Abstract
This edited volume marks the centennial of Surrealism with a focus on its ties to German culture. Essays in German and English explore the movement’s roots in German Romanticism, particularly through Novalis, and its reception by German critics and writers such as Walter Benjamin and Walter Serner. Contributors examine Surrealism’s intersections with avant-garde currents like Dada and New Objectivity, as well as the artistic innovations of Max Ernst. The volume also features a personal narrative, inspired by Walter Benjamin's "profane illumination," recounting early encounters with surrealist books in remainder markets. A concluding essay analyzes Surrealism’s influence on the aesthetics of Hannibal.
The collection opens with an original German story by Benedikt Wolf, followed by an interview with the author, and is complemented by a cover painting by Manfred Melitta Poppe, adding a creative dimension to this scholarly work. Extending this artistic engagement, the volume closes with an insert featuring a selection of original photographs by Chicago-based artist Tom Denlinger. Inspired by Surrealism—especially Max Ernst’s work—Denlinger co-edited The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game (2009, with Kanta Kochar-Lidgren and Davis Schneiderman). His recent photography playfully morphs digital images into Kafkaesque objects reminiscent of Odradrek, while the series reproduced here sculpts singular forms that evoke the unique non-human structures of trees. These images capture the collective work trees perform in producing 50% of their biome’s atmosphere. True to the sur-reality of the soluble, as André Breton conceived it, Denlinger’s photographs explore human existence as both holobiontic with plants and bacteria and as a fusion of human and vegetal consciousness, further blurring the boundaries between artistic vision and critical inquiry.