking socialist movements, all defied inviolable taboos. [Figs. 10–
11] Another factor in imposing sanctions on the journal was the loosening of
the wartime unity that had dominated Hungarian internal affairs after the
Austro-Hungarian army suffered serious losses on the Russian front and the
Romanians intruded deep into Transylvania in summer 1916. This caused an
eruption of differences and tensions that had hitherto been swept under the

47  Ibid., 74.

48  Zoltán Franyó, Néhány gorombaság az igazság nevében, op. cit., 18.
49  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit., 255.
50  Ilona Illés, A Tett, a MA és a 2×2, Repertórium [Repertory of A Tett, MA and 2×2], Petőfi
Irodalmi Múzeum, Budapest, 1975, 7.
51  N.n., A Tett-et elkobozták [A Tett was seized], Pesti Hírlap, 15 November 1915, 7.
52  Lajos Kassák, Napló [Diary], A Tett, 1/3., 1915, 52.
53  Péter Dobrovits, Krisztus siratása [Lamentation of Christ], A Tett, 2/8., 1916, [unpaginated.]
Lajos Kassák, Napló, Ibid., 136. Idem, Carlo D. Carra “Anarkistatemetés” című képe alá [Under the
picture Anarchist Burial by Carlo D. Carrà], A Tett, 2/11., 1916, 174–176. English translation in Timo-
thy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op. cit., 157–160.
54  Lajos Kassák, Jelzés a világba [Signal to the world], A Tett, 2/16., 1916, 277. English translation
in Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi (eds.), Signal to the World, op. cit., 10.

46
[8.] Péter Dobrovits, The Lamentation of Christ, A Tett, 1/2., 1915, [plate after page 29], Budapest

47
carpet and a crescendo of scapegoat-hunting rhetoric.55 It was to these chang-
es that Kassák himself was later to attribute the journal’s ban.56

The banning of A Tett

The ‘war culture(s)’ often involved denunciation of internal enemies as well
as hatred of foreign enemies. It was in a stormy autumn for Hungarian liter-
ary life that A Tett had first appeared. The campaign to discredit Endre Ady,
led by Jenő Rákosi, targeted Nyugat authors who were gradually intensifying
their criticism of the war. Nonetheless, the writers whom Kassák later dubbed
“brave mourners”57 did not give up (or gave up only partially) encouraging sol-
diers at the front to keep up the struggle, thus continuing to follow a mini-
mum programme in supporting the war. 58
Unlike Nyugat, A Tett struck a radically new note in war discourses and rep-
resentations, and it attracted the notice of the popular press as well as the
watchful eye of the censor.59 Only the imposition of the ban, however, brought it
widespread substantial public attention. No press organ had ever been banned
in Hungary since the outbreak of the First World War.60 The media almost uni-
versally adopted the language of the war discourse, news of the fighting was
carefully filtered, there was post-publication censorship, and self-censorship
was universal. Consequently, in the early years of the war, Kassák’s journal was
the only voice in the press to take such a determined anti-war stance.
There were two kinds of press response to the ban. The objections in the
Catholic journals, stated in the name of religious morals, were almost word-
for-word the same as those brought against Italy – which had entered the
war against the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in May 1915 – and the Futurist
intellectuals.61 Új Idők [New Times], a literary magazine close to the govern-

55  Péter Bihari, Lövészárkok a hátországban, Középosztály, zsidókérdés, antiszemitizmus az

első világháború Magyarországán [Trenches in the hinterland, The middle class, the Jewish
question and anti-semitism in First-World-War Hungary], Napvilág, Budapest, 2008, 7–8., 15.
56  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit., 294.
57  Ibid., 183.
58  Eszter Balázs, Szó és cselekvés kettőssége, értelmiségellenesség, értelmiségi felelősség
Magyarországon az első világháború elején [The duality of word and act, anti-intellectualism,
and the question of intellectual responsibility in Hungary at the start of the First World War],
Múltunk, 61/2., 2016, 50–53.
59  Pesti Napló and A Világ, for example, regularly reviewed the issues of A Tett and recom-
mended them to its readers.
60  Könyvtári Szemle, 4/1., 1916, 85.
61  Gábor Dobó, Imagining the war: “frenzied Futurists” and “treacherous Italians” portrayed
in Hungarian newspapers of the 1910s, in Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi, (eds.), Signal to the
World, op. cit., 56–58.

48
[9.] Béla Uitz, The Lamentation of Christ, A Tett, 2/15., 1916, 265., Budapest

49
ment, linked these arguments with its new line of attack on the avant-garde
in Hungary as early as summer 1915, in its review of Kassák’s book Éposz Wag-
ner maszkjában: “Are there still some people who see their ideal of literature
not in beauty and eternal human values, but in the sick, mongrel Futurists?”.62
In autumn 1916, the weekly Pesti Futár [Pest Courier], upon the banning of
A Tett, also talked of “literary lunacy” and “unparalleled drivel”,63 and the jour-
nalist István Lendvai, writing in Új Nemzedék, which had published Kassák
early in the war, declared that Kassák “had Hungarian thorns on his Futurist
brow”.64 Lendvai considered the ban to be excessive, saying that A Tett was
only the work of madmen, “paper anarchists”. Some daily newspapers, howev-
er, like the sensationalist A Nap [The Day], the government-aligned Az Újság
[The News] (for which Kassák had been an occasional author until autumn
1915) and the Social Democratic Népszava [People’s Voice] expressed their sol-
idarity with the editor of A Tett and mourned the passing of a valuable literary
journal for the new generation.65 A Tett was therefore not completely isolat-
ed in Hungarian society. Some periodicals followed it with friendly sympathy,
and when it was banned, even more spoke up in solidarity, and for freedom of
the press.
Following the ban of A Tett, Kassák and his associates launched another
literary and art journal, MA, in autumn 1916. They followed a new philosophy,
continuing to voice their protests against the war but temporarily refraining
from direct political comment and reducing the publication of foreign authors.
By holding exhibitions, running a publishing operation and schools, and inte-
grating into international avant-garde networks, however, they launched an
artistic programme that unequivocally transmitted the international avant-
garde. In addition, MA appeared just when the war was entering a new phase:
although censorship was tightened, public opinion regarding the war began
to waver and more and more people openly demanded peace. This new situa-
tion – and the reduced publication of foreign authors – enabled Kassák’s new
journal to run without interference for the remainder of the war.

62  N.n., Éposz Wagner maszkjában [Review of Kassák’s Epic in Wagner’s mask], Új Idők, 21/28.,
1915, 48–49.
63  N.n., A “Hördülő fintor”, vagy miért tiltották be A Tett című lapot [The “Dismayed grimace”,
or why they banned the journal A Tett], Pesti Futár, 13 October 1916, 10–11.
64  Csongor [István Lendvai], Tövisek és rózsák [Thorns and roses], Új Nemzedék, 3/41., 1916, 10–11.
65  N.n., A Tett-et betiltották [A Tett banned], A Nap, 5 October 1916, 5. N.n., A Tett című
szépirodalmi lapot betiltották [Literary journal A Tett banned], Népszava, 5 October 1916, 8.

50
[10.] Negro mask, A Tett, “International issue”, 2/16., 1916, 289., Budapest

51
[11.] Ivan Meštrović, Pietà (Serbian), A Tett, “International issue”, 2/16., 1916, 287., Budapest

52
Signal to the World – War ⋂ Avant-Garde ⋂Kassák
Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, 2015
1914

1915
[1.] Ilka Révai, Portrait of Lajos Kassák, Budapest, 1918, photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum,
Budapest

70
Márton Pacsika
Purposeful player of the new instrument 1 –
Lajos Kassák and the Budapest MA

“They
  struck us down, but we forced ourselves back to our feet [...]
we kept working in silence, and one day, openly and cheerfully,
we came out into the light with a new journal, MA.” 2

Lajos Kassák’s first journal, A Tett [The Action], was banned by the Ministry of
the Interior in 1916 for publishing material in an “International issue” that “en-
dangered the interests of warfare”.3 After a break of a few months, Kassák and
his circle brought out another journal with the title MA [Today]. [Figs. 1–2] The
history of MA customarily falls into two periods, corresponding to its publica-
tion in Budapest (1916–1919) and in Vienna (1920–1925). In reality, the journal
was in a state of continual change even in the Budapest period, as an institu-
tion developed around it and its contributors came and went.4 Like Die Aktion
[The Action] of Berlin, its area of interest extended into public affairs, but it
started primarily as a “literary and art journal”, and retained this profile until
1918. Kassák and his circle could not of course ignore the turbulent domestic
and international affairs of the time. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and
the period of the Hungarian Soviet Republic shaped the mood and subject
matter of the journal and constrained its options.

MA as an institution
Although it criticized the capitalist system of art institutions from the first
issue onwards, MA also made very good use of its means. For Kassák, the
question of artistic autonomy had an institutional as well as a purely aesthetic
aspect. Having attained financial independence within the capitalist system,
MA was able to guarantee the autonomy of the art created under the aus-
pices of capitalism. Its Propaganda section gives a clear picture of how MA
expanded and professionalized as an institution and developed into a sustain-
able business enterprise. Under the MA “brand”, Kassák and his circle went

1  The title is a quotation from an article by József Révai, Kassák, új fajiság és objektiv lira
[Kassák, new form of racial consciousness and objective lyricism], MA, 2/12., 1917, 192.
2  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete [The Life of a Man], vol. II., Magvető, Budapest, 1983, 308.
3  For the prosecutor’s ruling that imposed the ban, see 5484/1914 M.E. KM-an. 10/1. Petőfi
Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest.
4  See Júlia Szabó, A magyar aktivizmus története [History of Hungarian activism], MTA,
Budapest, 1971.

71
beyond the journal, recruiting members, publishing books and holding artistic
matinees and evening performances for Budapest workers. Later, they estab-
lished a drama school led by János Mácza and a school of painting at the ini-
tiative of Béla Uitz. They held regular lectures and seminars on artistic, literary
and cultural themes at various points throughout the country.5 Finally, they
opened a gallery in what was at that time a suburban street, Visegrádi utca.

[2.] MA, 1/1., 1916, [front cover with Vincenc Beneš’s linocut], Budapest
[3.] Die Aktion, 10/13–14., 1920, [front cover with Aloys Wach’s woodcut], Berlin
[4.] Der Sturm, 8/7., 1917, [front cover with Rudolf Bauer’s illustration], Berlin

The sophistication of MA as an institution shows up in the diversity – and

the high degree of integration – of its portfolio. Every issue of the journal ad-
vertised the organization’s activities and the books it published. The items on
sale in the gallery included copies of MA itself and the Berlin avant-garde jour-
nals Der Sturm [The Storm] and Die Aktion. In addition to advertising the MA
exhibitions, the journal ran positive reviews of them and carried lists of art-
works and illustrations. The borders between review, advertisement and cata-
logue blurred, especially after the opening the journal’s own exhibition space.
[Figs. 3–4]
MA soon became a public company, and was thus both a socialist-inspired
art journal and a sustainable capitalist enterprise. In the Propaganda section,

5  The first MA matinee outside Budapest was held in Szeged on 29 December 1918 and was
introduced by Gyula Juhász.

72
the Kassák circle attempted to resolve this contradiction as follows: “For us, art
is not an instrument of business. Business is an instrument to liberate art”.6

MA and the Hungarian cultural environment

Lajos Kassák and MA often referred to themselves as the voice of radical
youth, even though Kassák himself was hardly younger than the artists of the
Nyolcak painters’ group or the contributors to the leading modernist literary
journal, Nyugat [West]. Nonetheless, MA represented the only channel open
to progressive-minded young people denied access to existing journals and
galleries. Accordingly, the gallery exhibited previously little-known artists. Its
first exhibition displayed works by the Transylvanian János Mattis Teutsch, a
painter who adapted a nearly abstract expressionist style in the Munich circles
of Der blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider] before the First World War. Without an es-
tablished institution standing behind it, however, MA faced special challenges.
Illustrative of this is a letter from the National Hungarian Art Society rejecting
a request by the editorial board of MA for a permanent complimentary ticket
for their annual exhibitions.7
A further problem was that the avant-garde language used by Kassák and
his circle held few attractions for either the traditional workers’ movement or
left-wing students. A shocking example of this conflict was a talk that Kassák
delivered to the Galileo Circle, with the title Jegyzetek a szintétikus irodalom-
ról [Notes on synthetic literature]. There, Kassák admitted that “the literary
movement that has concentrated its strength in the journal MA [...] is, with
a few exceptions, regarded by the public as deranged eccentricity or artful
humbug”.8 Kassák also pointed out, however, that MA was constantly expand-
ing and was finding great sympathy among young people. The event itself
underlined the truth of both statements. Kassák’s talk was interrupted by con-
stant heckling, but one of the most vocally enraged objectors in the audience,
the young Sándor Barta, soon joined the journal himself.
MA made serious efforts to be taken seriously in the Hungarian cultural and
political milieus. Kassák and MA sought out contacts with well-known artists

6  Propaganda, MA, 1/1., 1916, 15–16. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.),
Between Worlds, A Sourcebook of Central-European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, LACMA–MIT
Press, Cambridge–London, 2002, 162–163.
7  MA, 1/ 2., 1916, 30.
8  The Galileo Circle was a community of free-thinking university students that was active
between 1908 and 1919. Kassák delivered a talk on synthetic literature to Galileo Circle members
on 3 December 1916, later published as Lajos Kassák, Szintétikus irodalom [Synthetic literature],
MA, 1/2., 1916, 18–21.

73
and writers in the country, as well as with young people. One outcome of this
activity that turned out to be useful for both the journal and the avant-garde
movement was the identification artistic prototypes. It also helped Kassák
towards the legitimization that he lacked in the early period. The occasional
appearance of the 19th-century poet János Arany and the modernist painters
Károly Kernstok and János Vaszary, despite jarring with the journal’s profile, be-
came an important adjunct to articles and pictures by radical young artists. The
same subtle balance showed up in the exhibition programme of the MA gal-
lery: in addition to new young artists like János Kmetty, Pál Pátzay, and Sándor
Bortnyik, it featured artistic predecessors of MA such as Ede Bohacsek and
Sándor Galimberti and well-known painters such as Lajos Tihanyi.9 [Figs. 5–7]

[5.] Sándor Bortnyik, Vörös mozdony [Red Locomotive], 1918, oil on cardboard, 44×33,5 cm,
Hungarian National Museum, Budapest
[6.] Ede Bohacsek, Tájkép [Landscape], 1913, oil on canvas, 95×100 cm, Hungarian National
Gallery, Budapest

9  Kassák involved several members of the Nyolcak painters’ group. Lajos Tihanyi had a solo
exhibition in the MA gallery, and Róbert Berény and Károly Kernstok had works published in
the journal.

74
[7.] Lajos Tihanyi, Portrait of Lajos Kassák, 1918, oil on canvas, 86×70 cm, Hungarian National
Gallery, Budapest

75
 MA also strove to build up cultural and political contacts with Hungarian
and international workers’ movements. Prominent figures of proletarian liter-
ature like Béla Révész and Maxim Gorky10 were regularly promoted by Kassák’s
group, both in the journal and at public events run by MA. Although Révész’s
Naturalism must have seemed aesthetically somewhat obsolete to the MA cir-
cle, his “socialist-nationalist” outlook was still an important point of reference
for activists.11 Furthermore, the journal Szabadgondolat [Free Thought], linked
to the Galileo Circle and to the “bourgeois democrats”, advertised itself in MA,
and the most influential leftist philosopher Ervin Szabó even paid a visit to the
MA gallery.
MA – unusually for a left-wing artistic journal – also gave space to authori-
tative artistic figures. Several issues were centred on a single artist, and these
included the composer Béla Bartók, the modernist poet Endre Ady and even
Kassák himself. The “Kassák issue” is particularly interesting in relation to
MA’s self-designation. Although the editorial board often presented itself as
a movement, it was Kassák’s own thinking and tastes that were definitive for
the journal’s operations. Nonetheless, MA maintained an open outlook and
sensitivity to criticism. In the “Kassák issue” of MA, the young critic József Révai
included some sardonic comments among his words of praise for the journal’s
leading figure.12
The conflicts in which the MA circle became embroiled during the period
were later to have a negative effect on the workings of the journal. Relations
with two important young intellectuals of the time, Béla Balázs13 and György
Lukács, became peculiarly embittered. In an interview, the elderly Lukács re-
called, “Kassák loathed me as I did him. I had good reason to”.14 Kassák wrote
of his antipathies to the philosopher both in the columns of MA and in his
autobiography.15 Their differences took on pressing significance during the

10  See, e.g., Ervin Sinkó, Az egyéniség, Maxim Gorkij könyvéből [Individuality, From Maxim
Gorky’s book], MA, 2/9., 1917, 144.
11  Lajos Kassák, Révész Béla (Konturok egy portrait-hoz) [Béla Révész (Outlines of a portrait)],
MA, 2/6., 1917, 82–83.
12  “From the outset, there have been some perceptible peasant and, one might say, agra-
rian-socialist hints.” József Révai, Kassák, új fajiság és objektív lira, op. cit., 192–193.
13  “We should note that in contrast to the en-garde of György Lukács, we have not a mo-
ment’s doubt regarding the purity of Balázs’ intentions as an author and his out-of-the-ordinary
values.” F. László Boross, Balázs Béla, Kalandok és figurák [Review of Béla Balázs, Adventures
and figures], MA, 3/7., 1918, 87.
14  György Lukács, Megélt gondolkodás, Életrajz magnószalagon [Lived-through thought, Bi-
ography on tape], Magvető, Budapest, 1989, 159.
15  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit., 479, 598–600.

76
Hungarian Soviet Republic, but their relations had already deteriorated during
the years of A Tett.16 Behind their quarrels lay differences in initial standpoints
regarding modern art and several personal, political and aesthetic disputes.17

Revolutionary art or revolutionary movement?

Among the contributors to MA, both regular and occasional, were some
left-wing intellectuals at the beginning of their careers. They included József
Révai, Ervin Sinkó, Mátyás György, Aladár Komját, József Lengyel and Imre
Sallai, and almost without exception, they rose to prominence in the Hungar-
ian communist movement. Their widening differences with Kassák’s group
stemmed from conflicting interpretations of the relationship between the so-
cialist cause and avant-garde art. As Lengyel wrote in his 1929 novel on the
Hungarian Soviet Republic entitled Visegrádi utca [Visegrád Street], “we did
not want to continue in a purely formal revolution, we no longer claimed that

[8.] Mátyás György–Aladár Komját–József Lengyel–József Révai, 1918, Szabadulás [1918, Libera-
tion], Krausz, Budapest, 1918, [front cover]

16  On this, see Gergely Angyalosi, Lajos Kassák és Lukács György viszonya [Relations between
Kassák Lajos and György Lukács], Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények, 91–92/4., 1987–1988, 462–471.
17  György Lukács, Régi kultúra és új kultúra [Old culture and new culture] in Idem, Történelem
és osztálytudat [History and class consciousness], Magvető, Budapest, 1971, 29–47.

77
[9.] MA, 2/5., 1917, [front cover with the reproduction of Franz Marc’s painting], Budapest
[10.] MA, 2/6., 1917, [front cover with Vincent van Gogh’s illustration], Budapest
[11.] MA, 2/7., 1917, [front cover with Rembrandt’s engraving], Budapest
[12.] MA, 3/5., 1918, [front cover with the reproduction of Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture], Budapest

78
[13.] MA, 2/12., 1917, [front cover with János Mattis Teutsch’s linocut], Budapest
[14.] MA, 3/2., 1918, [front cover with Béla Bartók’s music sheet], Budapest
[15.] MA, 3/3., 1918, [front cover with Ede Bohacsek’s illustration], Budapest
[16.] MA, 3/8–9., 1918, [front cover with István Szigethy’s exhibition poster], Budapest

79
‘revolutionarily new-form’ poetry is in itself a revolutionary act. In the condi-
tions of the time, we regarded poetry as a tool that had to be subordinated to
revolutionary aims”.18
Révai was undoubtedly one of the most distinctive representatives of the
young left-wing circle. His articles in MA emphasized the political potential of
art over its autonomy. He stated that “We need literature that is tendentious
rather than merely socially oriented. It must be tendentious, and not spouting
into nothingness”.19 These thoughts made clear – or in some respects presaged
– the deepening long-term divide between Kassák’s MA and the official com-
munist movement regarding the role and autonomy of art. After these young
people (Mátyás György, Aladár Komját, József Lengyel and József Révai) broke
from MA, they published an anthology 1918, Szabadulás [1918, Liberation].20
Several of them went to work for the communist journals Internacionálé [In-
ternational] and Vörös Újság [Red Journal]. Most of them chose direct political
action over the autonomous art revolution, and moved away from Kassák to
seek new mentors – first Ervin Szabó and later György Lukács. [Fig. 8]
After these departures, Kassák was obliged to write the journal almost on
his own for a while. He was soon joined, however, by returnees from the front
– Mózes Kahána and F. László Boross – and the young Árpád Szélpál, then
a banking official. The new authors had similar left-wing ideological posi-
tions to those who had departed, but in the delicate relationship between
avant-garde art and the socialist movement, the MA circle was, for the mo-
ment, united.

International models and relations

MA maintained the international orientation of A Tett, and a picture by
the Czech avant-garde artist Vincenc Beneš was chosen for the cover of the
first issue. The international subject matter in the journal – rather less than in
A Tett21 – was not confined to representing any single ‘ism’ or avant-garde
movement, and even extended beyond modern art. Pictures by German Ex-
pressionists like Franz Marc and Max Pechstein were to be found on its pages,

18  József Lengyel, Visegrádi utca [Visegrád street], Kossuth, Budapest, 1957, 26.
19  József Révai, Ibsen és a monumentális irodalom [Ibsen and monumental literature], MA,
2/8., 1917, 126–129.
20  MA published a review of the book by the four former contributors, full of trenchant criti-
cism and personal attacks. Sándor Barta, 1918: Szabadulás [Review of 1918: Liberation], MA, 3/11.,
1918, 135.
21  Eszter Balázs, Háborúellenesség és avantgárd, Kassák Lajos lapjai [Anti-war sentiment and
the avant-garde, Lajos Kassák’s journals], Irodalmi Magazin, 2/2., 2014, 99–102.

