[...] Baader scholarship was initiated in the late 1970s with the publication of primary source materials. The most significant publication of this kind was Johannes Baader, Oberdada. Schriften, Manifeste, Flugblätter, Billets, Werke und Taten, edited by Hanne Bergius, Norbert Miller and Karl Riha in 1977. This chronologically ordered collection of documents dating from 1905 to 1954, transcribed or presented as facsimiles, remains the single most important resource despite its many errors and frustrating lack of scholarly apparatus [For a detailed discussion of these problems read the review by Richard Sheppard in Journal of European Studies 9, parts 1/2, numbers 33/34 (March/June 1979) 152-154]. Additional documents and works in public and private collections were presented in three important exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues: Stephan Waetzoldt und Verena Haas (hrsg.), Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre (Reimer Verlag : Berlin 1977), The Twenties in Berlin. Johannes Baader, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch (Annely Juda Fine Arts : London 1978), and Dawn Ades, Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (Arts Council of Great Britain : London 1978). In the early 1980s, Richard Sheppard set an admirable standard for the scholarly publication of documentary materials in his presentation of a group of Baader's letters to Tristan Tzara in New Studies in Dada. Essays and Documents (1981). Karl Riha has maintained a commitment to publishing facsimiles and transcriptions of Baader-related material in a number of publications, some of which have appeared in the series Vergessene Autoren der Moderne.
If, with the exception of Sheppard's contribution, these early publications lacked proper footnotes, source information, and so forth, this situation has been rectified in the more recent presentations of primary source materials, namely Dieter Scholz's collection of Baader's poetry from the Hamburg Staatsarchiv and Winfried Mogge's publication and discussion of Baader's 1922-23 correspondence in the Archiv der deutsche Jugendbewegung [German Youth Movement]. Next to the 1977 Oberdada book, however, the most important documentary source book containing material from both the pre-Dada and Dada periods is Eva Züchner's impeccable publication of the Raoul Hausmann archive at the Berlinische Galerie Scharfrichter der bürgerlichen Seele. Raoul Hausmann in Berlin 1900-1933 (1998).
TEXT CREDITS
Adrian V. Sudhalter, Johannes Baader and the Demise of Wilhelmine Culture (New York University 2005) 7-9.