Dada Cream & Dadaism - Is there a relationship?

Bergmann & Co. was founded in 1885 (anniversary label, lower right) as a manufacturer of soaps. It's first product was Steckenpferd Seife, meaning Hobbyhorse Soap. It quickly developed both pine tar soaps for animals and high end soaps especially targeted to young ladies and their children. By 1907 they had diversified by adding a line of fine soap, facial creams and hair conditioners under the brand name Dada, which is a colloquial french term for a hobbyhorse, or Steckenpferd.

Dada Cream soap was a popular brand throughout German-speaking Europe and was used by Bergmann as a wedge product to claim a larger slice of the fine soap market in the rest of Europe. It was in common use in Zurich, where Bergman had one of its regional factories. This is important because it helps explain why a certain Zurich cabaret act took up the name by 1916 (see Dada in Zurich, by Bolliger, Magnaguagno and Meyer, 1985 edition, page 85), from whence it spread to Berlin and New York, giving its name to a new movement, Dadaism.

Well, that's one theory. For others check out this Wikipedia entry.

Bergmann & Co. was considered a leader in advertising. It produced many hundreds of advertising stamps and die-cut labels, usually in sheets of 20 or 25. Typically, a sheet had a theme and each stamp in a sheet presented that theme in a slightly different way. Commonly, sheets were designed so that they could be printed for each of Bergmann's several brands simply by swapping the brand names and slogans in the header and footer spaces, as can be see in the examples above.

Eman Robitschek was no Dadaist and yet both Eman's postcard "blog" and the movement of Dadaism spring from the same source. Both stem from the utter revulsion many people felt for World War I and its mad pursuit by the governments of Europe. Both grew in strength and conviction in the social and political turmoil that followed the War. But whereas Dadaism retreated into savage absurdity as an artistic lifestyle, Eman Robitschek embraced society by becoming a social critic and moralist, one who embraced absurdity as a critical device from time to time - a sharp literary tool rather than an artistic lifestyle.

Last updated 9/09/2013