80
as were those of Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. There were also poems
by the symbolist Émile Verhaeren and drawings by Rembrandt. This apparent
incoherence was in itself a statement that the journal was not committed to
any single movement. [Figs. 9–16]
The journal regularly covered international art events, and Mózes Kahána
and Iván Hevesy wrote extended essays attempting to clarify how movements
from Impressionism through Expressionism to Futurism differed from each
other.22 The motivation for this – in addition to the general educational mis-
sion of MA – stemmed from frequent accusations from critics that the Kassák
circle were themselves Futurists, despite their constant protests to the con-
trary. Rather than looking upon itself as a new artistic school, MA built on the
experience of various international movements to proclaimed the creation
of a “universal new art” and an associated worldview.23 Kassák declared that
these avant-garde schools of art “destroy with their feelings”, while he and
his associates “are, in our minds, [...] the foundation-layers of opportunities for
building”.24 That was what prompted MA to look beyond the domestic con-
text and link up with international artistic ventures, movements and institu-
tions. Der Sturm of Berlin may in several respects be regarded as the model for
MA: Kassák assumed a similar central role in his own institution as Herwarth
Walden did, and Der Sturm was, like MA, also active in other areas under the
same “brand”. These included running a gallery, publishing books and organ-
izing events. The Expressionism and left-wing orientation of Die Aktion, also of
Berlin, was also an important model for MA.

Activism and revolutions

In its early period, the Budapest MA was, like A Tett, primarily anti-militarist,
but after the end of the First World War, it increasingly focused on the domes-
tic and international socialist movement. Starting in December 1918, MA pro-
duced special “Worldview issues” containing solely political articles, pictures
and manifestos. Kassák was initially positive about the 1918 Budapest “Aster
Revolution”, leading to the foundation of the First Hungarian Republic, but
quickly became disappointed at what he saw as the inadequacies of comte

22  Mózes Kahána, August Stramm és a német expressionizmus [August Stramm and German
Expressionism], MA, 4/2., 1919, 23–24. Iván Hevesy, Túl az impresszionizmuson [Beyond impres-
sionism], MA, 4/3., 1919, 31–34.
23  Iván Hevesy, Az uj művészeti törekvések Magyarországon [New schools of art in Hungary],
MA, 4/3., 1919, 39–40.
24  Lajos Kassák, Aktivizmus [Activism], MA, 4/4., 1919, 46–51. English translation (excerpts) in
Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op. cit., 219–225.

81
[17.] MA, 3/12., 1918, [front cover with Sándor Bortnyik’s linocut], Budapest
[18.] MA, 4/5., 1919, [front cover with Sándor Bortnyik’s linocut], Budapest

Mihály Károlyi’s government. F. László Boross wrote an article demanding a

socialist republic, and an economic and cultural – rather than a constitutional
– revolution.25 The MA artists published a joint manifesto demanding a com-
munist republic.26 A dedicated issue dealt with two communist martyrs of
the Spartacus Uprising in Berlin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.27 The
MA writers translated the new Soviet constitution of 1918 and Lenin’s State
and Revolution.28 These “Worldview issues” also carried Sándor Bortnyik’s em-

25  F. László Boross, 1918. és forradalom [1918 and revolution], MA, “1st Special Worldview issue”,
Budapest, 1918, 2–3.
26  MA artists, Kiáltvány a kommunista köztársaságért [Manifesto for a communist repub-
lic], Ibid., 2. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op.
cit., 212–213.
27  Sándor Bortnyik, Portrait of Karl Liecknecht, MA, “3rd Special Worldview issue”,
Budapest, 1919, 1.
28  Vladimir Lenin, Állam és forradalom [State and revolution], MA, “4th Special Worldview is-
sue”, Budapest, 1919, 1–4.

82
blematic engravings propagating communist ideals. The design of the front
cover of MA also gradually changed at the same time. Instead of a literary and
artistic journal, it presented itself first as activist-artistic and then as an activ-
ist, artistic and social journal. Eventually the colour of the main title, MA, was
changed from black to red. [Figs. 17–20]
In the febrile political climate, relations between avant-garde art and So-
cialism again became a central question. “We want socialist art, but we again
emphasize, without conforming to any external command”, declared Kassák
in the “International issue” of MA.29 According to the activist programme, the
mission of MA was to create a new socialist humanity through art. Kassák pro-
moted the society-transforming power of culture and art, and not political ac-
tivity by artists. This was the source of an irresolvable conflict between MA and
the Communist Party: Kassák and his circle believed, contrary to Marxist axi-
oms, that consciousness could determine existence, and not only the reverse.

[19.] MA, “4th Worldview issue”, 1919, [front cover with Sándor Bortnyik’s linocut], Budapest
[20.] MA, “3rd Worldview issue”, 1919, [front cover with Sándor Bortnyik’s linocut], Budapest

29  Lajos Kassák, Tovább a magunk utján [Onward on our way], MA, 3/12., 1918, 138–139. English
translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op. cit., 171–173.

83
Lajos Kassák and MA during the Hungarian Soviet Republic
When the Communists, in alliance with the left wing of the Social Dem-
ocrats, took over power in March 1919, the artists of MA put out a pamphlet
warning of “slippery, thousand-faced acrobats of principle”, who “want to
preserve capitalist culture”. In the second last line of the pamphlet, the Kass-
ák circle wrote, “Long live the dictatorship of revolutionary artists over bour-
geois artists”.30 Of course, the MA artists were referring to themselves, and this
aroused antipathy among the left-wing artists and intellectuals who rejected
the avant-garde aesthetic. [Fig. 21]
Kassák himself took part in the cultural administration of the Hungarian
Soviet Republic, but the conflict between his roles as avant-garde artist and
workers-movement activist became increasingly manifest. Initially, in his ca-

[21.] Béla Uitz, Vörös katonák előre! [Red Soldiers Forward!], 1919, colour print on paper,
126×186 cm, Hungarian National Museum, Budapest

30  Activist Artists, Forradalmárok! [Revolutionaries!], Leaflet, 25 March 1919. Under the text of
the manifesto, we find the names of nearly every writer, artist and actor associated with MA.

84
pacity as censor, Kassák banned the appearance of a poster by the Social
Democratic artist Mihály Bíró, which rightly enraged the author of the icon-
ic hammer-wielding figure on the banner of the newspaper Népszava [Peo-
ple’s Voice]. 31 Kassák then worked in the Writers’ Directorate,32 where his main
achievement was to compile the “cadastral list”. This was produced as part
of a plan to abolish the commodity status of artworks by providing a perma-
nent state stipend to certain writers and artists – the ones included on the list.
A dispute broke out, however, concerning the amount of money to be paid
and – an even more contentious point – the names to be included on the list.
Major figures were absent from Kassák’s first version, among them writers
connected with the Social Democratic Party, and even the poet Mihály Babits,
from the modernist journal Nyugat. An article by the Social Democrat jour-
nalist Pál Kéri entitled Máca! (a reference to MA contributor János Mácza),33
fervently attacking the avant-garde orientation of MA, was thus not without
provocation. The mood and content of the March pamphlet, the censoring of
Bíró’s poster and the deficiencies of the cadastral list caused great irritation
among Social Democratic intellectual circles.34 [Fig. 22]
Although that article by Kéri and a subsequent piece taking up the same
theme by the journalist Ferenc Göndör35 were mainly directed at MA, they in-
cluded secondary – if highly personal – criticism of Béla Balázs and the philos-
opher György Lukács, the number one cultural affairs leader in the system.36

31  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit. 516–517. For more details see, Oliver Botar,
Lajos Kassák, Hungarian “Activism,” and Political Power, Canadian-American Slavic Studies,
36/4., 2002, 391–404.
32  The bodies responsible for the administration of various areas of culture in the Hungarian
Soviet Republic were the “Directorates”, whose members were mostly, if not exclusively, left-
wing artists and intellectuals. Kassák had a place in the Literary Directorate alongside Mihály
Babits, Béla Balázs and others.
33  “Máca! Does anyone know this name? [...] They are here. They are starting to appear: Máca,
Kassák, Balázs, Lukács – hired judges of literature and theatre. [...] Today, they stand at the fore-
front of an authority that should dictate revolutionary literature to the workers. They, who per-
haps imagine proletarian dictatorship as their opportunity to dictate the simultanist movement
to the workers, on pain of indictment before the revolutionary court. [...] We call on Zsigmond
Kunfi not to give his name to cover endorse this lunatic cell, this comically sad stain on soviet
rule, the literature and theatre department of the people’s commission for public education.”
Pál Kéri, Máca!, Az Ember, 15 April 1919, 5–6.
34  On this see Farkas József, Írók, eszmék, forradalmak [Writers, ideals, revolutions], Szépirodal-
mi, Budapest, 1979, 249–251.
35  Ferenc Göndör, Kik akarják diktálni a proletárirodalmat? [Who wants to dictate proletarian
literature?], Népszava, 16 April 1919, 7.
36  Although Zsigmond Kunfi was the People’s Commissioner for Public Education of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic, real power was held by his deputy in political affairs, György Lukács.
Megélt gondolkodás, op. cit., 156.

85
They were thus universally interpreted as political attacks on Lukács and the
Communists in general. Within a few days, the Revolutionary Governing Coun-
cil discussed the incident, and a consensus was reached that Lukács, who was
a member of the Council, must be defended against the criticisms. Béla Kun’s
government issued a communiqué37 and Ferenc Göndör, together with his
journal Az Ember [The Man], was banned from publication for a few weeks.38
Interestingly, Kassák’s name did not arise at the meeting, and MA was only
mentioned in the Press Directorate, where People’s Commissioner Béla Vágó,
citing a Russian example, defended the artistic direction of the avant-garde
journal.39 Lukács later responded to the criticism,40 rejecting what he saw as
aspirations to hegemony by Kassák’s circle as well as pressure from the So-
cial Democrats. Ideological, political and artistic conflicts among the various

[22.] MA, “Demonstrative issue from May 1919”, 1919, [front cover with Sándor Bortnyik’s linocut],
Budapest
[23.] Lajos Kassák, Levél Kun Bélának a művészet nevében [Letter to Béla Kun in the Name of
Art], MA, Budapest, 1919, [front cover]

37  György Lukács and the executive of the Hungarian Socialist Party, Nyilatkozatok [Declara-
tions], Népszava, 18 April 1919, 7.
38  Magda Imre–László Szücs (eds.), A Forradalmi Kormányzótanács jegyzőkönyvei, 1919 [Min-
utes of the Revolutionary Governing Council, 1919], Akadémiai, Budapest, 1986, 312–317.
39  Minutes of the 15 April 1919 meeting of Committee 9 of the Press Directorate, in György
Lukács, Forradalomban, Cikkek, tanulmányok 1918–1919 [In revolution, Articles and essays 1918–
1919], Magvető, Budapest, 1989, 429–430.
40  György Lukács, Felvilágosításul [For clarification], Vörös Újság, 18 April 1919, 4.

86
 groups were all mixed up in the affair, but of all the players in the struggle,
Kassák and MA clearly possessed the least political capital.41
In his speech to the June congress of the Party, Béla Kun condemned MA as
“a product of bourgeois decadence”,42 even though he had spoken up against
such attacks by others in the April dispute. The majority, including Kassák,43
interpreted Kun’s denunciation as a gesture to the Social Democrats. In his ar-
ticle Levél Kun Bélához a művészet nevében [Letter to Béla Kun in the Name
of Art],44 Kassák returned to the arguments of the March pamphlet, claiming
that what he and his associates were doing in MA was the artistic equivalent of
Béla Kun’s political activity. [Fig. 23] Kassák also stood up for the autonomy of
art and put his public response into a pamphlet of which ten thousand copies
were distributed, but failed to arouse Kun’s sympathy. In any case, the Hungar-
ian Soviet Republic was by that time facing much more urgent issues than dif-
ferences among the factions. There is no documentary evidence that MA was
banned for political purposes; journals of all kinds were being shut down be-
cause of the worsening paper shortage. MA did not become an official organ
of the Hungarian Soviet Republic to the extent that the dailies Népszava and
even more so Vörös Újság did, but it ranked alongside Nyugat and Huszadik
Század [Twentieth Century] in the priority assigned to its publication.45 Kassák,
however, despite not being the most important figure and being less influen-
tial than Lukács, was an active shaper of cultural politics during the period of
the Soviet Republic.
After the fall of the communist regime in August 1919, Kassák wanted to
resume publication of MA, but in the midst of arrests and reprisals, this proved
impossible and even dangerous. Recognizing this, he cut his hair short, ex-
changed his Russian-type black shirt for a simple white one and, as his associ-
ates had already done, took the boat up the Danube to Vienna, where he soon
put MA back into action.46

41  On this, see Béla Pomogáts, Kassák Lajos a forradalmakban [Lajos Kassák in the revolu-
tions], in Idem, A szellem köztársasága [The republic of the intellect], Akadémiai, Budapest,
2004, 198–214.
42  Kun elvtárs válasza [Reply from Comrade Kun], Vörös Újság, 14 June 1919, 4–5.
43  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit. 591.
44  Lajos Kassák, Levél Kun Bélához a művészet nevében [Letter to Béla Kun in the name
of art], MA, 4/7., 1919, 146–148. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Be-
tween Worlds, op. cit., 230–233.
45  Farkas József, A Magyar Tanácsköztársaság sajtója [The press of the Hungarian Soviet
Republic], Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1969, 90–95.
46  Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, vol. II., op. cit., 673–674.

87
Imagining a Movement – MA in Budapest
Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, 2016
[1.] Unknown photographer, Lajos Kassák at MA’s 1st German Propaganda Evening, Vienna,
22 March 1925, photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum, Budapest

106
Merse Pál Szeredi
Kassákism – MA in Vienna (1920–1925)

At the start of the 20th century, avant-garde movements across Europe re-
belled against the traditional forms and institutions of art. Their aim was to
repudiate the “old art” and to seek possibilities for the “new art”. At the centre
of the Hungarian avant-garde movement stood Lajos Kassák and the jour-
nals he edited. Kassák established his journal MA [Today] in Budapest dur-
ing the First World War, and it quickly became the leading organ of Hungar-
ian expressionist art. However, rather than affiliating himself with one single
‘ism’ from among the international trends, Kassák instead developed his own
art inspired by the phenomena of Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, and
Constructivism, and which he did not identify with any one ‘ism’ in particular.
He formed an individual standpoint in relation to the “new art”, which his con-
temporaries identified with that peculiar, long-haired figure wearing a black
Russian shirt: Kassák himself. This striking phenomenon of the Hungarian
avant-garde became popularly known at the end of the First World War as
“Kassákism”.1 [Fig. 1] The collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic represent-
ed a new chapter in the history of MA, with Kassák and his circle emigrating
to Vienna, where the spirit of the journal was completely transformed with
new concepts and new editors. The unified standpoint of the editorial board
that had existed in Budapest now broke down. Unlike his colleagues, Kassák
turned away from open political activities in the first half of the 1920s, and in-
stead placed intensive networking with the international avant-garde move-
ment at the centre of his activities, thanks to which MA became a defining
actor of the European avant-garde scene within a few years.

1  On the concept of Kassákism see, for example: [-üst], Megnéztem két képkiállítást [I saw two
exhibitions], Pesti Tükör, 15 February 1919, 15–16. Dezső Biró, Proletárművészet vagy Kassákizmus
[Proletarian art or Kassákism], Népszava, 30 August 1925, 6. For more detail on the Vienna
years of MA and Kassák, see Júlia Szabó, A magyar aktivizmus művészete, 1915–1927 [The art of
Hungarian activism, 1915–1927], Corvina, Budapest, 1981. Ferenc Csaplár, Kassák körei [Kassák’s
circles], Szépirodalmi, Budapest, 1987. Ágota Ivánszky, Kassák és a MA körének osztrák kap­
csolatai a bécsi emigrációban [The Austrian contacts of Kassák and MA in the Viennese exile],
Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények, 100/3., 1996, 294–312. Zoltán Péter, Lajos Kassák, Wien und der
Konstruktivismus 1920–1926 [Lajos Kassák, Vienna and Constructivism, 1920–1926], Peter Lang,
Frankfurt am Main, 2010. Éva Forgács–Tyrus Miller, The Avant-Garde in Budapest and in Exile
in Vienna, in Peter Brooker–Sascha Bru–Andrew Thacker–Christian Weikop (eds.), The Oxford
Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Vol. III., Europe 1880–1940, Oxford UP, Ox-
ford–New York, 2013, 1128–1156.

107
“To the new artists of the world” – MA’s Viennese platform
In 1919, Kassák and his circle had committed themselves to the Hungari-
an Soviet Republic that promised social changes, and it appeared that MA’s
platform would embody the new regime’s notions of culture. Kassák and col-
leagues believed that they could create the lyrical and visual language for the
art of the new world that followed the proletarian revolution. They did not,
however, envision their activities in the service of party politics. This led to con-
flicts with the leaders of the Commune; nevertheless, after the collapse of this
Soviet Republic, Kassák and his circle were forced to flee the political reprisals
of the subsequent counter-revolutionary Horthy regime. Kassák was impris-
oned in the summer of 1919 for some months, and only managed to escape
following the intervention by an acquaintance of Jolán Simon, Kassák’s life
companion. After his imprisonment, he reached Vienna illegally in the winter
of 1920, stowed away in the bowels of a ship.2
In the Austrian capital during the first half of the 1920s, a sizeable Hungari-
an colony came into being, consisting mostly of political and intellectual émi-
grés, who set about establishing Hungarian-language journals, including sev-
eral dailies. The earlier Budapest intellectual circles now reformed in Viennese
coffee houses, where communist, social democrat, and independent leftist
intellectuals discussed the reasons for the failure of the Budapest revolutions
and planned possible ways to begin afresh. They seized the temporary cir-
cumstances of exile and continued to target their activities at the Hungarian
public. After the Horthy administration announced a general amnesty in the
autumn 1926, the Viennese Hungarian émigré community of 1919 disbanded,
with many members – including Kassák – returning to Budapest.
In May 1920, Kassák relaunched MA. [Fig. 2] In the first issues, he promot-
ed the revolutionary expressionist platform, but his long-term aim was to in-
tegrate into the international avant-garde movement, and to bring about a
form of cooperation that would span national frames and borders. This also
defined the spirit of MA in Vienna, whose programmatic texts in Hungarian
and German Kassák addressed “to all the artists of the world”.3 According to
his utopian vision, the aim of the “new art” was to “revolutionise the culture” of

2  For more detail, see Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete [The Life of a Man], vol. II., Magvető, Bu-
dapest, 1983, 636–673.
3  Lajos Kassák, An die Künstler aller Länder! [To the artists of all nations], MA, 5/1–2., 1920, 2–4.
English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, A Sourcebook
of Central-European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, LACMA–MIT Press, Cambridge–London, 2002,
418–420.

108
[2.] MA, 5/1–2., 1920, [front cover with János Mattis Teutsch’s illustration], Vienna

109
the working class, the transformation of whose thinking and worldview would
organically bring about the socialist society of the distant future.
Kassák’s political position was criticised by Hungarian left-wing intellectu-
als as “naively misunderstood hyper-Marxism”.4 According to his earlier edito-
rial colleagues, who considered their art to be closer to the Communist cause,
Kassák had betrayed the revolution by distancing himself from the concept of
agitative art which demanded direct political changes. Committed commu-
nist artists also deserted Kassák, with the final break coming spring 1922 when
the painter Béla Uitz, who had spent time in Moscow, and the Dadaist poet
Sándor Barta – Kassák’s brothers-in-law and MA co-editors – simultaneously
turned their backs on MA. Shortly thereafter, Uitz and Barta set up their own
journals, Egység [Unity] and Akasztott ember [Hanged Man]. Barta moved in
the direction of the wholly politicised German Dada movement, while Uitz and
fellow poet Aladár Komját, following the Soviet Proletkult line, rejected MA
and the “bourgeois constructive aestheticism” of Western European artists.5

MA’s international connections

In the spirit of international openness, MA forged connections in the ear-
ly 1920s with a broad number of avant-garde circles, from America, across
Europe, and all the way to Japan. At that time, the networks of avant-garde
journals reached directly across national and cultural borders, ignoring the
hierarchical relationship between the centre (the “West”) and the periphery
(East-Central Europe).6 In the first half of the 1920s, MA’s contents and visuals
made it one of the most prominent artistic periodicals of its time, because of
which Kassák’s name became well-known throughout Europe.

Dadaglobe – Kassák and Dada

In Vienna, Kassák soon realised that neither the local art scene – which he
regarded as “petty bourgeois” – nor the Hungarian political émigré subcultur-
al milieu was an appropriate environment for him to develop his avant-garde

4  Béla Balázs, Befejezésül [In conclusion], Bécsi Magyar Újság, 14 September 1920, 5. [György
Lukács], Kassák Lajos, Új Március, 2/11., 1926, 675–678.
5  Ernő Kállai–Alfréd Kemény–László Moholy-Nagy–László Péri, Nyilatkozat [Manifesto], Egység,
2/4., 1923, 51. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op.
cit., 443–444.
6  Daina Teters, Peculiarities in the Use of the Concepts Centre and Periphery in Avant-Garde
Strategies, in Per Bäckström–Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Decentring the Avant-Garde, Brill–Ro-

in Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi (eds.) Signa/ to the World, War ⋂ Avant-Garde ⋂ Kassák,
dopi, Amsterdam–New York, 2014, 75–95. Merse Pál Szeredi, The international horizon of A Tett,

Kassák Foundation, Budapest, 2016, 69–77.

