Hugo Ball (1886-1927), founder of the Zurich "Cabaret Voltaire" and inventor of Dadaism, is one of the most peculiar and stimulating figures of literary modernity. His work is characterized by numerous abrupt and seemingly contradictory transformations, which this volume traces and attempts to interpret as an expression of a consistent intellectual development. "How grateful we were to you for the hot, ruthless drive for truth in your critique of society!" wrote his friend Hermann Hesse, while Friedrich Glauser noted: "He was a man of a cleanliness that occurs perhaps only once every hundred years. Ball was one of those rare individuals to whom vanity and pose are completely foreign. He did not present anything; he simply was." The volume includes a brief chronicle of Hugo Ball and an essay on the friendship between Hugo Ball and Hermann Hesse.