Joachim Ringelnatz

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Joachim Ringelnatz

Joachim Ringelnatz is the pen name of the German author and painter Hans Bötticher (7 August 1883 - 17 November 1934). His pen name Ringelnatz is usually explained as a dialect expression for an animal, possibly a variant of Ringelnatter, German for Grass Snake. He was a sailor in his youth and spent the First World War in the Navy on a minesweeper. In the 1920s and 1930s, he worked as a Kabarettist, i.e., a kind of satirical stand-up comedian. He is best known for his wry poems, often using wordplay and sometimes bordering on nonsense poetry. Some of these are similar to Christian Morgenstern's, but often more satirical in tone and occasionally subversive. His most popular creation is the anarchic sailor Kuddel Daddeldu with his drunken antics and disdain for authority.

In his final thrirteen years Ringelnatz was also a dedicated and prolific visual artist; the bulk of his art seems to have gone amiss during World War II, but over 200 paintings and drawings survived. In the 1920s some of his work was exhibited at the Akademie der Künste along with that of his contemporaries Otto Dix and George Grosz. Ringelnatz also illustrated his own novel called "...liner Roma..." (1923), the title of which is a doubly truncated "Berliner Roman" (Berlin novel), for "Berlin novels usually have no decent beginning and no proper ending." ("Berliner Romane haben meist keinen ordentlichen Anfang und kein rechtes Ende." [1])

In 1933, he was banned by the Nazi government as a "degenerate artist".

[edit] Works

1910 Gedichte
1911 Was ein Schiffsjungen-Tagebuch erzählt
1912 Die Schnupftabakdose. Stumpfsinn in Versen und Bildern von Hans Bötticher und Richard Seewald
1913 Ein jeder lebt's. Novellen (digital reconstruction: UB Bielefeld)
1920/1923 Turngedichte
1920 Kuttel Daddeldu oder das schlüpfrige Leid
1921 Die gebatikte Schusterpastete
1922 Die Woge. Marine-Kriegsgeschichten
1923 Kuttel Daddeldu (digital reconstruction: Kuttel Daddeldu. Neue Gedichte der erweiterten Ausgabe, scans of a 1924 edition at the library of the university of Bielefeld)
1924 ...liner Roma... With 10 pictures by himself.
1924 Nervosipopel. Elf Angelegenheiten
1927 Reisebriefe eines Artisten
1928 Allerdings (digital reconstruction: UB Bielefeld)
1928 Als Mariner im Krieg (under the pen name Gustav Hester)
1928 Matrosen. Erinnerungen, ein Skizzenbuch, handelt von Wasser und blauem Tuch
1929 Flugzeuggedanken
1931 Mein Leben bis zum Kriege (Autobiography)
1931 Kinder-Verwirrbuch with many pictures
1932 Die Flasche und mit ihr auf Reisen
1932 Gedichte dreier Jahre (digital reconstruction: UB Bielefeld)
1933 103 Gedichte (digital reconstruction: UB Bielefeld)
1934 Gedichte. Gedichte von einstmals und heute