110
 platform, and thus his attention was increasingly drawn to the latest develop-
ments in international avant-garde art. In the summer of 1920, MA first made
close contact with the Dada movement.7 Dada was a cultural phenomenon
characteristic of the First World War, which produced new paradigms, a new
language, and a new artistic attitude. In 1917, these sporadic phenomena or-
ganised under the leadership of Tristan Tzara to address all the avant-garde
artists of the world, to whom Kassák would also later dedicate his 1920 mani-
festo.8 At the time, Tzara was working on a large-scale anthology of post-war
art entitled Dadaglobe, and thus warmly welcomed the approach from a
Hungarian avant-garde group he was previously unaware of.9 [Figs. 4–5]
At the same time, Kassák also began corresponding with the eccentric
Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, whose collages of garbage and waste paper entitled
Merz and reproduced in Der Sturm [The Storm], certainly impressed Kassák.10
[Fig. 6] Kassák dedicated the January 1921 issue of MA to Schwitters’s art, and
later gave priority to publishing other artists of the international Dada move-
ment as well. The left-wing German Dada group greatly influenced Kassák’s
younger sister, Erzsi Ujvári, who experimented with expressionist verse, and
her husband, the poet Sándor Barta. The encounter with Dada’s emancipat-
ed, political yet also anti-art stance was an important moment in the history
of MA: from 1921 onwards, Kassák and his colleagues experimented with in-
creasingly bold visuals and texts. Despite Kassák’s initial sympathy, however,
he did not commit himself to Dada. He stated as early as the spring of 1921 that
“Dadaists have nothing in common with MA [...], since they are a conservative
school, and I have absolutely no inclination to belong to their ranks or to allow
MA to come under their control”.11

7  For more detail, see Gábor Dobó, Dadául írni és újraírni, Kassák Lajos és Tristan Tzara eddig
kiadatlan leveleiből [Dada writing and rewriting, From the formerly unpublished correspon-
dence of Lajos Kassák and Tristan Tzara], Helikon, 63/1., 2017, 143–156.
8  For more detail, see Adrian Sudhalter (ed.), Dadaglobe Reconstructed, Scheidegger and
Spiess–Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, 2016.
9  Letter of Lajos Kassák to the Zürich Dada Movement, Vienna, 6 December 1920. Published
by Ferenc Csaplár, Kassák az európai avantgárd mozgalmakban, 1916–1928 [Kassák in the Eu-
ropean avant-garde movements, 1916–1928], Kassák Múzeum és Archívum, Budapest, 1994, 18.
10  Schwitters’s works and poems were published in the April 1919 issue of Der Sturm. See the
Letter of Lajos Kassák to Christoph Spengemann, Vienna, 25 July 1920. Published by Ferenc
Csaplár, Kassák az európai avantgárd mozgalmakban, op. cit., 18. As well as the Letter of
Lajos Kassák to Kurt Schwitters, Vienna, 30 October 1920. Published by Julia Nantke–Antje Wulff
(eds.), Kurt Schwitters, Die Sammelkladden 1919–1923, De Gruyter, Berlin–New York, 2014, 12–13.
11  Letter of Lajos Kassák to Ödön Mihályi, Vienna, [Spring] 1921. V. 2293/113. Petőfi Literary Mu-
seum, Budapest.

111
[3.] Etel Nagy, Lajos Kassák and Jolán Simon in their rented room in Vienna, Vienna, February
1925, photographs, PIM–Kassák Museum, Budapest

112
 MA in Vienna – the existential background
In exile, Kassák lived in abject poverty, sharing a rented room in the out-
er district of Hietzing with his life companion, Jolán Simon, and his fos-
ter daughters. This milieu was captured by Etel Nagy, Jolán Simon’s older
daughter, in her amateur photographs taken in 1925. [Fig. 3] The small flat
on the first floor of Amalienstraße 26 also served as MA’s editorial offices,
although Kassák carried out most of the editorial work in the Café Schloss,
next to Schönbrunn Palace, or in the Colosseum coffee house, next to the
University of Vienna.1 The costs of everyday life and sustaining MA were cov-
ered in part by the honoraria Kassák received for his articles in the most
wide-spread Viennese Hungarian daily, the Bécsi Magyar Újság [Viennese
Hungarian Daily] and a weekly for Jewish culture, Diogenes, but Jolán
Simon provided most of their subsistence by distributing MA in Vienna and
doing various temporary jobs.2 “More than once, Kassák filched from dear
Jolán Simon’s pockets or purse, or, when absolutely necessary, bullied [the
money for printing] out of her – recalled József Nádass. –  I witnessed the
unhappy family’s quarrels many times, when this self-sacrificing, great lady
[...] complained and argued in her defence: we have to pay the rent, and
there’s nothing for lunch tomorrow! But Kassák didn’t give an inch, instead
he pilfered two more 10 Schilling coins, or one more 20 Schilling note from
his wife’s well-concealed, secret funds for the family’s daily outgoings”.3 In
terms of MA’s primary readership, Kassák could count on the forward-look-
ing Hungarian communities living in the cities of Austro-Hungarian Empire
successor states; his journal was banned in Hungary. A few copies however,
under the pseudonyms Kortárs [Contemporary] and 365, were smuggled
into Budapest on a boat by Jolán Simon, and later the Communist writer
Aladár Tamás.

1  József Nádass, Nehéz leltár [Difficult inventory], vol. I., Szépirodalmi, Budapest, 1963, 337., 365.
2  Ferenc Csaplár, Kassákné Simon Jolán, Kassák Múzeum, Budapest, 2003, 5–6.
3  József Nádass, Arcképvázlat Kassák Lajosról [Portrait sketch of Lajos Kassák], in Ilona Illés–
Ernő Taxner (eds.), Kortársak Kassák Lajosról [Contemporaries on Lajos Kassák], Petőfi Irodalmi
Múzeum, Budapest, 1976, 21.

113
[4.] Dada, [2]/3., 1918, [front cover with Marcel Janco’s illustration], Zürich
[5.] Sophie Tauber-Arp, Dada, 1920, photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum, Budapest

MA in the international network of avant-garde journals

In the rivalry of contemporary art, one important criterion was an up-to-
date knowledge of international art phenomena, being well-informed, and
gathering information from the enormous range on offer. Kassák envisaged
his own journal within this free, border-transcending force field of art, and
thus regarded the compulsion to absorb a rapid stream of information as
a huge challenge. Sitting at a table in Viennese coffee houses, he would sys-
tematically flick through the journals available, collecting illustrations and se-
lecting articles to translate. This network based on reciprocity played a large
role in MA’s international positioning: it was not only Kassák who advertised
papers of a similar mindset, MA also regularly featured in lists of journals rep-
resentative of the “new art”.12 Kassák’s most important international contacts
during the earlier Viennese years of MA were Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm,
Tristan Tzara’s Dada movement, Berlin constructivists he knew through László
Moholy-Nagy, the Parisian publications La Vie des Lettres et des Arts [The Life
of Literature and the Arts] edited by Nicholas Beauduin and Michel Seuphor’s

12  For more detail, see Hubert van den Berg’s essay in this volume, as well as Krisztina Passuth,
Les avant-gardes de l’Europe centrale, 1907–1927 [Central European avant-gardes, 1907–1927],
Flammarion, Paris, 1988. Timothy O. Benson (ed.), Central European Avant-Gardes, Exchange
and Transformation, 1910–1930, LACMA–MIT Press, Los Angeles, 2002.

114
Ça Ira! [It’ll be fine], as well as the Dutch journal De Stijl [The Style] edited by
Theo van Doesburg.13 [Fig. 7]
These journals were the most complex mediums of avant-garde thinking
and self-representation of their time. Behind the papers stood groups and
movements, and behind the movements were artists, whose personal net-
works did not necessarily correspond with those of the journals. This was also
the case for Kassák who, during his émigré years, left Vienna only a few times,
and thus came into contact with foreign artists mainly through his editorial
letters written on behalf of MA. To describe this divergence of personal and
institutional contacts, Hubert van den Berg proposes an adaptation of Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome.14 The rhizome is a non-
hierarchical network whose individual elements connect with one another in

[6.] Reproductions of works by Kurt Schwitters, MA, 6/3., 1921, 28–29., Vienna

13  For more detail, see Merse Pál Szeredi, MA/De Stijl, Theo van Doesburg esete a magyar
avantgárddal [MA/De Stijl, Theo van Doesburg’s case with the Hungarian avant-garde], Enigma,
24/90., 2017, 74–90.
14  Hubert van den Berg, Mapping Old Traces of the New, Towards a Historical Topography of
Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s), Arcadia, 41/2., 2006,
341–343.

115
[7.] The international network of avant-garde journals, exhibition view of New Art – The Vienna
Edition of MA in the International Networks of Avant-Garde, Petőfi Literary Museum, Buda-
pest, 2017

116
 such a way that the pattern does not necessarily form a system. Certain con-
tacts may break off and reconnect, but this does not influence the structure
itself. The concept of the rhizome also highlights the randomness of contacts:
for example, in many cases, Kassák only came across reproductions of an art-
ist’s work or their poetry through indirect sources. For MA at this time, it was
not personal contacts but joining networks of “new art” that was more im-
portant, which is why Kassák did not feel it necessary to request works from
artists in person, but rather republished them in Hungarian translation from
the various journals and publications that arrived. For example, he reproduced
works in MA by Picasso, Léger and other cubist painters, taken not direct-
ly from the French artists, but from the first issue of Chilean poet Vincente
Huidobro’s journal Créacion [Creation].15 It was also indirectly that Kassák learnt
of the poems written by Theo van Doesburg’s Dada alter-ego, I. K. Bonset, on
“X-pictures” (that is, X-rays), and published them in MA in 1921. Kassák was not
yet in contact with De Stijl, but learnt of Van Doesburg’s poetry from a republi-
cation of F. T. Marinetti’s futurist journal Poesia [Poetry] based in Rome.16 Natu-
rally, many more such examples could be given, but these instances suffice
to show that “virtual” contacts were as important as personal or institutional
networks in the broadening of MA’s international horizons.
During the first half of the 1920s, avant-garde journals could appear using
the new developments in printing technology, with bold typography and a
high number of reproductions, and thus their value substantially increased
as the primary bearers of information on the “new art”. In Budapest during
the First World War, Kassák had already paid great attention to using good
quality paper, exacting reproductions and striking cover pages in his journals,
but in Vienna, MA appeared in a unique format with exceptional typography.
As the number of avant-garde journals boomed, Kassák felt the competition
and revised MA’s image in spring 1921.17 The expressionist header in the style
of János Mattis Teutsch was replaced by colourful poster-style lettering, un-

15  Reproductions of artworks by Albert Gleizes, Pablo Picasso and Jacques Lipchitz, Créacion,
1/1., 1921, [n.p.] See the same reproductions in MA, 7/2., 1922, 21. (Picasso) 11. (Lipchitz) and 22.
(Gleizes)
16  I. K. Bonset, X-képek [X-pictures], translated by László Zilahi, MA, 6/6., 1921, 70. Kassák used
the publication I. K. Bonset, X-Beelden, Poesia, 1/5–6., 1920, 33. The poem was originally pub-
lished in De Stijl, 3/7., 1920, 57. Kassák listed the 1920 issues of Poesia among the “publications
received” section of the August 1921 issue of MA, but only issues 7–8 of De Stijl from 1921.
17  Kassák understood perfectly the importance of competition, “I think we are one of the
most beautiful papers in Europe today”, he wrote, immodestly, to a fellow editor in 1921. See the
Letter of Lajos Kassák to Ödön Mihályi, Vienna, [Spring] 1921. V. 2293/113. Petőfi Literary Museum,
Budapest.

117
derneath which works by representatives of the “new art” were reproduced.
All this suited MA’s new programme and its concept of international openness.
With its exciting spirit, MA came to be regarded as an increasingly prestigious
paper even by Western and East-Central European artists. On a number of oc-
casions, leading avant-garde figures, such as Raoul Hausmann, Hans Richter,
El Lissitzky or Theo van Doesburg, published their texts, manifestos and art-
works first in Kassák’s journal. And alongside these appeared Kassák’s con-
structivist compositions on the front cover of many issues.
From 1921, Kassák wanted to be a formative figure in the international
avant-garde network, and to stand out primarily by means of his radicalism
in the competition between publications. In a letter to Tzara, he came forward
with a plan for an international journal that would publish only the “most ex-
treme” tendencies among German, Hungarian, Italian and Russian art.18 This
concept was also reflected among the pages of MA: the issues published be-
tween 1921 and 1925 represented a collage of the entire spectrum of the inter-
national avant-garde. [Figs. 8–15]

Tatlinism or Machine-Art
For Kassák and MA’s international networks, perhaps the most problematic
element between in 1921 and 1922 was the new Russian art. Prior to 1920, hard-
ly any information on the avant-garde art of revolutionary Russia had reached
Europe. News of Suprematism, founded by Kazimir Malevich to surpass the
form experiments of Futurism and Cubism, or the process by which Vladimir
Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and colleagues placed a geometric
abstract language in the service of the socialist revolution, had not reached
Kassák at all, despite the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s contacts with Russia.
The first information was brought by the young art historian Konstantin Umansky,
who arrived in Germany in 1920. Umansky first publicised these new phenom-
ena in his articles and highly successful book on the development of modern
Russian art during the First World War.19 His account, published as Der Tat-
linismus oder die Machinenkunst [Tatlinism or Machine-Art], also inspired the
Dadaist artists in Berlin. At their first joint exhibition in August 1920, George
Grosz and John Heartfield demonstrated their commitment with placards
18  Letter of Lajos Kassák to Tristan Tzara, Vienna, 16 December 1921. Published by Ferenc
Csaplár, Kassák az európai avantgárd mozgalmakban, op. cit., 20.
19  Konstantin Umansky, Neue Kunstrichtungen in Rußland I., Der Tatlinismus oder die Machi-
nenkunst [New directions of art in Russia I., Tatlinism or machine art], Der Ararat, 1/4., 1920, 12–14.
Konstantin Umansky, Neue Kunst in Rußland, 1914–1919 [New art in Russia, 1914–1919], Gustav
Kiepenheuer, Potsdam, 1920.

118
that read “Art is Dead, Long Live Tatlin’s Machine-Art”.20 Umansky arrived in
Vienna in the winter of 1920, where he worked for the Russian Telegraph Agen-
cy (ROSTA) led by the Hungarian cartographer Sándor Radó.21 On Kassák’s in-
vitation, Umansky presented an illustrated talk to the “MAists” on the develop-
ment of the Russian avant-garde until 1919.22
In spring 1921 Béla Uitz, Kassák’s brother-in-law and co-editor of MA, trav-
elled to Moscow to take part in the third congress of the Communist Interna-
tional, with a delegation of the Hungarian Communist Party that had reorgan-
ised itself in Vienna. A large-scale exhibition of Russian avant-garde art was
organised for the occasion, various manifestos were published, and during the
congress, Tatlin’s model for the Monument to the Third International was ex-
hibited for the first time. While in Moscow, Uitz collected publications, graphic
albums, manifestos and photo reproductions, and sent a portion of these to
his colleagues in Vienna over the summer. [Figs. 16–18] It was thus the edito-
rial board of MA who were the first in Europe to have the latest documents of
Russian Constructivism in their possession.23 Kassák therefore had the oppor-
tunity to make his journal the first European mediator of Russian Construc-
tivism, however, he did not publish these works. He concentrated his atten-
tion on Western European art, and MA primarily published works by German
and French Dadaist artists. Kassák first published Russian materials only in
May 1922, in MA’s anniversary double issue. [Fig. 19] This issue included repro-
ductions not only of Russian artists, but also a representative cross-section of
all contemporary constructivist activity: Raoul Hausmann, Oskar Schlemmer,
Francis Picabia, Willi Baumeister, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Man Ray.
Kassák was therefore not interested exclusively in (Russian) revolutionary art,
but rather the revolution in abstract art, and accordingly, tried to accord all
international artists equal weight.

Avant-Garde Canon – the Book of New Artists

From the May 1922 edition of MA onwards, Kassák began to unambiguous-
ly follow the editorial strategies of international constructivist journals. Simi-
lar to the methods used by Вещь/Objet/Gegenstand [Object], Kassák paired

20  Richard Huelsenbeck (ed.), Dada Almanach, Erich Reiss Verlag, Berlin, 1920, plate after
page 40.
21  Sándor Radó, Dóra jelenti [Dóra reports], Kossuth, Budapest, 2006, 40–52.
22  Béla Uitz, Jegyzetek a MA orosz estélyéhez [Notes to the Russian evening of MA], MA,
6/4., 1921, 52.
23  See MA, 6/8., 1921, 116. Cf. Éva Bajkay, Hol a kontextus? [Where is the context?], Artmagazin,
14/3., 2016, 58–64.

119
[8.] MA, 6/5., 1921, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s illustration], Vienna
[9.] MA, 6/7., 1921, [front cover with George Grosz’s drawing], Vienna
[10.] MA, 6/8., 1921, [front cover with Viking Eggeling’s illustration], Vienna
[11.] MA, 7/2., 1922, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s typography], Vienna

120
[12.] MA, 7/3., 1922, [front cover with Ivan Puni’s illustration], Vienna
[13.] MA, 7/4., 1922, [front cover with Hans Arp’s illustration], Vienna
[14.] MA, 7/7., 1922, [front cover with the reproduction of Theo van Doesburg’s painting] Vienna
[15.] MA, 7/8., 1922, [front cover with El Lissitzky’s illustration], Vienna

121
avant-garde artworks with modern technical innovations, such as photographs
of modern industrial buildings, aircraft and other machinery.24 This direct con-
nection between modern art and technology was most successfully realised
in Kassák and László Moholy-Nagy’s joint publication of September 1922, the
Új művészek könyve [Book of New Artists].25 Kassák originally perceived the
volume as a literary and fine arts anthology before deciding on the album for-
mat. With the publication, he wanted to secure his status as an internationally
formative figure of the avant-garde canon. The volume presents the evolution
of ‘isms’ from Kassák’s perspective, with a series of futurist, expressionist, cub-
ist, Dadaist and constructivist works. The picture essay, containing more than
120 reproductions, emphasises the parallels between modern art and mod-
ern technology: Futurism and the automobile, Cubism and film (and mon-
tage techniques), and Constructivism and light-frame industrial architecture.
At the apex of this artistic-technological progress set forth in the anthology, in
the closing pages of the book, were Kassák’s own “picture architecture” works,
aircraft, and frames of Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling’s abstract films. [Figs.
20–21] Over the course of the eighteen-month editorial process, Kassák was
certainly inspired by Tzara’s ambitious plans for the Dadaglobe anthology,
which was never realised, and thus Kassák’s book became the first compre-
hensive anthology of “new art”. Kassák learned first-hand of the international
formations of Constructivism, and also acquired a large amount of reproduc-
tions from Moholy-Nagy, who was living in Berlin.26 The Új művészek könyve
did not receive much critical attention, although it did significantly inspire the
creation by Hans Arp and El Lissitzky of their anthology Kunstismen [Isms of
Art] by providing something of a model.27

Kassák’s art between Dada and Constructivism

Naturally, MA not only published artists of the international avant-garde
movement, but also works by Kassák and his circle. Kassák’s own work un-
derwent significant transformation in 1921–1922: under the influence of Dada
and Constructivism, he redefined his earlier poetry and, in parallel, began

24  For more details, see Merse Pál Szeredi, MA/De Stijl, op. cit.
25  For more details, see Krisztina Csaba, Kassák Lajos–Moholy Nagy-László, Új művészek
könyve [Lajos Kassák–László Moholy-Nagy, Book of new artists], BA Thesis, Eötvös Loránd Uni-
versity, Budapest, 2016.
26  Ferenc Csaplár, A “Karaván”-tól az “Új művészek könyvé”-ig [From “Karaván” to “Új művészek
könyve”], in Idem, Kassák körei, op. cit., 7–13.
27  El Lissitzky–Hans Arp (eds.), Die Kunstismen, 1924–1914 [The isms of art, 1924–1914], Eugen
Rentsch Verlag, Zürich–Munich–Leipzig, 1925.

122
[16.] Olga Rozanova, Suprematist Composition, 1916, photograph, PIM–Kassák, Museum Budapest
[17.] Alexander Rodchenko, Spatial Construction, 1918, photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum,
Budapest
[18.] Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition, c. 1920, photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum,
Budapest

123
[19.] MA, 7/5–6., 1922, [front cover with László Moholy-Nagy’s illustration], Vienna

124
[20.] Typology of avant-garde art and modern technology, with reproductions of works by
Umberto Boccioni, Fernand Léger, Vladimir Tatlin, Lajos Kassák, Hans Richter, and Viking
Eggeling, Lajos Kassák–László Moholy-Nagy (eds.), Új művészek könyve [The Book of New
Artists], Julius Fischer Verlag, Vienna, 1922.

125
experimenting with the fine arts. MA’s Hungarian interests during this period
focused on Kassák’s numbered verse and “picture architecture”.

“First dash towards the new Kassák” – the numbered verses

Kassák summarised the events and lessons of the Soviet Republic in his
epos entitled Máglyák énekelnek [Bonfires Sing], in which he evoked the rev-
olutions and proletarian dictatorship in a tone that was both analytical and
heroic, thus bringing an end to this phase of his earlier activism. This work,
together with what in many respects can be viewed as its predecessor, the
Hir­detőoszloppal [With Advertising Pillar] volume of poetry published in 1919
(and then pulped after the collapse of the Soviet Republic), opened the way
for the construction of the “new Kassák”. Between 1920 and 1929, Kassák gave
his poems serial numbers rather than titles. The full series contains 100 poems,
many of which were written during his Viennese émigré years. These num-
bered verses completely ignored the usual characteristic forms and content
of poetry, striking a diametrically different tone from Kassák’s earlier expres-
sionist free verse. The linguistic terrain of Kassák’s numbered poems contain
Dadaist elements inherited mostly from Schwitters, as well as humour, irony,
and self-irony. Free association, absurd metaphorical images and commen-
tary-style colloquial text excerpts succeed one another in these poems with-
out subject matter, and which deconstructed poetic devices and grammatical
structure.
Despite MA’s international success, the Hungarian public did not accept the
“Dadaist Kassák”. His critics, and even his close colleagues who respected his
political activism, accused him of being autotelic. “Words are not there to drag
their contents about like sacks”, wrote Kassák in one of his poems.28 His first
significant – and still to this day his best-known – work was the autobiograph-
ically inspired Dadaist long poem A ló meghal és a madarak kiröpülnek [The
Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away], in which he reworked the story of his 1909 va-
grant period in Western Europe, and how he thus became an artist as a result.

“To move beyond Dada” – the theory and practice of “picture archi-
tecture”
International developments in the avant-garde art of the 1920s inspired
Kassák to start his own fine arts experimentation. He wanted to create an iden-

28  Lajos Kassák, Poem 13, MA, 6/7., 1921, 86. Cf. Lajos Kassák, Levél a művészetről II. [Letter on
art II.], Bécsi Magyar Újság, 12 September 1920, 3.

126
tical visual world parallel to the numbered poems, and found his answer in the
form world of geometric abstraction. We may locate the models for Kassák’s
earlier fine arts creations in Schwitters’s Dadaist works, the Abstract Expres-
sionism of Der Sturm, and the Russian art presented by Umansky. Kassák
called his own works “picture architecture”, whose aim was the “creation” of
a new world on the flat surface. “Picture architecture” is a “creation which
lays the foundation stones and triumphant predictions of the community of
the future into infinite and shapeless space” –  wrote the art critic Ernő Kál-
lai.29 Kassák laid down the theory of “picture architecture” in a Dadaist-toned
manifesto published in autumn 1921. Its platform was significantly different
from his revolutionary and propagandistic-tone writings on the role of fine
arts. Kassák favoured geometric abstract art that created “subject-free form”,
a “force demonstrating itself” and “the beginnings of a new world”.30 “We must
erase the rules from our heads” – he wrote – because [“picture architecture”] is

[21.] Lajos Kassák–László Moholy-Nagy (eds.), Új művészek könyve [The Book of New Artists],
Julius Fischer Verlag, Vienna, 1922, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s illustration]

29  Péter Mátyás [Ernő Kállai], Kassák Lajos, MA, 7/1., 1921, 139. English translation in Timothy O.
Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op. cit., 425–427.
30  Lajos Kassák, Képarchitektúra [Picture architecture], MA, 7/4., 1922, 53. Originally published
as Lajos Kassák, Bildarchitektur [Picture architecture], translated by Pál Aczél, MA, Vienna, [Sep-
tember] 1921. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op.
cit., 427–432.

127
 Portrait gallery of the new artists
The first cycle of Kassák’s numbered poems was written in 1920–1921,
and shed light on MA’s new orientation, which Kassák published together
with poems by international Dadaist authors.1 In some pieces of the cycle
he named himself, the “new Kassák”, alongside other representatives of
the “new art”. [Fig. 22] In his poems he incorporated other “MAists” who ap-
peared under the still-unified banner in Vienna: the painter József Nemes
Lampérth, who went mad after the revolution; the “tin-hatted” painter Sán-
dor Bortnyik; the “bearer of pallid joie de vivre” János Mácza; the “pig-head-
ed relativist” Sándor Barta; and his life companion, Jolán Simon, the “first-
class Dadaist actress”. But he also presented notable figures from the
international scene too: the “customs officer” Rousseau, Paul Klee, Tristan
Tzara, and Kurt Schwitters in the figure of “Little Anna”, since Kassák had
first come across the German artist through his poem An Anna Blume [To
Anna Flower].2

[22.] Unknown photographer, Sándor Bortnyik, Béla Uitz, Erzsi Ujvári, Andor Simon, Lajos
Kassák, Jolán Simon, and Sándor Barta, Vienna, Hietzing, 1922, photograph, Petőfi Literary
Museum, Budapest

1  The first 18 numbered poems were collected and partially renumbered in Kassák’s 1922 an-
thology Világanyám [The world, my mother], published by the Bán Verlag in Vienna.
2  Kurt Schwitters, Anna Blume [Anna flower], Paul Steegemann, Hannover, 1919. Kurt Schwit-
ters, Annavirágnak [To anna flower], translated by Mózes Kahána, MA, 6/3., 1921, 30.

128
not painting in the academic sense of the word”.31 The artist creating “picture
architecture” needs neither technical knowledge nor indeed a subject for their
creation to be at once “an American-calibre city, a look-out tower, a resort for
lung patients, and mass entertainment”.32 [Fig. 23]
Kassák did not conceptualise his visual experiments as stand-alone art-
works, but published them in MA primarily in the context of his theoretical
writings and poems. His vision for the “new world” was presented with pictori-
al and textual elements that complemented one another. Hardly any of these
early painting and collages have survived; most of the pictures were lost or de-
stroyed.33 Artists around Kassák’s journals and movement imbued the theory
of “picture architecture” with the greatest success. Sándor Bortnyik was the
first to commit himself to the geometric abstract form language of “picture
architecture”. Next after him came László Moholy-Nagy who, after long exper-
imentation, exhibited his constructivist-Dada compositions in the Der Sturm
gallery in a joint exhibition with László Péri, a sculptor who also started out
with Kassák.34 For a while, even Béla Uitz became a follower of Constructivism:
after his trip to Moscow in 1921, he experimented with abstract painting, and
his works were shown with great success at an exhibition in Vienna in 1923.

The allure of typography

In October 1922, Kassák refined his theory of “picture architecture”, and
presented his works not as relatives of Dada but of El Lissitzky’s Proun series,
which represented a form of transition between the flat plane and space, be-
tween the fine arts and architecture.35 In 1924, Kassák’s work also departed
the flat plane for space. He created spatial “picture architectures” that were
on the one hand “dynamic”, and on the other, he reflected on their practi-
cal application, and this is how the constructivist advertising kiosks and
stage set designs using collage techniques were born. [Fig. 24] From 1922,
Kassák found the most innovative opportunity to use the constructivist form

31  Sándor Bortnyik, Képarchitektúra album [Picture architecture portfolio], with an introduc-
tion by Lajos Kassák, MA, Vienna, 1921, [1.]
32  Lajos Kassák, Képarchitektúra, op. cit., 54.
33  For more details, see Merse Pál Szeredi, Kassák Lajos első kiállítása (1924) [Lajos Kassák’s
first exhibition (1924)], Ars Hungarica, 43/2., 2017, 189–214.
34  For more detail, see Merse Pál Szeredi, Budapest–Berlin–Budapest, Magyar művészek Ber-
linben az 1920-as években [Budapest–Berlin–Budapest, Hungarian artists in Berlin in the 1920s],
in Gábor Kaszás–Merse Pál Szeredi, Berlin–Budapest, 1919–1933, Képzőművészeti kapcsolatok
Berlin és Budapest között [Berlin–Budapest, 1919–1933, Artistic contacts between Berlin and Bu-
dapest], Virág Judit Galéria, Budapest, 2016, 11–147.
35  Lajos Kassák, Bildarchitektur [Picture architecture], MA, 8/1., 1922, [6.]

129
 [23.] Lajos Kassák, “Picture architectures”, MA, 8/1., 1922,
[6–7.], Vienna

language in advertising design and modern typography. He changed the im-

age of MA once again to a square format, replacing fine arts reproductions on
the cover with typographic designs by Kassák and his colleagues. [Figs. 25-29]
In 1926–1927, on his return to Budapest, Kassák produced commercial posters
for many well-known Hungarian and international companies.36

Art and technology – MA and the Bauhaus

Following the collapse of Budapest activist group which had formed during
the First World War, Kassák gathered a new group of regular friends around

36  Ferenc Csaplár (ed.), Lajos Kassák, The Advertisement and Modern Typography, Kassák
Museum, Budapest, 1999.

130
him consisting of young Hungarian writers living in Vienna who were attracted
to MA not for its political mission, but its avant-garde art platform. The young
artists, who were at least a decade younger than Kassák, were less dependent
on him, and hardly felt exploited in Vienna: most of them had not arrived in
the Austrian capital as persecutees or political émigrés, and did not have the
direct experience of revolutions that Kassák’s earlier colleagues did. It was at
this time that the MA circle expanded to include political emigrants Tibor Déry,
Pál Szegi, and Gyula Illyés, who all sent translations from Paris; József Nádass
and Aladár Tamás who arrived from Budapest; Ágoston Erg, Teréz Bergmann
and Sándor Vajda, young students from Sighetu Marmației (Transylvania) at
the University of Vienna; as well as the Austrian Hans Suschny, who was court-
ing Jolán Simon’s eldest daughter. It was through this new group that Kassák

131
 [24.] Lajos Kassák, Stage design, c. 1924–1926, collage on cardboard, 24,2×19,7 cm, private
collection [courtesy of Galerie Le Minotaure, Paris]

132
[25.] MA, 8/5–6., 1923, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s typography], Vienna
[26.] MA, 9/2., 1923, [front cover with Henrik Glauber’s typography], Vienna
[27.] MA, 9/6–7., 1924, [front cover with Sándor Vajda’s typography], Vienna
[28.] MA, 10/1., 1925, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s typography and Naum Gabo’s drawing],
Vienna

133
[29.] MA, 9/1., 1923, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s typography], Vienna

134
[30.] MA, 9/3–4., 1924, [front cover with Farkas Molnár’s typography], Vienna

135
[31.] Reproduction of Walter Gropius’ architectural design, MA, 9/5., 1924, [3.], Vienna
[32.] Reproductions of Gert Caden’s sculptures, MA, 8/5–6., [5.], Vienna

also came into closer contact with the Bauhaus school in Weimar, where a
number of Hungarian students and professors worked, among them Farkas
Molnár and László Moholy-Nagy.37
In the 1924–1925 issues of MA, the functionalist concept of Constructivism
promoted by the Bauhaus played an increasingly important role: modern ar-
chitecture, technical innovations and design. [Figs. 30–31] Kassák dedicated
thematic issues to the buildings and urbanist plans of Farkas Molnár, Walter
Gropius, Arthur Korn and the young Silesian architects’ group Das junge
Schlesien, based in Wrocław. In his spring 1925 programmatic text Éljünk a
mi időnkben [Let us Live in Our Times], Kassák promoted the “new unity” of
technology and art, similar to the Bauhaus. Kassák termed artists as “restless
inventors” and “guards of construction”, and proposed the improvement of

37  For more details, see Éva Bajkay (ed.), Von Kunst zu Leben, Die Ungarn am Bauhaus [Art
into life, Hungarians in the Bauhaus], Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, 2010. András Ferkai, Molnár Farkas,
Terc, Budapest, 2011.

136
human living conditions as the most important function of art.38 Taking its
direction from the functionalist and architecture-oriented turn in internation-
al Constructivism, from 1923, MA emphasized the transformation of the “new
man’s” sphere of life, lifestyle reform initiatives (such as hygiene and sport)
and the propagation of architectural-technological output, which Kassák re-
garded as identical in value to art. This notion was further honed from 1926 in
Kassák’s new journal Dokumentum [Document], established in Budapest.
Despite its international orientation and horizons, most editions of MA
were in Hungarian. Kassák edited a total of three foreign-language editions,
the first of which appeared in 1923. The “German Special issue” published
texts from constructivist artists who imagined the unity of art and technology

[33.] MA, 10/2., 1925, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s typography], Vienna
[34.] Mura Zyperowitsch’s dance at MA’s 1st German Propaganda Evening, Ma Este, 3/14., 1925,
4., Budapest

38  Ludwig Kassák, Leben wir unsere Zeit [Let us live in our times], MA, 10/2., 1925, 2–5. Pub-
lished in Hungarian in the Cluj-based journal Korunk, 1/6., 1926, 455–457.

137
[35.] Enrico Prampolini, Caricature of Lajos Kassák [1924], Literatura, 2/5., 1927, 124., Budapest

138
 The futurist congress
In October 1924, Kassák made personal contact with many artists from
the international avant-garde scene who were visiting Vienna for Friedrich
Kiesler’s exhibition on avant-garde theatre techniques. A shrewd critic, Max
Ermers, invited F. T. Marinetti, Enrico Prampolini, Theo van Doesburg, and
Lajos Kassák to the lobby of the Hotel Erzherzog Karl for a “futurist con-
gress”, with the aim to provoke debate between the artists. As Kassák’s
colleague József Nádass recalled, the clash between Kassák and Marinetti
livened things up: “the debate turned into chair throwing, table slamming,
and a fight almost broke out, because Marinetti was already flirting with
fascism”, while Kassák accused Mussolini of being a traitor.1 The constructiv-
ists criticised Marinetti for his pro-war stance and support for Italian fascist
Futurism, on which Ermers noted that “Marinetti however saw no funda-
mental difference between dissimilar methods: according to him, the dif-
ferences between the Italian futurists and the foreign constructivists led
back to divergent racial temperaments”.2 Following the argument – accord-
ing to Ermers – Marinetti became very hungry and enquired after a good
local restaurant. Since the ascetic constructivists could not invite him for
such a meal, the congress quickly came to an end. The comic nature of the
situation struck Theo van Doesburg, as he later wrote in a letter: “Marinetti
burst the bubble of the Viennese mentality. Oh, Vienna is so dreary and
backwards”.3 [Fig. 35]

1  József Nádass, Kassák Lajossal az emigrációban [In exile with Lajos Kassák], Kortárs, 12/10.,
1968, 1629.
2  Max Ermers, Futuristenkongreß im Hotel Erzherzog Karl [Futurist congress in the Hotel
Erzherzog Karl], Der Tag, 18 October 1924, 4.
3  Letter of Theo van Doesburg to Walter Dexel, Vienna, 11 November 1924. Published in Walter
Vitt (ed.), Hommage à Dexel (1890–1973), Beiträge zum 90. Geburtstag des Künstlers [Hom-
mage à Dexel (1890–1973), Essays to the 90th birthday of the artist], Keller, Starnberg, 1980, 82–83.

139
subordinated to architecture, such as Gert Caden, Adolf Behne, Werner Gräff
or Ludwig Hilberseimer.39 [Fig. 32] The “Music and Theatre Special issue”, con-
taining texts in German, French and Italian, was one of the few occasions when
MA reacted to one of the significant events in Viennese artistic life. The con-
structivist artist Friedrich Kielser organized a large-scale exhibition in Vienna
in 1924 on experiments in new theatre techniques, on the occasion of which
Kassák published this representative special issue of MA.

MA in Viennese artistic space

During the First World War, Kassák had run MA in Budapest as a form of
alternative “Gesamtkunstwerk” institution: besides publishing the journal, he
opened a gallery, ran a free school, organised theatrical and musical perfor-
mances, thus becoming an unavoidable presence on the progressive liter-
ary and fine arts scene during the revolutions with MA’s attractive, diverse
events. Compared to the complex institutional system that existed in Buda-
pest, Kassák had no similar opportunities open to him in Vienna. He did not
find partners in Viennese artistic life, but neither did he try to build Austrian
contacts. In 1920, he made his first – and for a long time only – contact in Vi-
enna with the Freie Bewegung [Free Movement] group led by Adolf Loos, in
whose city-centre gallery Béla Uitz’s winter 1920 exhibition was held.40 During
their exile years in Vienna, Kassák and his activist circle held smaller reading
soirées, performing their own poems, manifestos, and works by internation-
al representatives of the “new art”. It was then that Jolán Simon became a
Dadaist performance artist, and masterfully performed even Tzara’s “Maori”
poem consisting of “meaningless” sounds.41
During the Vienna soirées, Kassák came to know young, Zionist Jewish in-
tellectuals around the journal Das Zelt [The Tent] edited by Eugen Hoeflich,
many of whom took part in these events as musicians or performance artists.
This contact came about thanks to two Austrian artists, Josef Kalmer, nomi­
nally MA’s publisher in Austria, and Mirjam Schnabel-Hoeflich who, in Novem-

39  Adolf Behne, Architektur [Architecture], MA, 8/5–6., 1923, [8.] Werner Gräff, Vergnüglicher
Überfluß durch Neue Technik [Amusing abundance of new technology], Ibid., [15–16.] The text
was later published in the fourth issue of G in 1926. Ludwig Hilbersheimer, Bewegungskunst
[Movement art], Ibid., [14–15.] The text had been published earlier in the Sozalistische Monat-
shefte in 1921.
40  Ewald Schneider, Die Künstlergruppe “Freie Bewegung”, 1918–1922 [The artists group
“Freie Bewegung”, 1918–1922], unpublished manuscript, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Vienna, 1999.
41  For more details, see Ferenc Csaplár, Kassákné Simon Jolán, op. cit.

140
 ber 1920, recited Kassák’s poems translated into German at the first Viennese
activists’ matinee.42 Schnabel-Hoeflich also performed Kassák’s poems at MA’s
“first German propaganda evening” on 22 March 1925, while Mura Zypero­
witsch, an artist of Russian origin from Hoeflich’s circle, performed a modern
dance composition. [Figs. 33–34] The Viennese press reported ironically on the
evening, and even Eugen Hoeflich wrote the following in his diary: “the babble
of MA activists that evening where Mirjam helped out was tiring and pointless.
These decadent Hungarian writers want to realise Europe’s apotheosis in life,
to make a new era from the modern era – and still don’t get further than prais-
ing the latest inside toilet. I’ll need days to recover from that constructivists’
evening”.43

Avant-garde Budapest – Kassák’s return home in 1926

Kassák viewed his forced emigration in Vienna as a temporary condition,
and from 1924 onwards, constantly sought ways to return home. MA contin-
ued to be published in Hungarian, its primary aim being to bring Western
European “new art” to the Hungarian public in Hungary and Austro-Hungar-
ian Empire successor states (today Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine).
The editions smuggled into Budapest by Jolán Simon provided an important
point of reference for those who had remained in the country following the
collapse of the Soviet Republic, and thus forced to conform to the new polit-
ical climate. The first significant avant-garde journal of this era was Magyar
Írás [Hungarian Writing], edited by Tivadar Raith, a member of Kassák’s circle
during the First World War. Magyar Írás set out as an organ for late Expression-
ism, but quickly became the most important journal of “new art” in Hungary.
The milieu around Raith opened up opportunities for many young critics and
writers, and a number of similar journals were set up following its model. The
Dadaist paper IS [Also], edited by Imre Pán and Árpád Mezei, or Iván Hevesy
and Ödön Palasovszky’s manifesto-like volumes aligned themselves with the
avant-garde, yet their platforms diverged from those of Kassák. For instance,

42  [N. n.], A MA felolvasó estélye [The soirée of MA], Bécsi Magyar Újság, 18 November 1920, 7.
See also MA, 6/3., 1921, 36.
43  [-st], Kennen Sie “MA”? [Do you know “MA”?], Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 March 1925,
6. [N. n.], Aktivistischer Abend [Activist Evening], Arbeiter-Zeitung, 21 March 1925, 8. [N. n.], MA,
Ein futuristischer Kunstabend [MA, A futurist evening], Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 23 March 1925,
6. Armin A. Wallas (ed.), Eugen Hoeflich (Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl), Tagebücher 1915 bis 1927
[Eugen Hoeflich (Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl), Diary between 1915 and 1927], Böhlau, Vienna,
1999, 222.

141
in Nyugat, Iván Hevesy sharply criticized “picture architecture” and Construc-
tivism.44
Prior to his return, Kassák published his anthology Tisztaság könyve [Book
of Purity] in the spring of 1926. [Figs. 36–37] This was the first publication
since the collapse of the Soviet Republic which appeared in Budapest by le-
gal means, indeed, it was even available commercially. In this volume, Kassák
gathered together his poems written in exile (and their translations), novellas,
manifests and artworks with a view to presenting his constructivist platform
developed over five years as an émigré. Tisztaság könyve provided a frame-
work for Kassák’s return home, presented the “new Kassák” to Budapest, and
at the same time, closed the ten-year history of MA.

[36.] Lajos Kassák, Tisztaság könyve [The Book of Purity], Horizont, Budapest, 1926, [front cover
with the reproduction of Lajos Kassák’s collage]
[37.] Árpád Szélpál, Lajos Kassák’s window display for the Mentor Bookstore in Budapest, 1926,
photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum, Budapest

44  Imre József Balázs, Magyar dada? Megjegyzések az IS folyóiratról (1924–1925) [Hungarian
Dada? On the journal IS (1924–1925)], Létünk, 40/1., 2011, 55–63. Zsolt K. Horváth, Az új művészet
társadalmi programja, Hevesy Iván, Palasovszky Ödön és a megélt jövő imperatívusza [The
social program of new art, Iván Hevesy, Ödön Palasovszky, and the imperative of future past],
2000, 25/7–8., 2013, 53–61.

142
New Art – The Vienna Edition of MA in the International Networks of
Avant-Garde (Kassákism 1.)
Petőfi Literary Museum, 2017
György Tverdota
2×2 – The Journal edited by Lajos Kassák
and Andor Németh (1922)

Despite appearing for only one issue in October 1922, the journal 2×2 wrote
itself into the history of ‘isms’. That is because it carried one of the most sig-
nificant works of Lajos Kassák and thus of the Hungarian avant-garde, the
poem A ló meghal és a madarak kiröpülnek [The Horse Dies the Birds Fly
Away], which one of the editors, Andor Németh, later described as “Kassák’s
best writing”.1 [Fig. 1] The tension between the apparent insignificance and
actual importance of the journal inevitably arouses curiosity. A striking fea-
ture is the structural symmetry, as suggested by the title. The number two
may be a reference to the two editors, who shared the space equally: Kassák
and Németh. Both had complete control over their respective halves. Kassák
stated in the introduction: “the journal is edited by two people in one frame-
work, but completely independent of each other”.2 The “twice” that precedes
the “two” refers to the editors’ dual capacities. They were also authors, and
published their own works in the journal. This interpretation, however, comes
up against a hidden asymmetry, a “material fault”. Kassák actually appears in
three rather than two capacities. Inserted into the text of The Horse Dies the
Birds Fly Away are two of Kassák’s abstract compositions. Kassák’s introduc-
tion to his own section also conferred on him the role of essayist, effecting an-
other asymmetry. Within the symmetrical structure of 2×2, then, Kassák had a
hidden but definite dominance.3

Avant-garde and cultural transmission

Kassák, in addition to being the all-powerful editor of MA [Today] was in-
volved in producing other journals during his time in Vienna in the 1920s. In
his determination to break his isolation from readers in Hungary, whom no
publication bearing his name could reach, he put out individual issues of his
journal under different names – Kortárs [Contemporary] and 365 – and attrib-
uted them to different “editors”, such as Aladár Tamás. With 2×2, however, he

1  Andor Németh, Emlékiratok, Részletek [Memoirs, Extracts] in Idem, A szélén behajt-

va, Válogatott írások [Driven along the edge, Selected writing], Magvető, Budapest, 1973, 611.
Lajos Kassák’s poem is translated into English by Edwin Morgan at http://digiphil.hu/o:kassak_
alo.en.tei [consulted 21 December 2017].
2  Lajos Kassák, [2×2], 2×2, 1/1., 1922, 33.
3  “Kassák did the typography for the journal, and so it had a very appealing design.” Andor
Németh, Emlékiratok, op. cit., 610.

161
did not have to resort to such trickery. It was printed in the Elbemühl Press
in Vienna, which was also responsible for MA and other Hungarian-language
publications. Kassák was open about his involvement: “I am prepared for the
inevitable attacks on my principles and my person. In my part of the journal,
I want to give the best of the current artistic work I have access to, as chosen
by me, free from all influence, work that is at one with myself as artist and
editor”.4 In Kassák’s case, one can comfortably dismiss any tendency to playful
metamorphosis or any attempt to seek occasion to give vent to other aspects
of himself. The Kassák of 2×2 did not want to hide or to distinguish himself
from the editor and contributor of MA.
His co-editor, Andor Németh, joined the MA circle in Vienna and be-
came a contributor and translator for the journal. Later, during the launch of
Dokumentum [Document] in 1926 in Budapest, in addition to his contribution

[1.] 2×2, 1/1., 1922, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s typography], Vienna

4  Lajos Kassák, [2×2], op. cit., 33.

162
 as author, he became a principal member of staff, under Kassák’s direction. In
2×2, however, he took up the lofty position of co-editor. The “two” in the title was
an embodiment the journal’s co-editorial structure. How did Németh earn this
position, and how did the other members of the MA circle come to respect his
elevated status? He had first met Kassák before the First World War on the edi-
torial board of the literary journal Renaissance,5 when Németh was translating
F. T. Marinetti’s free verses from French on the pages of Új Revü [New Review].6
As co-editor, therefore, Németh did not fall short of Kassák in support for the
new radical modernity.
In a cruel turn of fate, Németh fell into dramatic and almost irretrievable
oblivion during the war years. In summer 1914, he travelled to Paris with his
friend Andor Révész to make contact with newest representatives of the
proliferating schools and studios – the Naturists, Unanimists, Cubists and Si-
multanists. They seemed to have realized their aim. The greatest catch, which
Németh was to remember proudly many years later, was his meeting with
Apollinaire. This thread of the story highlights the heightened attention
Németh paid – despite his competence in both German and French culture
– to the French schools of avant-garde, including the French transmission of
Italian Futurism. At home, Kassák also took up the German threads, and his ini-
tial French connections gradually withered. Whereas Kassák went on to set up
the journals A Tett [The Action] and MA and publish collections of avant-garde
poetry, Németh, having been stuck in Paris at the time of mobilization, spent
five years in internment camps on French islands in the Atlantic, hermetically
cut off from the cultural life of Hungary.7

A story of extraordinary cooperation

Németh steadfastly maintained his openness to new schools of art, and im-
mediately upon settling in Vienna, he sought out Kassák’s group of émigrés
from the Hungarian Soviet Republic. He was impressed by the accomplish-
ments of his new friends, and unhesitatingly followed Kassák and the Hungar-
ian avant-garde throughout the period, even in their most audacious Dadaist

5  The Hungarian political, social and art journal Reniassance (1910–1911), under the direction of
Árpád Zigány, had a special focus on German-speaking culture and was financially supported
by Franz Ferdinand by aiming at reinforcing dynastic centralism of the Habsbourgs.
6  F. T. Marinetti, A következtetések ellen, A hullámok harsonája [Against conclusions, Trump of
waves], translated by Andor Németh, Új Revü, 3 April 1913, 43.
7  György Tverdota, Németh Andor, Egy közép-európai értelmiségi a XX. század első felé-
ben [Andor Németh, A Central-European intellectual in the first half of the 20th century], vol. I.,
Budapest, Balassi, 2009, 41–52.

163
adventures. Like the young writer Tibor Déry, he was one of those who stub-
bornly clung to radical modernity right to the end, possibly even more so than
Kassák. When the avant-garde ceased as a movement, he reluctantly made
do with the modernity that Nyugat [West] offered the Hungarian public in the
1930s. This explains why Kassák was confident that he had found in Németh a
supporter of the most modern endeavours and could trust him as co-editor in
the joint venture. This trust was essential to the birth of 2×2. [Fig. 2]
Nonetheless, Németh maintained his independence from Kassák and from
MA. He had three fundamental reservations concerning his fellow writers at
MA. One was the “scorched-earth” tactic adopted by the Kassák circle. This
involved taking up sympathy with some modern movement and then, after
a while, abandoning it. From then on, the tendency they had supported be-
came taboo for the members of the group, and on behalf of the newly-cho-
sen movement they ruthlessly heaped criticism on the paradigm they had left
behind. Their loudest dispute was with the leading modernist literary journal
Nyugat, based on artistic rivalry rather than mutual hatred. Németh, however,
had grown up on the works of the first generation of Nyugat and remained

[2.] Unknown photographer, Participants of MA’s 1st German Propaganda Evening, Vienna,
22 March 1925, photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum, Budapest
From left to right: Hans Suschny, Leo Halpern, Miriam Schnabel-Hoeflich, Günther Hadank,
Lajos Kassák, Andor Németh, Paul Emerich, Mura Zyperowitsch, and Max Kuhn

164
 an admirer of Endre Ady, iconic poet of Hungarian modernism, throughout
his life. He maintained close friendships with other writers of Nyugat, includ-
ing Dezső Kosztolányi, Frigyes Karinthy and Zoltán Somlyó. He respected the
editor Ignotus, György Lukács, Mihály Babits, Zsigmond Móricz and even the
“aestheticizing” Ernő Szép. Like so many of his generation, he waited a long
time for Ernő Osvát, “grey eminence” (informal editor) of Nyugat, to discover
him for the modernist literary journal. He also remained open to the output of
the avant-garde schools that the Kassák circle had put behind them.
In a heated argument with Kassák, Németh gave voice to another reser-
vation concerning MA. In summer 1922, on the pages of the Bécsi Magyar
Újság [Viennese Hungarian Daily], he took sides in a debate between MA and
Egység [Unity], a Viennese Hungarian avant-garde journal with a committed
communist outlook, produced partly by authors who had broken from MA.
Németh did not defy Kassák and did not turn against his own journal, but by
partly agreeing with the communist Egység, he displayed some ambivalence
towards Kassák’s endeavours. He claimed that just when a new form of revo-
lution was taking shape – on the pages of Egység, for example – Kassák was
carrying on a free-thinking revolutionary poetic tradition that had peaked in
the 19th century.8 Kassák did not satisfy the demands of this new ideal, and
Németh admitted the validity of the critic Andor Rosinger’s claims, particularly
in the light of numbered poems and the Dadaist poems of total despair, that
the intellectual leader of MA was a romantic bourgeois individualist and not
a new-type revolutionary.9 Kassák responded in his own journal with a very
robust defence of his revolutionary credentials.10 An outside observer might
have expected the two writers’ paths to have finally diverged, but the opposite
happened. The emergence of this conflict bound Kassák and Németh into an
even closer alliance. It was not an alliance based on uniformity of outlook, but
on mutual respect and acknowledgement of differences.
This development gives the lie to the legend of Kassák’s ruthless tyranny as
an editor, one who ostracized anyone who defied him and admitted writers,
artists and intellectuals into the MA community only if they bowed to his will.
In addition to his confidence in Németh’s commitment to modernity, Kassák
realized that he had great need of a writer and journalist of such broad out-

8  Andor Németh, Egység kontra MA [Egység versus MA], Bécsi Magyar Újság, 16 July 1922, 7.
9  Andor Rosinger, A “MA” forradalmi ideológiája [The revolutionary ideology of “MA”], Egység,
1/2., 1922, 14–16.
10  Lajos Kassák, Válasz sokfelé és álláspont [Standpoint and answer to multiple queries], MA,
7/8., 1922, 50–54.

165
 The concept of “permanent modernity” in 2×2
The outlook of 2×2 co-editor Andor Németh may be termed “permanent
modernity”, comprising openness to the successive and mutually-exclu-
sive layers of emerging movements. As a disciple of “permanent moderni-
ty”, Németh regarded the artists, critics and readers of the MA circle, even
though he had a close association with them, as narrow-minded and dog-
matic. He saw his values as being embodied in the art of Apollinaire, which
seemed to him to embrace all of modernity from the tradition of romantic
lyricism to Cubism, and of course including Surrealism, a term Apollinaire
had coined during the summer of 1917. The concept of “permanent mo-
dernity” also applied to Kassák as a poet, not in his approach to organiz-
ing a movement. Kassák pursued scorched-earth tactics as an editor, but
his most successful avant-garde poem, The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away,
which was published in 2×2, bears traces of every major ‘ism’ (Simultanism,
Expressionism, Dadaism and Constructivism) and everything from “walk-
ing poems” to words without meaning and pseudo-syntax. It is thus an elo-
quent exposition of Németh’s ideal of “permanent modernity”. [Fig. 3]

[3.] Imre Göndör, Caricature of Andor Németh, 1922, pencil on paper, 20×21,5 cm, Petőfi Literary
Museum, Budapest

166
look – and Németh was at home in both the German and French cultures (and
increasingly in the English language) – if he was to build up international (and
Hungarian) contacts. It is also possible that Kassák shared Németh’s third res-
ervation concerning MA – namely that the journal reached only a very limited
public, a problem that had to be remedied by finding connections to potential
readers – and that this also motivated him to his tolerance. Art historians now
see the activity of MA in Vienna as a success story, and this is borne out by the
journal’s steadily-widening circle of international contacts.
The internal tensions among the émigré community heightened, and the
Hungarian intellectuals who had fled in 1919 gradually drifted apart and filtered
back to Hungary. This, and the gathering strength of Hungarian intellectual
life in the neighbouring countries, led to a dwindling of interest in MA. Hun-
gary’s opening to the outside world also reduced the attraction of the journal
to the Hungarian public. The “movement logic” deriving from manifestos and
directives was increasingly exposed as sterile. Both Németh and Kassák real-
ized that something had to change if public interest in the avant-garde was to
be maintained.

Experimentation and popular literature – division of labour

in the editorial policies of MA and 2×2
For Kassák, 2×2 was an experiment in creating a journal with a dual struc-
ture. MA remained the primary base, where committed followers assiduous-
ly cooked up the new ingredients of modernity, manifestoes and essays ap-
peared, and bold experimentation continued. By contrast, the bright, friendly
pages of the new journal served up the new recipes as if they were as self-
evident as 2×2=4, leaving the complexities of work in the kitchen discreetly
curtained off. Although Németh’s personality and intellectual qualifications
suited him to experimentation, he had doubts about its usefulness. He per-
formed editorial tasks with the strictest artistic standards, but wanted to re-
main in practice as a writer and to reach out to the audience. He wrote in Bécsi
Magyar Újság in an article announcing 2×2, that the new journal “does not put
forward a programme and does not pronounce new themes”.11 Kassák also
accepted this approach: “I do not propose any fixed programme”, he wrote in
his editorial.12 Both undertook that their joint journal would be an up-to-date,
elevated literary forum, rejecting all constraints related to publishers and com-

11  Andor Németh, Író és közönség [Writer and public], Bécsi Magyar Újság, 8 October 1922, 8.
12  Lajos Kassák, [2×2], op. cit., 33.

167
 mercial demands and not making any concessions to the inadequate erudi-
tion and consequent low standards of the readers, but avoiding self-indulgent
theorizing.
There can be no better indication of Kassák’s relations with Németh than
his comments in the introduction to the section he edited. He spoke of both
cooperation and the likelihood of heated disputes breaking out between them:
“both of us wanted to move towards the future and both want to go along with
others who are trying to make their way in the same direction, but we must
openly state the distinction between our thinking in matters of philosophy, so-
cial affairs and art. Quite possibly, our different thinking may spark off a struggle
between us today or tomorrow. A struggle within the bounds of a single journal
and towards the same end, but clearing different paths towards that end”.13
We can find clues to the journal’s orientation from the figures who lent
it their support. One was the Transylvanian author Gábor Gaál, and another
was Kassák’s “most loyal enemy” (as he once wrote in a book dedication), the
critic Aladár Komlós: “What is the significance of this journal? In short, it is the
organ of the post-Nyugat writers’ generation”.14 Komlós had a disputatious
friendship with Németh, disapproving of the extreme experiments of moder-
nity and never tiring in his criticism of the excesses of the ‘isms’. By formulat-
ing a move towards eternal things, he got in ahead of the poet Mihály Babits,
who set a new orientation for Nyugat by pronouncing a programme of tradi-
tion-preserving modernity. Komlós’ stand behind 2×2 shows that his informed
criticisms of the age included some openness towards modern developments,
but he was put off by doctrinaireness and self-indulgent-seeming experimen-
tation.

What went into 2×2

An orientation towards radical modernity, as is clear even from a brief in-
spection, runs as a common thread through the two halves of the journal.
The differing tastes of the two editors, however, is also plain to see. Németh’s
“permanent modernity” made room for many diverse currents, including Béla
Balázs, who started out with Nyugat but later moved away from them; Mátyás
György; Nyugat itself, Dadaism; the surrealism-approaching Tibor Déry; and
József Lengyel, who was moving out of the avant-garde in the direction of
Communism. In his years of Viennese exile, Andor Németh held Balázs’ writ-

13  Ibid.
14  Aladár Komlós, 2×2, Bécsi Magyar Újság, 5 November 1922, 8.

168
[4.] Alexander Archipenko, [Drawing], 2×2, 1/1., 1922, 37., Vienna
[5.] Lajos Kassák, A ló meghal és a madarak kiröpülnek [The Horse Dies the Birds Fly
Away], 2×2, 1/1., 1922, 40., Vienna
[6.] Lajos Kassák, “Picture architecture”, 2×2, 1/1., 1922, 44., Vienna
[7.] Lajos Kassák, “Picture architecture”, 2×2, 1/1., 1922, 48., Vienna

169
ing in high regard; Balázs regarded Kassák as simply mad. Németh wrote a
glowing review of one of Balázs’ novels. The poems selected from Balázs’ as-
yet unpublished book Férfiének [Man’s Song] for 2×2 may be placed some-
where between the two literary centres of Nyugat and MA, slightly closer to
Nyugat tastes than the radicalism of the “MAists”. Németh’s true discovery
in Vienna, however, was Déry, with whom he had strong bonds of friendship.
Also worth mentioning are two poems – among the last – by Mátyás György,
whom Németh esteemed more highly than any other poet in Kassák’s old
circle. József Lengyel’s short story is interesting for a verse passage that has
earned its place in history by being identified as a potential source for Atti-
la József’s poem Tiszta szívvel [With clear heart]. Other notable pieces are a
short story by Mária Lázár and an essay on dilettantism by Gustav Landauer.
Németh later wrote about the literature he included in the journal, “After the
programme article, I put in Déry’s poems, really out of friendship with him, be-
cause Kassák would also gladly have given them space in the other half of the
journal. Déry was a ‘MAist’ at the time. Then came a German-language author,
a Hungarian-born woman to whom I was introduced by Béla Balázs and who
later became a good writer. Then I published two fine poems by Béla Balázs,
and a piece by a strange young man. The author of the short story was József
Lengyel, one of Kassák’s wildest colleagues... Then came the poems by Mátyás
György, unfortunately not as interesting as Majoranna anyó [Granny Majoran-
na]”.15 Ferenc Csaplár, citing a recollection by Németh, interprets Landauer’s
essay as a veiled criticism of “MAist” lyricism. Németh recalled that “The essay
was written by the chief ideologist of the communist dictatorship of Munich,
Gustav Landauer. I ran the piece to put over to Kassák’s communist colleagues
that it was not essential for them to mimic each other”.16
Németh also introduced himself as an author, with the first act of his play
Az ingatag halott [The Unsteady Corpse], the rest of which, as is characteris-
tic of Németh, has been lost. The author of the Claudelian one-act Veronika
tükre [Veronica’s Mirror], which had reaped enormous success in his youth,
had made great strides in adopting the avant-garde dramatic language, but
his boldness and willingness to experiment did not lead to the kind of exper-
imental stage productions that stemmed from the pens of Apollinaire, Ivan
Goll or even Tibor Déry (See, e.g., Az óriáscsecsemő [The Giant Baby]).

15  Andor Németh, Emlékiratok, op. cit., 610.

16  Ibid. See also Ferenc Csaplár, Kassák és Németh Andor [Kassák and Andor Németh], Eu-
rópai Kulturális Füzetek, 16, www.c3.hu/~eufuzetek/index_16.php?nagyra=16/16_Csaplar.html
[consulted 21 December 2017].

170
[8.] Blaise Cendrars–Sonia Delaunay, Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France
[Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Joan of France], Les Hommes Nouveaux, Paris, 1913,
detail.

171
 The fulcrum of the section edited by Kassák – and perhaps of the whole issue
– was his poem The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away. Here we will say no more than
that the “walking poem” [poème-promenade] appeared at a productive mo-
ment of Kassák’s transition from Dadaism to Constructivism. This dual orienta-
tion also shows up in his editorial choices. Jean Cocteau’s poems (translated by
Endre Gáspár) tend in the Dada direction, while Alexander Archipenko’s draw-
ing and László Medgyes’ essay represent an opening towards Constructivism.
August Stramm’s long poem evoked the spirit of Expressionism. By contrast,
Jean Epstein’s pamphlet vehemently attacking Freud was an attempt to bring
down psychoanalysis, often regarded as a philosophical prop of Expressionism.
Endre Gáspár was featured strongly in the second half of the journal. In addi-
tion to his translation of Cocteau, he contributed a French, German, Italian and
English review, and the theater critic János Mácza reported on the products of
Russian modernity. [Figs. 4–8]

The contemporary reception of 2×2

Kassák seems to have had high hopes for his joint venture with Németh and
was bitterly disappointed by its hostile reception. He complained in a letter to
the writer Ödön Mihályi that “The journal was received with such odium that
I will not be surprised if the publisher refuses his services. It seems that manna
is not fit for Hungarians. They need lighter stuff. The same goes for writers as
it does for journalists and the public”.17 Then there was an outburst in a letter
to Déry: “2×2 has seized up completely, but I should point out, not because we
could not have sold 400–500 copies, but because everyone, all the so-called
experts, out of obtuse professional jealousy or vain attention-seeking, were
against it”.18 Kassák was right. A promising venture had been cut short, por-
tending the fate of the later journal Dokumentum, which lasted slightly longer
but was also unfairly terminated.

17  Quoted in Ibid.

18  Ferenc Botka (ed.), Déry Tibor levelezése, 1901–1926 [The correspondence of Tibor Déry,
1901–1926], Balassi–Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, Budapest, 2006, 249–250.

172
The New Kassák – The Horse Dies and the Birds Fly Away
(Kassákism 2.)
Petőfi Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, 2017
Judit Galácz
Avant-Garde Experiments Committed to Paper –
the MA “Music and Theatre Special issue” (1924)

In 1915, Lajos Kassák launched his first journal A Tett [The Action], which al-
ready included short reviews of Budapest theatre performances. One year later
A Tett was banned, but that same year, Kassák launched a new journal entitled
MA [Today], and continued to maintain that alongside fine arts and literary
themes, his journal should also cover theatre. After the tentative experiments
of its first year, from 1917 onwards, alongside theatre reviews, theoretical texts
on dramatic art as well as dramaturgies (the theory and practice of dramatic
composition) started appearing within the pages of MA with increasing fre-
quency.
With MA’s interest in theatre, Kassák joined the editorial practice of similar
avant-garde journals, but he was not driven merely by the cultural tendencies
of the era. In the 1910s and 1920s, the significance of theatre and its openness
and commitment to social questions were self-evident for the public and art-
ists too. In the early 20th century, theatre modernisers in Hungary experiment-
ed in two characteristic directions: they brought new social layers into the pro-
cess of creation (such as workers’ plays), and consciously aimed at a radical
transformation of the traditional performance style and theatrical spectacle.
They wanted to reform theatrical space, bring an end to the alienated forms of
theatrical drama, and do away with the strict boundaries between stage and
audience.

János Mácza’s Theory of Theatre

During MA’s Budapest years between 1916 and 1919, the artists who gathered
around the journal wanted to rethink the traditional practices of theatrical cre-
ation. The journal’s views and ground-breaking ideas on theatre were defined
during this period by the activities of János Mácza, who published theoretical
writings in MA as its theatre expert, and popularised topical questions on the
modernisation of theatre in his lectures organized by the free school of MA.
At the end of the 1910s, he published two significant texts, Új dráma, új szín-
pad, A színpad megújhodását váró keveseknek [New Drama, New Stage, For
the few who want to reform theatre] in 1917,1 and Teljes színpad [Total Stage] in

1  János Mácza, Új dráma, új színpad, A színpad megújhodását váró keveseknek [New drama,
New stage, For the few who want to reform theatre], MA, 2/11., 1917, 167–169.

183
1919. We may regard the former as a manifesto to give a synopsis of the writers
and artists around the journal. In the essay, Mácza outlined his complex the-
atrical vision. He analysed in detail the basic elements of theatrical works (di-
rection, acting, sets, lighting, and so on) separately, and according to his thesis,
the perfect work can emerge from the synthesis of these elements, which will
be unified by a new type of directorial concept. Mácza’s second theoretical
text, Teljes színpad –  which he termed dramaturgy –  was a further develop-
ment of the author’s earlier ideas.2 [Fig. 1] Here, Mácza expanded on the notion
that the work brought into existence on the stage can be viewed as a piece of
art that cannot be separated into theatre, drama and acting.3

[1.] János Mácza, Teljes színpad [Total Stage], MA, Vienna, 1921, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s
illustration]

2  The text was first published in MA in 1919, and later as a separate book in Vienna in 1921,
which also included a later version of the text. The publication of the two versions of the text
together also allowed for the effects of the interim period to be formulated, thus making the
theoretical train of thought visible. János Mácza, A teljes színpad [Total stage], MA, 4/4., 1919,
54–56 (part 1), 4/5., 1919, 103–106 (part 2) and 4/6., 1919, 136–139 (part 3). Idem, Teljes színpad [Total
stage], MA, Vienna, 1921.
3  Rózsa Kocsis, Igen és nem, A magyar avantgard színjáték története [Yes and no, History of
Hungarian avant-garde theatre], Magvető, Budapest, 1974, 184.

184
 Mácza’s texts in MA emphasized two questions of the radical metamorpho-
sis of theatre: transforming the interpretation of the genre of drama, and the
problematics of theatricalism. Among the existing theatrical interpretations,
it was primarily those that advocated a synthesis of balance between these
two standpoints that came to the fore. Mácza was particularly affected by the
Gesamtkunstwerk thinking of English director Edward Gordon Craig in the
1910s, and the expressionist theatre attitude towards raising social questions,
which started in Germany and was greatly influential over European acting.
Mácza believed that the characteristics of expressionist theatre –  a mode of
expression concentrating on inner emotions, and a puritanical world of form
– could create a credible stage atmosphere, and thus theatre could move
beyond traditional practices based on stylization and theatrical gestures, to
become a form suited to the notions of the time.
In expressionist theatre, Mácza was interested in the cluster of problems aris-
ing from collective feeling, actors’ movements, and the possibilities of space.
He thus turned towards Soviet mass theatre and, in the later version of Teljes
színpad, wrote in appreciation of Constructivism and the theories of the great-
est figures in Russian revolutionary theatre, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander
Tairov. In September 1917, Mácza and Kassák founded an acting school to pres-
ent the theories committed to paper as performances to the public.4 The young
artists around the school experimented with short, one-act performances, their
actions reinforcing the progressive, community nature of the MA circle.
After the fall of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, Kassák and his col-
leagues had to exile from Hungary in 1920, and settled in Vienna, where they
continued their theatre-related work, but with different emphases. Because
they were marginalised in Vienna, they could no longer react directly to events
in the world of Austrian theatre, and instead opened towards international
avant-garde artistic circles. They organised performance evenings and mat-
inees in Vienna, Berlin and Czechoslovakia, and under the influence of such
international circles, Kassák modified his ideological notions on theatre.

4  According to the brief announcement in the weekly Színházi Élet [Theatrical life], the free
school was opened under the direction of János Mácza to set up a studio ensemble (6/39., 1917,
45). Members of the company came from the group of artists gathered around Kassák’s jour-
nal. Not much is known for sure about this small group: they held their rehearsals among the
Roman ruins in Aquincum in Buda, and their concepts of acting were dominated by Mácza’s
notions idealising the expressionist style. Their sole notable performance was held at the work-
ers’ club in Újpest in March 1919, where they performed Mácza’s one-act drama Individuum.
Rózsa Kocsis, Igen és nem, op. cit., 169. Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete [The Life of a Man], vol. II.,
Magvető, Budapest, 1983, 513.

185
Lajos Kassák and the International Exhibition of New Theatre
Techniques in Vienna
Although Kassák continued to publish Mácza’s writings, he was only really
interested in one element of them, namely the unity to be created from the
synthesis of theatrical space and movement. We can locate the reason for this
divergence of opinion in the fact that Kassák was influenced by constructivist
theories. At the 1922 First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin,5 Kassák became ac-
quainted with the work of several Russian revolutionary artists, among them
El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich. Russian constructivist the-
ories and notions guiding the radical transformation of stage space also ap-
peared in MA’s theatrical publications. Such texts included writings on oppor-
tunities to create Proletkult and propaganda theatre (János Mácza), plans to
rethink stage space in a completely new way (Kurt Schwitters), and what was
termed “mechanical theatre” (Farkas Molnár).6
The artists around MA entered contemporary international avant-garde
theatrical discourse in September 1924 with the MA “Music and Theatre Spe-
cial issue”.7 [Fig. 2] The special issue was produced following the International
Exhibition of New Theatre Techniques in Vienna, which featured leading art-
ists and concepts of the international avant-garde on the theme of contem-
porary theatre.8
The exhibition concept was developed by Friedrich Kiesler, whose influen-
tial works experimented with the introduction of progressive forms which de-
constructed the traditional stage space, and made possible new ways of creat-
ing spectacle. Some works in the exhibition dealt with the possibilities of stage
mechanics, others with the concept of the complete deconstruction and re-
thinking of the traditional stage. The works on show ranged from scale models
and set designs to puppet art, presenting the wide range of avant-garde the-
atre experiments to the public. Artists exhibited included Oskar Schlemmer,
Kurt Schwitters, Alexandra Exter and László Moholy-Nagy.

5  El Lissitzky (ed.), Erste Russische Kunstausstellung [First Russian art exhibition], Galerie van
Diemen, Berlin, 1922.
6  János Mácza, Az új művészek és a Prolétkult [New artists and the Proletkult], MA, 7/8.,
1922, 60–61. Kurt Schwitters, A Merzszínpad [The Merz-stage], MA, 6/3., 1921, 29. Farkas Molnár,
A mechanikus színpad [The mechanical stage], MA, 8/9–10., 1923, [6.]
7  MA, “Music and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924.
8  Friedrich Kiesler (ed.), Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik [International exhi-
bition of new theatre techniques], Würthle, Vienna, 1924.

186
[2.] MA, “Music and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s
typography], Vienna

187
 Special Theatrical issues of Avant-Garde Journals
The “Music and Theatre Special issue” of MA that focused on theatre –
with a few texts on music as well – belongs to the rank of contemporary
avant-garde journals that dedicated special issues to discourses around the
new forms of theatre. The theatrical avant-garde appeared on these jour-
nals’ horizons not only because of their innovation and agitation, but also
because this field was expressly regarded as a problem of fine arts. In 1926,
the American The Little Review published a similar issue to the one edited
by Lajos Kassák, as this issue responded to the International Theatre Exhi-
bition, organized by Friedrich Kiesler in New York. [Fig. 3] Further issues of
this New York journal remained in Kassák’s archives, such as the 1923 spring
“Exiles’ Number”, whose front cover featured a set design by Fernand Léger
for the ballet La Création du monde [The Creation of the World], written
by Blaise Cendrars and Darius Milhaud. [Fig. 4] These designs were repro-
duced in the MA “Music and Theatre Special issue” as well. It is also im-
portant to mention the Romanian Contimporanul [Contemporary] and the
Italian futurist journal Noi [Us], which also published special thematic issues
on theatre in 1924. Noi included the same texts by F. T. Marinetti and Enrico
Prampolini, which Kassák published. [Fig. 5]

[3.] The Little Review, 11/2., 1926, [front cover with Friedrich Kiesler’s illustration], New York
[5.] Noi, 1/6–9., 1924, [front cover with Enrico Prampolini’s typography], Rome

188
[4.] The Little Review, 9/3., 1923, [front cover with Fernand Léger’s illustration], New York

189
 Kassák reacted first to the exhibition in the Viennese journal Komödie
[Comedy].9 He strongly criticised the works’ lack of ideological and art theo-
retical background, and expressed disapproval of the exhibition’s organisation
and direction, as well as of the installation of the objects and the editing of
the catalogue. The criticism was directed not only at the event and the works
on display, but also the organisation of the exhibition and the role of Friedrich
Kiesler in selecting the materials on show. Although we do not know wheth-
er they met in person, they certainly knew each other’s work, and since they
had similar ideas in many ways on the renewal of theatre, Kassák could have
viewed Kiesler as a rival. The relationship between them, therefore, was one of
tension.10 The exhibition provided Kassák with a good opportunity to present
his own ideas on avant-garde theatre to a wider audience.

The MA “Music and Theatre Special issue”

The MA “Music and Theatre Special issue” may be regarded as Kassák’s own
canon in terms of who and what he found important among contemporary
theatre artists and theories. The special issue was introduced by Kassák’s theo-
retical essay Über neue Theaterkunst [On New Theatre Art].11 This text includes
motives already found earlier in MA’s theatrical programme, namely that “the-
atrical art cannot be placed under the reign of one single factor. Artistic cre-
ation is synthetic form-creation”, the elements of which all play an important
role in the end result.12 Theatre differs from other art forms in that acting is a
form created simultaneously in space and time. As Kassák puts it: “the stage
is no more and no less than a constructive game (life-movement) united from
a single point”.13 A new type of director was needed for this new formation,
whom he called the “organiser”. Kassák believed that two paths led to the
creation of theatre according to the new rules. First, the western European

9  Ludwig Kassák, Die Wiener Internationale Theatertechnische Ausstellung [The Internation-

al exhibition of new theatre techniques in Vienna], Komödie, 5/39–40., 1924, 3–4.
10  See Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Ar-
chitekturprojekte, 1923–1925 [The scenery explodes, Friedrich Kiesler’s theatre experiments and
architectural projects, 1923–1925], Löcker, Vienna, 1988, 159.
11  Ludwig Kassák, Über neue Theaterkunst [On new theatre art], MA, “Music and Theatre Spe-
cial issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [2.] The text was translated from Hungarian into German by Endre Gáspár.
The Hungarian version of the text was published in Lajos Kassák, Tisztaság könyve [Book of
purity], Horizont, Budapest, 1926, 57–60. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács
(eds.), Between Worlds, A Sourcebook of Central-European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, LACMA–
MIT Press, Cambridge–London, 2002, 444–447.
12  Ibid.
13  Ibid.

190
path, which was necessarily a dead end since its representatives were unable
to move beyond the traditions of flat depiction or strong naturalism in theatre
practice. The second path was the Russian one, in which truly revolutionary
ideas about theatre and the stage as a real space were already being explored,
however, practitioners were still also only focusing on small, finite problems,
such as Tairov’s ideas about movement on stage. Kassák believed in the uni-
ty of space, movement and stage construction, and viewed the fundamental
questions of theatrical art from this perspective.14
Kassák’s introductory essay followed by the essay of the founding father of
Italian futurist art, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, on “tactile theatre” – Teatro An-
tipsicologico Astratto, di Puri Elementi e il Teatro Tattile [Antipsychological, Ab-
stract Theatre of Pure Elements and Tactile Theatre] – as providing the found-
ing voice to the ideological orientation of the texts that follow.15 Like Marinetti
and the other futurist thinker also published in MA, Enrico Prampolini, Kassák
also strove to produce a theatrical synthesis, even if that was imagined with
ultimately simplified means. Marinetti spoke of theatrical works in which the
actors would interpret “each feeling or atmosphere” in performances, which
was an attempt not only to delete the existing boundaries of drama as a gen-
re, but also to reach true unity through extreme simplification. However, in
his manifesto Scène Dynamique Futuriste [Futurist Dynamic Scenes],16 Pram-
polini recommended transforming the system of the forms of performances
based on pantomime techniques, creating a harmonic unity of movement,
colours, music and lines through the harmonic expression of dynamic, rhyth-
mic movement.
Marinetti’s essay was followed by Herwarth Walden, the representative of
German Expressionism and founder of the journal Der Sturm [The Storm], in
his text Das Theater als künstlerisches Phänomen [The Theatre as Artistic

14  See Rita Nemes, Raumstationen 1924–2004, Vor 80 Jahren erschien das Musik- und Thea­
ter-Sonderheft der Wiener Zeitschrift MA [Space stations 1924–2004, The Music and Theatre
Special issue of the Viennese journal MA was published 80 years ago], in Pál Deréky–Zoltán Kék-
esi–Pál Kelemen (eds.), Mitteleuropäische Avantgarden, Internationalität im 20, Jahrhundert
[Central European avant-gardes, Internationality in the 20th century], Peter Lang, Frankfurt am
Main, 2006, 87–100.
15  F. T. Marinetti, Teatro Antipsicologico Astratto, di Puri Elementi e il Teatro Tattile [Anti­
psychological, abstract theatre of pure elements and tactile theatre], MA, “Music and Theatre
Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [3.]
16  Enrico Prampolini, Scène Dynamique Futuriste (Manifeste) [Futurist dynamic scenes (Ma­
nifesto)], Ibid., [11.]

191
Phenomenon],17 which also discussed the disassembling of the stage to its
foundations to rebuild it according to new principles. Here, the focus is on
the outdated nature of traditional theatrical space and its reconstruction. It is
as if Kassák wanted to present a new artistic form of building the new theat-
rical construction by graphically placing Walden’s text and Kurt Schwitters’s
manifesto on the Merz-Stage next to one another,18 even if this possibility was
wholly unusual and proffered an extreme solution. In Schwitters’ manifesto,
we can recognise a Dadaist creation based on montage techniques, in which
the fundamental organising force is the random placing of elements next to
one another, thus excluding conscious planning from the work process.
The text by Russian director Alexander Tairov, A színpadi atmoszféra [The
Stage Atmosphere],19 also fits into the Marinetti–Prampolini–Walen discourse.
In his introduction to the special issue, Kassák had already mentioned Tairov’s
theatre work. He objected to the director’s excessive focus on the role of
the actor, incorrectly turning him into an autocrat in the pieces, but praised
Tairov’s experiments in organising space. Using a historical narrative of his
own construction, Tairov deduces how designing the stage spectacle evolved
from early maquette forms, via two-dimensional sketches, and back again to
the maquette. We may regard this train of thought as one kind of practical
summary of the three-dimensional experiments which Tairov carried out in
his large stage productions. Tairov’s final conclusion was that the maquette
can only be a suitable solution for spatial design if we learn to think in more
dimensions, thus avoiding the traps of outdated naturalist design. Illustrat-
ing these experiments were photographs of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s works and
stage designs. Just as Tairov and Meyerhold attempted to transform space
along constructivist lines, Meyerhold also concentrated as a director on the
spatial arrangement possibilities of human movement. This verifies Kassák’s
remark in his introduction on the inability of Soviet-Russian artists to fully cre-
ate stage synthesis because they had not moved beyond this particular prob-
lem of the stage.
Although these Soviet-Russian artists undoubtedly influenced Kassák’s
thinking on theatre, the artists grouped around MA were more sympathetic

17  Herwarth Walden, Das Theater als künstlerisches Phänomen [The theatre as artistic phe-
nomenon], Ibid., [4.] English translation in Timothy O. Benson–Éva Forgács (eds.), Between
Worlds, op. cit., 448–449.
18  Kurt Schwitters, Die Merz-Bühne [The Merz-stage], Ibid., [4.] Originally published in
Sturm-Bühne, 1/8., 1919, 3. See also footnote 6.
19  Alexander Tairov, A színpadi atmoszféra [The stage atmosphere], Ibid., [5–6.] Originally pub-
lished in Idem, Das entfesselte Theater [The unleashed theatre], Kiepenheuer, Potsdam, 1923, 11.

192
[6.] László Moholy-Nagy, Egy nagyváros dinamikája [Dynamic of the Metropolis], MA, “Music
and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [8–9.], Vienna
[7.] El Lissitzky, Die Elektro-mechanische Schau [The Electro-Mechanical Show], MA, “Music
and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [4–5.], Vienna

193
towards the fine arts focus of the Bauhaus school’s theatre concepts, which
unified cubist and expressionist endeavours along mechanist lines.20 Two art-
ists connected to the Bauhaus were also published in the special issue: László
Moholy-Nagy’s sketch for a film entitled Egy nagyváros dinamikája [Dynamic
of the Metropolis],21 as well as El Lissitzky’s Die elektro-mechanische Schau
[The Electro-Mechanical Show] with accompanying illustrations, including
the mechanical set design for the 1923 futurist opera Victory over the Sun.22
Both works exemplify the Bauhaus theatre’s commitment towards mechan-
ics and the experiments in mechanical movement of the stage. [Figs. 6–7] Art-
ists working at the Bauhaus viewed the scene as a playground of architectonic
parts, forms and colours. They thought that if theatre wanted to remain alive
in the film era, then mechanics should be present on the stage. These princi-
ples were also related to the puppet designs of Georg Teltscher, which incor-
porated the problematics of the mechanisation of man into debates about
theatre theory. [Fig. 8]
The question of mechanics is further addressed by the photograph of Fer-
nand Léger’s moving sets [Fig. 9] as well as the texts by Hans Heinz Stuck-
enschmidt – Mechanisierung der Musik [The Mechanisation of Music]23 – and
Josef Matthias Hauer’s Zur Einführung in Meine “Zwölftönenmusik” [Intro-
duction to my Twelve-Tone Music].24 Stuckenschmidt thought in terms of the
structural qualities of musical instruments and the most advanced means of
musical reproduction of its time, the gramophone. He was interested in how
the structure of these sound-creating and playing instruments could be fur-
ther developed mechanically for music to become more enjoyable. The score
and text by the Austrian composer Hauer dealt with an exceptionally provoca-
tive question from the Viennese music world of the 1920s. Hauer’s compatriot
and fellow composer Arnold Schönberg, together with his students, had tried
to work out a compositional practice based on a twelve-tone scale, which they
called dodecaphony. This method was significant because it helped to bring

20  See Rózsa Kocsis, Igen és nem, op. cit., 188.

21  László Moholy-Nagy, Egy nagyváros dinamikája [Dynamic of a metropolis], MA, “Music and
Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [8–10.]
22  El Lissitzky, Die elektro-mechanische Schau [The electro-mechanical show], Ibid., [5.] Orig-
inally published as Die plastische Gestaltung der elektro-mechanische Schau Sieg über Sonne,
Moskau 1913, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, 1923. English translation in Timothy O. Benson–
Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, op. cit., 447–448.
23  Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, Mechanisierung der Musik [The mechanisation of music],
Ibid., 9/8–9., 1924, [12.]
24  Josef Matthias Hauer, Zur Einführung in meine “Zwölftönenmusik” [Introduction to my
twelve-tone music], Ibid., [16.]

194
[8.] Georg Teltscher, Puppet Designs for Yvan Goll’s Methusalem or the Eternal Bourgeois, MA,
“Music and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [14.], Vienna
[9.] Fernand Léger, Laboratorium [Laboratory], MA, “Music and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9.,
1924, [15.], Vienna

195
about a systematic permutation with which serial, that is, musical variations
could be multiplied to form a series-based system. The text by Hauer present-
ed a variation of this system.

Friedrich Kiesler and Jacob Levy Moreno

It is clear that the “Music and Theatre Special issue” edited by Kassák sys-
tematically summarised all the theatrical ideas of the time which preoccupied
the MA circle during the Vienna years. Following on from this overview of the
special issue’s contents, it is clear that there is a similarity between Kassák’s
publication and Kiesler’s theoretical and practical work putting together the
Viennese exhibition, and thus the absence of Kiesler in the issue is even more
striking. Kiesler’s activities in the 1920s crucially featured works that concen-
trated on a new transformation of stage space. His works demolished the
wings of the stage, hitherto considered indestructible, and reformed the en-
tire construction of stage space. In some of his designs, only the set was moved
by mechanical elements, such as in Karel Čapek’s R. U. R. [Rossum’s Universal
Robots],25 while for Eugene O’Neill’s play The Emperor Jones,26 the foundations
of the stage were rebuilt on a spiral, two-level construction, thus creating what
he called Raumbühne [Space Stage]. Kiesler further developed this direction
over many years, such as in the design for the Infinite Theatre,27 which did
away with the walls and dividers that break up inner space, creating a unified
spectacle and spatial experience that flow into one another, thus representing
an experiment in transforming the relationship between stage and audience.
In the MA “Music and Theatre Special issue”, Kassák also used Kiesler’s phrase
Raumbühne, and also took into account the opportunities for the transforma-
tion of space. Kiesler’s name, however, is mentioned only once in the entire
issue, in an essay by the Wrocław architect Günter Hirschel-Protsch, which
lists the artists who had undertaken significant research in the field of move-
ment in theatre.28 Research on this subject has located the reason for this in
the above-mentioned ideological and personal conflict between Kassák and

25  Karel Čapek, R. U. R., Theater für Kurfürstendamm, Berlin, 1923.

26  Eugene O’Neill, The Emperor Jones, Lustspielhaus in der Friedrichstraße, Berlin, 1924.
27  Friedrich Kiesler introduced his first design for the universal or infinite theatre at the 1926
International Theatre Exhibition in New York. He regularly returned to this utopian notion
throughout his life, preparing ever more draft designs for the idea.
28  Günter Hirschel-Protsch, Das Bewegungsdrama [The movement drama], MA, “Music and
Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [15.]

196
Kiesler.29 According to some theories, the omission of Kiesler can be explain­
ed as Kassák’s expression of sympathy with Jacob Levy Moreno, the founder
of psychodrama, who accused Kiesler of plagiarism at the vernissage of the
International Exhibition of New Theatre Techniques. Levy Moreno claimed
that his ideas had been incorporated by Kiesler into his works but Kiesler had
not acknowledged this and presented the Raumbühne as his own creation.30
The notion that Kassák took Levy Moreno’s side is supported by the fact that
in the following year, MA published his essay on Rögtönző színház [Impro-
vised Theatre].31 However, the memoirs of the young poet Sándor Vajda, who
joined Kassák’s circle in 1923, cast a different light on this supposition.32 Vajda
writes that when Levy Moreno’s text was published in MA, Kassák was working
almost exclusively on his autobiography Egy ember élete [The Life of a Man],
and paid less attention to Viennese artistic life. It was in fact Vajda and Hans
Suschny who ensured that the two theoretical texts – Josef Matthias Hauer on
his “atonal music”33 and Levy Moreno on improvised theatre – were published
in the journal.34

Further Appearances of the Idea of Mechanical Theatre in MA

If we take into consideration the special issue’s publications and the texts
published earlier in MA on constructivist mechanical theatre – writings by
Farkas Molnár and Pál Sánta35 –we can see that Kassák was interested in those
theories which dealt with creating theatrical space and acting methods that
had never been experienced before. Sánta was also critical towards the new
experiments: although the works had moved away from Naturalism, the new

29  See, e.g., Veronika Darida, Színházutópiák [Theatre utopias], Kijárat, Budapest, 2010, 247.
Rita Nemes, Raumstationen, op. cit., 87–100.
30  On this, see Barbara Lesák–Thomas Trabitsch (eds.), Frederick Kiesler, Theatervisionär–
Architekt–Künstler [Frederick Kiesler, Theatre visionary–architect–artist], Österreichische Thea­
termuseum–Brandstätter, Vienna, 2012, 39.
31  Jacob Levy Moreno, Rögtönző színház–Théatre Immediat [Improvised theatre], MA, 10/1.,
1925, [4.]
32  Sándor Vajda, Untitled Autobiography, unpublished manuscript, [first half of the 1970s],
MTA–Lukács Archives, Budapest. Dossier 4–5., 49–60. For more details, see Barbara Lesák, Die
Kulisse explodiert, op. cit., 160.
33  Josef Matthias Hauer, Atonális zene [Atonal music], MA, 9/5., 1924, 5–6. Originally published
in Die Musik, 16/2., 1923, 103–106.
34  For more details, see Judit Galácz–Merse Pál Szeredi, Parallel Avant-Gardes in Vienna,
A Report on the Lack of Cooperation between Kassák and Kiesler, in Peter Bogner–Gerd Zillner
(eds.), Frederick Kiesler, Face to Face with the Avant-garde, Essays on Network and Impact,
Birkhäuser, Wien, 2018, [forthcoming.]
35  Farkas Molnár, A mechanikus színpad, op. cit., [6.] Pál Sánta, Az új dráma és új színpad [New
drama and new stage], MA, 8/9–10., 1923, [5–6.]

197
director had created neither drama nor a unified stage, but rather followed his
own ideas about drama and brought a work into being on this basis. Molnár
responded to this in defence of the Bauhaus mechanical theatre experiments.
The aim of mechanical theatre was to provide a scene-space experience for
the viewer, which “consists of architectonically formed space and colour phe-
nomena, where man, present in perfect balance and coordinated into the
space, provides a unified Gesamtkunstwerk phenomenon”.36 Although Mol-
nár’s study was not reproduced in the 1924 special issue, a scene he described
from Georg Teltscher and Kurt Schmidt’s Mechanisches Ballett [Mechanical
Ballet] was published as an illustration in the MA “Music and Theatre Special
issue”.37
Bearing in mind Kassák’s earlier views on theatre, we may suppose that
he was sympathetic towards Levy Moreno’s model of theatre and the related
transformation of theatrical space, which envisioned a practice in which the
boundary between stage and audience would disappear, and in which even
the roles could disappear: members of the audience become actors, and the
actors become viewers.
The works and conceptual editing specifically for a Hungarian audience in
the MA “Music and Theatre Special issue” outlined here elucidate the range of
ideas on avant-garde theatre in the 1920s. This living international discourse
was joined by Lajos Kassák, who organised his ideas on the principles of the
new theatre so that they could later impact endeavours in Hungary too.

36  Farkas Molnár, A mechanikus színpad, op. cit., [6.]

37  Kurt Schmidt–Georg Teltscher, Figurine des Mechanisches Balletts [Figures of the Mecha­
nical Ballet], MA, “Music and Theatre Special issue”, 9/8–9., 1924, [12.]

198
New Drama, New Stage – Theatrical Experiments of the Hungarian
Avant-Garde (Kassákism 3.)
Gizi Bajor Actors’ Museum, 2017
 FOR NEW THEATRE ART

TOTAL STAGE
 [1.] Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, [front cover with Willi Baumeister’s collage], Budapest

208
Gábor Dobó
Generation change, synthesis and a programme for a new
society – Dokumentum in Budapest (1926–1927)

Carrying the slogan “reporting on art and society”, the journal Dokumentum
[Document] was concerned with the interrelationships of culture, politics and
society.1 It was published in Budapest, and ran for only five issues. Its founders
– the editor-in-chief, Lajos Kassák, together with Tibor Déry, Andor Németh,
Gyula Illyés and József Nádass – had all returned to Hungary in 1926, having
departed after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. In their years of exile,
they had worked in the international avant-garde movements, while always
keeping track of Hungarian cultural and political affairs. Dokumentum set out
to do what the important literary review of Hungarian modernism launched
in 1908, Nyugat [West] had done twenty years previously – to be the journal
of the young generation of artists (“fiatalok” – the “young ones”), seeking
answers to contemporary questions beyond the reach of the “efficiently ran”
but in their view “senescent” journals.2
Dokumentum, with its interest in contemporary culture in the broadest
possible sense, had a distinctive place in the culture of European avant-garde
journals that flourished after the First World War. Looking to extend its reader-
ship abroad, it published some of its articles in German and French as well as
in Hungarian. Publication of writing translated from world languages into the
national language and vice versa was rare in the Hungarian journal market at
the time, but an established practice in European avant-garde journals, ena-
bling them to function as vehicles of multi-directional cultural transfer.3 [Fig. 1]
In line with foreign journals of similar philosophy, Dokumentum proclaimed
the interaction of science, technology, sociology, popular culture and the arts.

At the time of writing, the author was in receipt of a grant from the Deák Dénes Foundation
and the New National Excellence Programme of the    Ministry of Human Resources, code
number ÚNKP-17-3
1  For more detail see, Éva Forgács–Tyrus Miller, The Avant-Garde in Budapest and in Exile
in Vienna, in Peter Brooker–Sascha Bru–Andrew Thacker–Christian Weikop (eds.), The Oxford
Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Vol. III., Europe 1880–1940, Oxford UP, Ox-
ford–New York, 2013, 1128–1156.
2  Letter from Lajos Kassák to Jolán Simon, Vienna, [1925]. KM-lev. 2031/20. Petőfi Literary Mu-
seum–Kassák Museum, Budapest.
3  See Eszter Balázs, Kulturális transzferek a történeti kutatásban, Beszélgetés Michael Wer-
nerrel, a párizsi Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) tanárával [Cultural trans-
fers in historical research, Interview with Michael Werner, professor at the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris], Aetas, 19/3–4., 2004, 245–253.

209
 A “synthetic” avant-garde journal
Dokumentum belonged to a distinct group of European avant-garde jour-
nals of the 1920s known by the term “synthetic”. The synthetic approach to avant-
garde journals stemmed from an intellectual praxis that became widespread
after the war, usually referred to by the expressive slogan “rappel à l’ordre”, or
“back to order”.1 In the late 1910s and the 1920s, several modernist movements2
turned away from unorthodox, provocative and subversive forms of expres-
sion and returned to tradition, attempting to create a new European culture.3
Avant-garde artists chose a somewhat different strategy for building the future.
Rather than taking up the dropped threads of the past, they wanted to create
new constructions out of the phenomena of science, technology and the social
sciences. The synthetic avant-garde journals looked on the First World War as
the closing episode of an epoch that had lasted several centuries, the epoch of
European civilization, and looked to a future built from a clean sheet, using mo­
dern and, in their view, future-looking elements. The journals that espoused syn-
thetic thinking, including Dokumentum, were designed to manifest all of these
aims in their structure and image. They embraced a great diversity of subject
matter and used many different media, all under the umbrella of avant-garde
visuality, which meant innovatively-designed covers and headings carrying the
message that the “new art” is capable of interpreting and giving new meaning
to the apparently chaotic world people were then living in. [Figs. 2–3]
In his 1929 book, Karl Mannheim put forward the idea of “socially unattached
intellectuals”4 – dynamic, constantly-renewing individuals with the abili-

1  The expression was first used in Jean Cocteau, Le rappel à l’ordre [The return to order], Librai-
re Stock, Paris, 1926. See also: Jean Laude, Le Retour à l’ordre dans les arts plastiques et l’archi-
tecture, 1919–1925 [The return to order in the plastic arts and architecture, 1919–1925], Université
de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne, 1986. Jennifer Ruth Bethke, From Futurism To Neoclassicism:
Temporality In Italian Modernism, 1916–1925, California UP, Berkeley, 2005.
2  I use the term modernism for the early 20th-century cultural movements reflecting the
age of modernity. By avant-garde, I mean the artistic schools that radically revised moderni-
ty and modernisms and were critical towards them. There was no sharp boundary between
modernisms and the avant-garde, only transitions. Peter Brooker–Andrzej Gąsiorek–Deborah
Longworth–Andrew Thacker, Introduction, in Idem (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms,
Oxford UP, Oxford, 2010, 3–4.
3  Anne-Rachel Hermetet, Pour sortir du chaos, Trois revues européennes des années vingt
[To get out of the chaos, Three European journals of the twenties], Presses Universitaires de
Rennes, Rennes, 2009.
4  Taking up from Alfred Weber, Karl Mannheim, in his book on the sociology of knowledge,
uses this term to refer to a section of society that is “constantly experimenting and developing
social sensitivity within itself”, and “is not clearly fixed and relatively classless”, and included the
editors of Dokumentum. Karl Mannheim, Why there is no Science of Politics, in Idem, Ideology
and Utopia, Harcourt–Routledge, London–New York, 1954, 97–104.

210
 ty to see the current tendencies of their age and draw conclusions about
the future.5 This group was not tied to a particular social class but shifted
dynamically from one class to another and facilitated communication be-
tween them. Members of the group were aware of their own intermediate
position, and were capable of critically interpreting the world around them,
from the outside. Their syntheses meant both a critical stance towards pre-
vailing conditions and a broad-based, innovative programme to change
them. A good example of this was László Moholy-Nagy, who soon became
a major figure of the European avant-garde. He embodied this sovereign
type, and took an interest in the question of synthetic thinking as early as
1925. Moholy-Nagy was already a professor in the Bauhaus and contributed
to several avant-garde journals, including Dokumentum. His essay on syn-
thetic journals appeared in Pásmo [Zone],6 published in Brno, a medium-
sized town but a place of significance for modernism and a local centre

[2.] Lajos Kassák, The New Russian Art [Malevich, Tatlin], Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, 3., 6., Buda-
pest

5  On “synthesis” and the “bearers of synthesis”, see Karl Mannheim, Why there is no Science
of Politics?, op. cit., 97–104.
6  The journal of the Devětsil group, edited by Artuš Černík between 1924 and 1926.

211
 of the avant-garde in the 1920s. Moholy-Nagy saw the distinctive feature
of “synthetic journals” as their proclamation of the “new way of life” and its
manifestations. This covered the areas with the greatest promise for mod-
ernism, such as architecture, education and typography. It is the visual ap-
pearance of synthetic journals that sets them apart from other periodicals
of the period: eye-catching and immediately recognizable, they display de-
velopments in avant-garde typography and book design. The reproductions
and photographs set amongst the text were more than illustrations for the
articles, they had an independent presence. Photographs of technical inno-
vations or modern cityscapes, often published without comment, acted as
visual manifestos, declaring that these developments drew the real picture
of the age of modernity. Synthetic journals were multi-media, giving space
to means of expression across the widest possible range, from text to film
scripts, architectural drawings and musical scores. They were also multi-
lingual: articles in the national vernacular were accompanied by abstracts
translated into the major European languages.7 Although in many cases
they declared quite divergent aims, synthetic journals developed a com-
mon mode of communication that bridged cultures, movements and poli­
tical views. Kassák’s first synthetic journal was MA [Today], produced in
Vienna in the first half of the 1920s. It anticipated Dokumentum in terms
of the diversity of its subject matter and even its visuality. Another devel-
opment that took place in the first half of the 1920s was the internation-
al network that manifested itself in Dokumentum. Kassák mobilized the
contacts he had built up during the period of the Vienna MA, and Gyula
Illyés, Tibor Déry and Andor Németh also made use of relationships dat-
ing from their years of exile. Dokumentum’s links with other synthetic jour-
nals, holding opposite views on many issues, like Noi [Us] in Rome, L’Esprit
Nouveau [The New Spirit] in Paris, and Manomètre [Manometer] in Lyon
also date from this period. In contrast with MA, however, which enjoyed
the good connections into the European journal network afforded by its
base in Vienna, Dokumentum, despite its similar profile, was more isolated,
and despite Kassák’s best efforts, never became part of the European avant-
garde network. [Figs. 4–6]

7  László Moholy-Nagy, Richtlinien für eine Synthetische Zeitschrift [Guidelines for a synthetic
journal], Pásmo, 1/7–8., 1925, 5. More detail on this issue: Jindřich Toman, Permanent synthesis:
László Moholy-Nagy’s idea of a synthetic journal, in Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi (eds.), Local
Contexts/International Networks, Avant-Garde Journals in East-Central Europe, Petőfi Literary
Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest, 2017, [forthcoming.]

212
[3.] Gert Caden, Hanging Construction, Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 1., Budapest
[4.] László Moholy-Nagy, [Painting], Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, 15., Budapest

The creation of connections between these far-flung areas was seen as the main
task of an avant-garde journal. Somewhat at odds with this rational artistic out-
look was the special place the editors assigned to poetry, which they described
as “magic”, “creation”, and “action”.4 They believed that these qualities would
intuitively illuminate the hidden interconnections of the contemporary world.
Set against the journal’s rational investigations, echoing international Con-
structivism and the Bauhaus, the approach derived from Surrealism, relying
on allusions and the magic of words, presented a fundamental contradiction
that the editors did not resolve. The special place of poetry in Dokumentum
derived in part from the fact that the editors were themselves all poets and re-
garded literature as standing apart from any other mode of expression, a view
with a long history in Hungarian culture. In Hungary, in lack of (total) national
sovereignty, literature always had a distinctive role in national self-expression.

Attempt to enter the domain of literature

Hungarian cultural affairs of the time may be described, using the term of
the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, as a “field” in which the various players,

4  Andor Németh, Kommentár [Commentary], Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 6–12. Gyula Illyés, Sub
specie aeternitatis, Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, 24–25.

213
[5.] Air traffic in the metropolis [Flying omnibus, “Goliath”], Dokumentum, 1/4., 1927, 17., 18.,
Budapest

in our case the journals, positioned themselves relative to each other and the
political and economic powers. This model is particularly useful for describing
the situation when new players enter the field and the system of relations
is rearranged. In the Hungary of the 1920s, which was going through a pro-
cess of legal, political and economic stabilization, the birth of Dokumentum
and several other artistic and literary journals was such a moment. The au-
thorities permitted the foundation of more and more periodicals. Eighteen
newspapers were denied permits in 1926, but only half that number in 1927,
indicating a sudden freedom on the press market.5 A partial amnesty allowed
many intellectuals to return from their exile in Berlin and Vienna, and several
of them launched journals aimed at literary circles.6 A common feature of the
avant-garde and modernist journals launched between 1925 and 1927 – includ-
ing Dokumentum – was the aim of carving out their own position in the Hun-
garian literary field as journals for “the young ones”, and as alternatives to Nyu-
gat.7 Nyugat was by then a highly prestigious literary journal, and it repeatedly
proved itself capable of renewal (after the First World War, with its programme
of “tradition-preserving modernity”8), so that it continued to be an attractive
forum for young people with literary ambitions. Just when the new wave of
journal launches began, it greatly strengthened its position by announcing a
programme of renewal aimed at nurturing talent and giving new writers public

5  Balázs Sipos, Sajtó és hatalom a Horthy-korszakban [Press and power in the Horthy era],
Argumentum, Budapest, 2011, 120.
6  A thorough account of the issue is Dávid Szolláth, Magyar irodalmi mező az 1920-as években
[The Hungarian literary field in the 1920s], Literatura, 41/2., 2015, 161–184.
7  On the theoretical background to the issue, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, Genesis
and Structure of the Literary Field, Stanford UP, Palo Alto, 1996, 264–270.
8  György Tverdota, A hagyományőrző modernség születése [The birth of tradition-preserving
modernity], Literatura, 40/2., 2014, 119–132.

214
[6.] Unknown photographer, Palucca, Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 32., Budapest

215
[7.] Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927, [front cover], Budapest
[8.] Nyugat, 20/1., 1927, [front cover], Budapest

exposure.9 Many radical young people, however, were not satisfied with being
published in Nyugat, because they felt that their aesthe­tically or politically
radical programme would lose its edge in the normative modernist journal.
They wanted to articulate their own viewpoint, in their own periodical. These
authors construed the newly-founded journals’ relationship with Nyugat as
the struggle of the “young ones” against the “old ones”. Journals of divergent
artistic outlook that defined themselves as generationally anti-Nyugat includ-
ed Dokumentum’s predecessors, 365 (1925) and Horizont [Horizon] (1926); what
became its main rival, Új Föld [New Earth] (1927); a journal edited in Budapest
but concerned with cultural issues of Transylvania and the “mother country”,
Híd [Bridge] (1927–1928); a modernist literary journal that was also open to the

9  An indication of Nyugat’s well-organized reaction after sensing the new demands is that in
1925, before Kassák’s manifesto, it announced the revamping of the journal to embrace young
talent (through competitions) and to make what had been a literature-centred journal “of gene­
ral interest”. N.n., A Nyugat új korszaka [The new era of Nyugat], Nyugat, 18/16–17., 1925, 213–214.

216
 avant-garde, A Láthatár [Horizon] (1927); the periodical that Lajos Nagy set up
to counter “bourgeois literature”,10 Együtt [Together] (1927–1928); and the poet
Lőrinc Szabó’s Pandora.11 Critics of the time unanimously judged these organs
to be “generational” forums, all aimed at attacking the hegemony of Nyugat
in the autonomous position in the literary field.12 [Figs. 7–8]
Dokumentum also set out to be a trend-dictating journal and a unique fea-
ture of the Hungarian cultural press market. Its opening article bore the head-
ing, A Nyugat húsz éves [Nyugat is twenty years old], the editors13 set the hon-
oured but, in their view, outdated Nyugat against the new representative of
“vigorous youth” – Dokumentum. The most prestigious journal was now “fruit-
lessly vegetating”, and the article implied that the generation represented by
Dokumentum should displace it, and the generation it embodied. In Kassák’s
usage, the “young ones” was a reference to “societal age”. They were new fig-
ures in literary life, young writers and those, like Kassák himself, who came
from outside the institutional system. Kassák’s biological age put him in the
same category as the first generation of Nyugat (he was forty when Dokumen-
tum was launched), and he associated “youth” with the new or avant-garde
conception of art. The Dokumentum editorial was effectively an avant-garde
ma­nifesto; instead of giving an analytical account of Hungarian affairs of the
time, it rhetorically set the avant-garde (associated with notions of novelty and
youth) against the integrative, tradition-preserving modernity represented by
Nyugat (associated with the past, and an ageing generation).
In reality, Kassák and his avant-garde associates had somewhat more com-
plex relations with Nyugat than their Dokumentum programme implied.
Kassák positioned himself and his journal in opposition to Nyugat, but still
regarded it as the best literary journal in Hungary and a worthy competitor.
In its consolidated position, run by experienced editors with reputations of
their own, working with major authors, and with a solid financial foundation,

10  N.n. [Lajos Nagy], Az Együtt útja [The path of Együtt], Együtt, 1/1., 1927, 1–2.
11  Lőrinc Szabó, Karinthy, a kritika és az alapszabályszerű modernség [Karinthy, criticism and
constitutional modernity], Pandora, 1/3., 1927, 180–182.
12  See, e.g., Sándor Jakobovits, “Pandora”, az ifjú írói generáció mentsvára Budapesten [Pando-
ra, the refuge of the young writers generation], Reggel, 16 January 1927, 11. Tivadar Raith, Új lapok
köszöntése [Welcome to new journals], Magyar Írás, 7/3., 1927, 17–19. László Rubin, Új folyóira-
tok, régi hangok [New journals, old voices], A Láthatár, 1/2., 1927, 1–2. N.n., A legprogresszívebb
irodalmi irányok új magyar folyóiratai [New Hungarian journals of the most progressive literary
schools], Literatura, 2/1., 1927, 90–91. See also, György Tverdota, A Nyugat és az avantgarde között
[Between Nyugat and the avant-garde], Literatura, 4/3–4., 1977, 76–94.
13  Lajos Kassák–Tibor Déry–Gyula Illyés–József Nádass–Andor Németh, A Nyugat húsz éves
[Nyugat is twenty years old], Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 2–3.

217
Nyugat14 dominated Hungarian literary affairs in such a way that – in Kassák’s
view – it was preventing the emergence of a new literary centre, and he was
determined to counter this by setting up his own journal.
Kassák and most of his colleagues on Dokumentum had been active in
Hungarian literary journals for many years. They were well aware that as indi-
viduals, in the prevailing state of affairs, they might at most be able to pursue
their own careers as writers (as Kassák, Déry and Illyés later did), but if they
were to achieve a real breakthrough, they would have to work together. The
most effective means of collective action was the journal, as contemporary in-
ternational praxis and Kassák’s own experience in editing had proven. Indeed,
we often identify the modernist movements with the editorial staff of journals.
A Tett [The Action] and MA based themselves on alternative artistic institu-
tions, and their editors presented themselves to the public as members of an
artistic movement. Revealingly, Hungarian critics often referred to Kassák’s
journal as representing the “MAist school”. The collective identity of a journal
did not necessarily coincide with the individual viewpoints of its editors, but
enabled it to speak as the voice of a salient idea, programme or group, or as
the herald of a new artistic ideal. This was true of Nyugat in 1908, when it was
being launched, and subsequently of Kassák’s journals A Tett, MA and – in 1926
– Dokumentum. Kassák was well aware that the principles of a newly-formed
group would inevitably be intellectually incompatible with any existing jour-
nal and could not be integrated into it. [Fig. 9]
This was true for Nyugat, even though it incorporated certain avant-gar-
de features (such as poetic forms) into its integrative programme of tradition-
preserving modernity, and regularly published avant-garde authors. The poli-
cy of Nyugat towards the avant-garde may be described as one of domestica-
tion: it made space for the avant-garde and published the more conventional
work of avant-garde authors with the intention of fitting them into its own
programme. Nyugat wanted to represent the modernity of the moment. This
ambition (and the associated frustrations) can be traced in its reception of
Italian Futurism15 and the Hungarian avant-garde. The first major article about
this was Mihály Babits’ Ma, holnap és irodalom [Today, Tomorrow and Litera-

14  Recent research does not bear Kassák out in this assertion, but partly leaves the question
open. On the workings of the Nyugat editors and its financial base, see Attila Buda, A Nyugat
könyvkiadó története [The history of the Nyugat publishing house], Borda Antikvárium, Buda-
pest, 2000.
15  Gábor Dobó, Framing Futurism in Hungary (1909–1944), in Günter Berghaus (ed.), Interna-
tional Yearbook of Futurism Studies, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2018, [forthcoming.]

218
ture], the title of which encapsulates the question of currency.16 Nyugat gave
space to the avant-garde on its pages, but took the edge of its attack and dis-
guised its political character.17
As a permanent contributor to Nyugat (from the beginning of his career,
and gaining recognition there as a poet, writer and critic, but not as the leader

[9.] Dokumentum’s artists’ evening at the Chamber Hall of the Music Academy, Programme,
5 March 1927, Budapest [the leaflet was also preserved in the archives of Gyula Illyés]

16  Mihály Babits, Ma, holnap és irodalom [Today, tomorrow and literature], Nyugat, 9/17., 1916,
328–340.
17  Revealing in this regard is the reception of the book version of Kassák’s autobiography Egy
ember élete [The Life of a Man] from 1927. The critics set it apart from Kassák’s avant-garde
œuvre, and challenged Kassák’s own interpretation, calling it a psychological novel or confes-
sions. For more details, see Gábor Dobó, Kassák Lajos Egy ember élete című önéletrajzának fog-
adtatása, 1927–1928 [The reception of Lajos Kassák’s autobiography The Life of a Man, 1927–1928],
Literatura, 41/3., 2015, 277–288. On the theory behind this debate, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Mar-
ket for Symbolic Goods, in Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, op. cit., 141–177. On the issue of the
neutralization of the avant-garde, see András Kappanyos, A Nyugat és az avantgárd [Nyugat
and the avant-garde], Literatura, 34/4., 2008, 423–432. In greater depth on the complex rela-
tions between Nyugat and the avant-garde, see György Kálmán C., Élharcok és arcélek [Front
lines and profiles], Balassi, Budapest, 2008. Anne-Rachel Hermetet, Pour sortir du chaos, op. cit.

219
of a movement), Kassák himself experienced that his writing only appeared in
the journal if it met (or at least did not clash with) the aesthetic expectations
of tradition-preserving modernism represented by Ernő Osvát, the editor of
Nyugat. Kassák therefore published his avant-garde writing in his own jour-
nals. When he offered Nyugat an essay on avant-garde art during the peri-
od of publication of Dokumentum (probably the article A korszerű művészet
él [Modern art lives]), he was rejected. “Osvát has not accepted your article.
He said that if he accepted it, then you would bring your poems. Because he
could never give space to writing he does not believe in. It is very well written,
but what you assert in it, he really does not believe. [...] He is pleased to get
writing from you, but just not this new creed”, wrote Jolán Simon to Kassák.18
Proposals to launch journals based on cooperation between established au-
thors and those of the avant-garde held no attraction for Kassák. For exam-
ple, he did not get involved in a 1926 initiative by two of his former associates,
Árpád Szélpál and Aladár Tamás, to “include one prestigious writer in each
issue”, such as Frigyes Karinthy, Kassák, or Dezső Szomory.19 After returning to
Hungary, Kassák must have realized in the first half of 1926 at the latest that if
he was to re-establish his place in the milieu that had been his own before he
went into exile, he would have to set up a vehicle for his ideal of art in the form
a new journal.

An avant-garde utopia: the modern city

Dokumentum focused on the prospects for modern life. It took as self-ev-
ident that for people of the day, life was taking place in newly-planned cities,
or existing cities undergoing modernization. The authors took the view that
artists had to learn from engineers and scientists and do their creative work
with conscious awareness, taking greater account of the demands of the age
and of society. Artworks had to take their effect in the same way as the form
and function of modern machinery – straightforwardly and without frills.20
The issue of lifestyle also came into focus, inseparable from the questions of
working conditions, the economic apparatus, urban spaces, the social fabric
and art. An important conclusion drawn by the authors was that people’s lives
could be transformed by rethinking the role of the city and the home, leading,

18  Letter from Jolán Simon to Lajos Kassák, Budapest, [July 1926]. KM-lev. 2063/143. Petőfi
Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest.
19  Letter from Jolán Simon to Lajos Kassák, Budapest, 1 February 1926. KM-lev. 2063/116. Petőfi
Literary Museum–Kassák Museum, Budapest.
20  See, e.g., Yves Labasque, A modern stílus [The modern style], Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 48.

220
[10.] György Gerő, Film footage of Jolán Simon, Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, 20–21., Budapest
[11.] Enrico Prampolini, Stage design, Dokumentum, 1/4., 1927, 7., Budapest

221
 in the long term, to a new society. They saw housing conditions as influencing
(regulating) the lives of individuals in every respect, from sleep, the structure
of the family, and social and sexual life to sport, diet, hygiene and habits of cul-
tural consumption.21 [Figs. 10–15]
Dokumentum’s visions of the modern city were utopian in the special sense
that avant-garde movements were also utopian, at once pragmatic and sub-
versive. Since Thomas More wrote his book Utopia in 1516, many versions of the
concept have been produced. The avant-garde notions of utopia differ from
the original early-modern theories. While the latter are really thought experi­
ments or philosophical reflections pursued without any intention to imple-
ment them, avant-garde movements approached utopia not so much as a
mental construct as an artistic and political praxis capable of creating new
structures and relating critically and subversively to various forms of hegem-
ony. Although the early modern version of utopia may also be regarded as a
critique of current conditions, the avant-garde took it to greater extremes and
set it against the persistence of the past in the present.22
Dokumentum offered, in the characteristic way of avant-garde utopias,
practical ways of superseding existing patterns of thought and society. Its arti-
cles on cities went beyond generalities about modern urban visions and went
into the technical details of how they could be realized.23 It also strongly criti-
cized contemporary phenomena in town planning, lifestyles and economics,
such as certain architectural complexes in Budapest and the way of life of the
Budapest lower middle class. The chronotope (spatial and temporal structure)
of its ideas for the city was the “future that can be planned here and now”.
It claimed that everything needed to plan a city to symbolize and generate our
future and be the birthplace of the new society was already available. Planning
meant rational work, aiming to eliminate the accidental. As one article put it,
“every possible material, structural and technical innovation” must be used to
design the new city, but “without assuming technical utopias and non-existent
material and structural inventions”.24 Like many other contemporary journals,

21  N.n. [Farkas Molnár], Város [City], Ibid., 17–20. In greater depth, see András Ferkai, Molnár
Farkas, Terc, Budapest, 2011.
22  Roland Schaer, Utopia and Twentieth-Century Avant-Gardes, in Roland Schaer–Gregory
Claeys–Lyman Tower Sargent (eds.), Utopia, The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western
World, The New York Public Library, New York–Oxford, 2000, 279.
23  On the interrelationships among the avant-garde, utopia and the city, see David Pinder,
Visions of the City, Utopianism and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism, Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press, Edinburgh, 2005. Christina Lodder, Searching for Utopia, in Christopher Wilk (ed.),
Modernism, Designing a New World, 1914–1939, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2006, 23-69.
24  [Molnár Farkas], Város, op. cit., 17.

222
[12.] Analytic film footage, Dokumentum, 1/4., 1927, 33., Budapest
[13.] Kazimir Malevich, Architecture [1923], Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927, 17., Budapest

223
Dokumentum looked on the USA and the Soviet Union as embodiments of
the ideal future state (adding the Jewish settlements in Palestine, adduced as
examples specifically in this sense). One article declared “with some certainty”
that “in America, the outlines of a future type of person and of coming soci-
ety are becoming manifest”. It also regarded the Soviet Union as “an experi-
ment on broad foundations” in “the new social order” and “the new culture”.25
Dokumentum did not resolve the contradictions between its overall left-wing
stance and its articles on the states of the future. The latter did not rank cap-
italist states and the Soviet Union according to a hierarchy, but rather identi-
fied many common features in their political, social and economic systems.26
Their tendencies towards economic and social uniformity, and their efficiency
and pace of development were highlighted and praised.27 The explanation for
the unresolved contradiction is that Dokumentum emphasized the obsoles-
cence of the European economic and social model in contrast with the USA
and the Soviet Union, a perspective that dwarfed the fundamental differences
between the two emerging powers. [Figs. 16–17]

[14.] [Farkas Molnár], Város [City], Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 20., Budapest
[15.] El Lissitzky, Orator’s pulpit, Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927, 20., Budapest

25  Paul Wengraf, Európa fejlődési lehetőségei [Europe’s potential for development], Doku-
mentum, 1/4., 1927, 4.
26  Balázs Sipos, Amerika mint modernizációs példa, utópia és disztópia a Horthy-korban
[America as an example, utopia and dystopia of modernization in the Horthy era], Médiakutató,
16/1., 2015, 73–88. István Feitl (ed.), Nyitott/zárt Magyarország, Politikai és kulturális orientáció,
1914–1949 [Open/closed Hungary, Political and cultural orientation, 1914–1949], Napvilág, Buda-
pest, 2013.
27  Paul Wengraf, Európa fejlődési lehetőségei, op. cit., 5.

224
 In addition to writing that constituted rational investigation of cities, Do-
kumentum assigned an important role to avant-garde poetry in reformu-
lating the conception of the city. The editors also regarded the journal’s art-
theoretical essays (usually on poetics) and literary pieces as “documents”. They
considered the irrational, intuitive artistic approach of poetry to be capable
of showing – that is, documenting – a different face of cities and city people,
complementing scientific and social-scientific investigations. Indeed, they
saw no contradiction between the two approaches, and employed them in
parallel. Thus, articles on town planning were accompanied by poems alluding
the city as a mystical, unknowable place. The city as a place of aimless wander-
ing (flânerie) was a long-established notion in European culture. References
in Dokumentum, however, were unequivocally linked to French Surrealism,
a movement with which some of the editors were already in direct contact.

[16.] Vkhutemas, partial model of the lye production facility of an old chemical factory in
Moscow, Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927, 18., Budapest
[17.] Vladimir Tatlin’s “glass tower” (Spatial structure), Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927, 19., Budapest

225
 Most prominent was Gyula Illyés, who in his article La littérature hongroise
(dite jeune) [The Hungarian Literature (called Young)], wrote of nouvelle sensi-
bilité to the world28 in Száműzetésem első keserű éneke [The First Bitter Song
of my Banishment], he stated that his experiences in the years following the
“machine age” caused him to see metaphors of the poet not in “the engineer”
or “the technician”, as did the representatives of international Constructivism,
itself a source of influence on Dokumentum, but the reverse – in the mys-
tical, the “wanderer” who had traversed the “boulevard Aragon”.29 Illyés had
elsewhere, in free indirect discourse (thus identifying with the book) quoted
Louis Aragon’s paradigmatic surrealist novel Le Paysan de Paris [Paris Peas-
ant] from 1926. “The apparently inanimate objects lying around us, the mate-
rial and social facts, preserve the mystery of reality”,30 wrote Illyés. [Figs. 18–19]

Why Dokumentum closed

Despite being referred to by contemporaries and subsequently by literary
historians as an unequalled avant-garde journal, Dokumentum, after only six
months and five issues, closed in 1927.31 There are no contemporary comments
on its closure, and we have to infer the reasons indirectly. They probably arose
from a combination of three circumstances. Firstly, there was no section of
the literary public of the time to which the journal could be directed. Second-
ly, journals formulating radical programmes did not have an easy time in the
prevailing political climate and the censorship conditions, and nor did they fit
with intellectual mood of the time. Finally, such journals did not find sources
of support on which they could build a strong financial base.

Limited public exposure

A condition for those receiving amnesty under prime minister István Beth-
len’s policy of consolidation was to refrain from open declaration of political

28  Gyula Illyés, La littérature hongroise (dite jeune) [The Hungarian literature (called Young)],
Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 5.
29  Gyula Illyés, Száműzetésem első keserű éneke [The first bitter song of my banishment],
Ibid., 21.
30  Gyula Illyés, Louis Aragon (Édition de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1926), Dokumentum,
1/3., 1927, 34–35. For more details, see Imre József Balázs, Esőcsinálás, Illyés Gyula szürrealista
kalandja [Making rain, Gyula Illyés’ surrealist adventures], Irodalomtörténet, 42/1., 2011, 3–23.
Judit Karafiáth, Kassák, Dokumentum (1926–1927) et le surréalisme hongrois, Anachronia,
4.,1997, 78–86.
31  See, e.g., Georges Baal–Marc Martin (éd.), Ombre portée, Le surréalisme en Hongrie [Drop
shadow, Surrealism in Hungary], L’Age d’Homme, Paris, 1995.

226
 views.32 The Bethlen government saw the press as a powerful weapon for ma-
nipulating the public, and in the “state protection act” of 1921, limited the dis-
tribution of media products and regulated their appearance. In this atmos-
phere, writers were always at risk of prosecution for “political incitement”,
“high treason” or “contempt for religion”.33 Many intellectuals became the ob-
jects of sanction in the interwar period, including the Dokumentum editorial
staff members Kassák, Déry and Illyés.

[18.] Árpád Szélpál, Photo composition from Piros Nagy’s toy models, Dokumentum, 1/4., 1927,
32., Budapest
[19.] Árpád Szélpál, Portrait of Lajos Kassák next to Piros Nagy’s toy models, Budapest, 1927,
photograph, PIM–Kassák Museum, Budapest

32  See Merse Pál Szeredi, Budapest–Berlin–Budapest, Magyar művészek Berlinben az 1920-as
években [Budapest–Berlin–Budapest, Hungarian artists in Berlin in the 1920s], in Merse Pál Sze-
redi–Gábor Kaszás, Berlin–Budapest 1919–1933, Képzőművészeti kapcsolatok Berlin és Buda-
pest között [Berlin–Budapest 1919–1933, Artistic contacts between Berlin and Budapest], Virág
Judit Galéria, Budapest, 2016, 11–147.
33  In more depth on press conditions in Hungary at the time, see Balázs Sipos, Sajtó és hata-
lom a Horthy-korszakban, op. cit.

227
 There was disagreement among the Dokumentum editors as to what con-
stituted declaration of political views. This tension is apparent in the journal,
and may have contributed to its downfall. Kassák had urged social and polit-
ical changes in MA when he was in exile in Vienna, and claimed that art and
self-formation had important parts to play, but he did not see the need for tak-
ing a position in current political issues. In this respect, he put some distance
between himself and other avant-garde journals put out by émigrés, which
were directly connected to the Communist Party and followed the Prolet-
kult line. Examples are Akasztott Ember [Hanged Man] (1922) and Ék [Wedge]
(1923–1924), launched by artists who had broken with Kassák precisely because
of their party activism. The writers Illyés and Déry had also been involved in
the workers’ movement during their years of exile, and unlike Kassák, wanted
to form Dokumentum into an outspoken journal that took a stand in current
political issues. Kassák did not want to make this concession to his co-editors.
Even MA had emphasized the autonomy of art relative to the left-wing parties,
and had approached politics indirectly and with an utterly different logic, but
there were also censorship considerations in avoiding stating political views
directly.
Differences in outlook among the editors and the restriction of freedom
of speech and freedom of the press combined to explain why Dokumentum,
despite being a political journal, avoided taking a direct stance. It could be
described as a depoliticized journal, meaning that in Hungary, avant-garde
journals (which were inherently political – from the Dada publications of Ber-
lin to La Révolution surréaliste [The Surrealist Revolution], published between
1924 and 1929 and clearly exercising the greatest influence on Illyés and Déry)
were required by external forces to at least partially veil their political character
if their staff were to avoid trouble for propagating their political views.34 It was
a frustrating situation for the editors, and generated tension among them,
as they mentioned in their press statements and private correspondence of
the time. Andor Németh, for example, described the editorial staff as a “‘for-
eign embassy’ – the embassy of a new society – here in Budapest in 1927. That
perhaps explains why we do not interfere in the internal affairs of the host
state”.35 Tibor Déry wrote in a letter to philosopher Vilmos Szilasi: “I objected

34  “Depoliticized” is different from “apolitical” or “antipolitical”. On the latter, see György Kon-
rád, Antipolitika, Közép-európai meditációk [Antipolitics, Central European meditations], AB
Kiadó, Budapest, 1986. Klara Kemp-Welch, Antipolitics in Central European Art, Reticence as
Dissidence Under Post-Totalitarian Rule 1956–1989, I. B. Tauris, New York, 2014.
35  Andor Németh, Új folyóiratok, régi hangok, op. cit., 34–35.

228
to the general character of the journal (I don’t know whether I’ve told you), in
that its attacking edge was not sufficiently specific. [...] Kassák, above whom
constantly hangs the sword of Damocles, did not want the first issue to be to
conspicuous – our homeland, how should I say, its health conditions are in-
describable, you have to watch every word you write if you don’t want it to be
seized”.36 Nonetheless Dokumentum did address political issues, if obliquely.
The typical method was to reproduce news considered typical of capitalism
and the Horthy system with an ironic or satirical comment, in such a way that
the editors could not be called to account under the letter of the law.

The displacement of avant-garde movements

In seeking the reason for Dokumentum’s demise we should also bear in
mind that there were modernizing (political) and modernist (artistic) move-
ments in 1920s Hungtary with an interest in suppressing, neutralizing or per-
haps integrating the avant-garde. This goes above all for the representatives of
state-sponsored culture and tradition-preserving modernity (Nyugat). Kunó
Klebelsberg, Minister of the Interior and subsequently Minister of Religious
Affairs and Education, launched a large scale programme of educational, sci-
entific and cultural policy on a “neonationalist” ideological base, thus drawing
criticism from the old establishment conservatives, such as academic socie-
ties. Klebelsberg was behind the launch of the regime-linked right-wing mod-
ernist journal Napkelet [Orient], which was edited by Cécile Tormay between
1923 and 1940, and was set up as an opposition to Nyugat (that is, West).37
Unlike most cultural journals, Napkelet did not reject the avant-garde on aes-
thetic grounds. For example, articles by two excellent Italianists, Imre Várady
and Jenő (Koltay-)Kastner, made a critical but intelligent study of Futurism,
which was seeking a place in the Italian Fascist regime.38 By contrast, it was

36  Ferenc Botka (ed.), Déry Tibor levelezése, 1927–1935 [The correspondence of Tibor Déry,
1927–1935], Balassi–Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, Budapest, 2007, 10–11. Andor Németh, another
member of the Dokumentum staff similarly perceived the state of access to the public, see
György Tverdota, Németh Andor, Egy közép-európai értelmiségi a XX. század első felében [An-
dor Németh, a Central European intellectual in the first half of the 20th century], vol. I., Balassi,
Budapest, 2009, 107.
37  Right-wing modernist journals were not at all rare in this period. One example is Il Selvag-
gio (1924–1943), which criticized the Italian Fascist regime from the right.
38  For more details, see Orsolya Rákai, A Napkelet és az irodalmi modernség [Napkelet and
literary modernity], Jelenkor, 56/2., 2013, 170–175. For a comprehensive view, see Ignác Rom-
sics (ed.), A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948 [The Hungarian right-wing tradition,
1900–1948], Osiris, Budapest, 2009. On the relationship between avant-garde and conserva-
tive criticism, see György Kálmán C., Strange Interferences, Modernism and Conservativism vs.
Avant-Garde, Hungary, 1910s, Hungarian Studies, 26/1., 2012, 107–122.

229
mostly in the aesthetic sense that Nyugat, which always wanted to be the
forum for the most modern initiatives, perceived the challenge from the
avant-garde. As we have seen, its response was an attempt at integration.
Nyugat gave space to avant-garde authors (publishing nearly all contributors
to Dokumentum in the same period) and addressed the same subjects as ap-
peared in Dokumentum (from Russian film to movement art and atonal mu-
sic). Even some of the poetic techniques of the avant-garde were taken up by
its main poets (including Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi and Lőrinc Szabó).
Nonetheless, it attempted to build these endeavours into its programme of
tradition-preserving modernity. [Fig. 20]

The financial base of modernist and avant-garde journals

The direct reason for Dokumentum’s closure was, according to recollections
of those involved, the low circulation, indicating the isolation of avant-garde
art. The avant-garde and modernist journals were always dependent on their
public and the demands of their sponsors. They were either financed by the
government (such as Napkelet) or survived from the support of a committed
patron of the arts (this was true for Nyugat, although it also relied on subscrib-
ers and its affiliated businesses, such as its publishing house), or the support
of a publisher (such as Literatura [Literature], a literary and cultural review ed-
ited by Géza Supka); there were also journals maintained by political parties
(such as the Communist cultural review 100%), and even some that survived
from subscriptions and – a few – from advertising, or a combination of the
two. Dokumentum wanted to be independent, and was confident in its mar-
ketability, thus assuming real demand from readers, intellectual consumers.
Distribution on newspaper stands, however, was probably not permitted, and
the few potential subscribers39 were split among competing journals. Judging
from Kassák’s correspondence concerning his previous journals, we can infer
that Dokumentum was maintained by the editorial staff themselves, but ten-
sions arising from points of principle and editorial policy soon caused them to
discontinue their financial support.

39  An anecdotal account of this, but largely consistent with the available sources, Zoltán Zelk,
Egyember-látta matiné [One man’s matinee], Élet és Irodalom, 31 January 1970, 4.

230
Epilogue
A few months after the closure of Dokumentum, Kassák launched Munka
[Work], a journal with a completely different profile. He brought several of the
Dokumentum staff with him. Munka was not an art journal, and dealt above
all with social, economic and political issues. It also served as the intellectual
hinterland for the “Munka Circle”, consisting of young artists and workers and
built on self-training, political activism and performances (such as speaking
choirs). It kept a distance from official cultural institutions, carving out an alter-
native position for itself in cultural affairs. Kassák made use of his several years
of experience in editing A Tett and the Budapest and Viennese editions of MA
to build up autonomous structures (journal, gallery, free school and others) to
take its message to a public beyond that of existing cultural institutions.

[20.] Tibor Déry, Énekelnek és meghalnak [They Sing and They Die], Genius, Budapest, 1928,
[front cover with Lajos Kassák’s illustration]

231
 Dokumentum’s authors, after 1927, abandoned the endeavour to subvert
cultural life and started to build their careers as writers. Kassák continued his
highly successful autobiography Egy ember élete [The Life of a Man] – which
enjoyed a serious and warm critical reception – in Nyugat, and went on to be-
come a regular contributor to the magazine. Déry and Németh, although they
stayed with avant-garde poetry until the late 1920s, did not seek to continue
their activities within a movement. Like Kassák, they regularly wrote for Nyu-
gat, and Gyula Illyés became a senior member of its staff, and later a co-editor.
By enabling these former avant-garde authors to find their place in its ambit
by the late 1920s, Nyugat displayed the flexibility of its modernity programme.
Another factor that brought them together was the gradual change in the
former Dokumentum editors’ artistic outlook. Without a making any conspic-
uous break from the avant-garde period, they gradually revised their view of it,
abandoned avant-garde poetics, and pursued a different kind of art.40
Dokumentum was the last major standard-bearer of a current in Hungarian
literature that came to a stop at that time. It attempted to re-interpret inter-
national avant-garde trends in the Hungarian environment. Several decades
later, the magazine’s former staff and sympathizers produced major works of
literature – semi-autobiographical novels, memoirs and essays – that assessed
Dokumentum from this point of view. These included Déry’s A befejezetlen
mondat [The Unfinished Sentence], which also evokes the direct cultural
context of Dokumentum, István Vas’ Nehéz szerelem [Difficult Love], Andor
Németh’s Emlékiratai [Memoirs] and Lajos Kassák and Imre Pán’s Izmusok
története [The History of Isms].

40  György Tverdota, Kassák avantgarde-ja, a harmincas évekből visszatekintve [Kassák’s

avant-garde, looked back at on from the thirties], in Lóránt Kabdebó (ed.), Tanulmányok Kassák
Lajosról [Essays on Lajos Kassák], Anonymus, Budapest, 2000, 196–202.

232
From machines to images – themes and interpretations
in Dokumentum

The wide-ranging topics presented by Dokumentum, alongside their inter-

pretations, can be formalized even though the editors often maintained a
productive contradiction between them. With a gesture typical of synthetiz-
ing journals, Dokumentum regularly presented technological innovations
and cityscapes without any commentary. These photographs were like visual
manifestos proclaiming that such modern developments visually manifest the
essence of the era. Synthetizing journals are multimedia works, presenting a
wide variety of different forms of expression, from texts through film scripts
and design to visual artworks. Dokumentum simultaneously upheld the possi-
bility of both rational and irrational modes of cognition; explored the relation-
ship between individual and community; formulated ideas of the future with
reference to already existing blueprints; and investigated the interconnections
between modern technology and contemporary art. The journal proclaimed
that science, technology, sociology, popular culture, and art mutually influence
each other, therefore the primary task of an avant-garde journal is to create a
link between these disparate fields.
 the aesthetics of artworks
imagined
individual

irrational

1
30 28
18
3
19
11
10
29
27
6
20 14
2
3 13
4
29 17
25
31
15
21

24
16
12 23
23
7 22
5
9

rational

communal
realized
the aesthetics of
machines
[21.] Dock, Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, 9., Budapest
[22.] Dokumentum, 1/4., 1927, [front cover], Budapest
[23.] Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, [front cover], Budapest
[24.] Heinrich Lauterbach, Volksschuleprojekt – Plan for a school,
Dokumentum, 1/5., 1927, 7., Budapest

[25.] Power station in Haifa, Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 41., Budapest

[26.] Dokumentum, 1/5., 1927, [front cover], Budapest
[27.] Film reel, Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 11., Budapest
[28.] György Gerő, Film, Dokumentum, 1/2., 1927, 23., Budapest
[29.] Stage photo from Jean Cocteau’s ballet The Ox on the Roof, Dokumentum, 1/4., 1927, 25.,
Budapest
[30.] Béla Kádár, [Untitled], Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927, 31., Budapest
[31] Lajos Kassák, [Untitled], Dokumentum, 1/1., 1926, 23., Budapest