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1920s

Lecture and recital tours across Europe

Together with other members of the international avant-garde — Jean Arp, Raoul Hausmann and Tristan Tzara — he organises and takes part in tours of provocative evening recitals and lectures in Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and Germany.

1923–1932

Publishes the periodical ‘Merz’

The periodical appears from 1923 to 1932, each issue devoted to a central theme: no. 5 (1923) is a portfolio of prints by Jean Arp, and double issue 8/9 (1924) is edited and typeset by El Lissitzky, whose friendship proves particularly influential and brings Schwitters’s pictures closer to Constructivism. In all, 21 issues appeared; by numbering, the last is no. 24.

1929–1934

Official typographer to the city council

From 1929 to 1934 he is the official typographer to Hanover town council; by the late 1920s he is a well-known typographer (his best-known work is the catalogue for the Dammerstock estate in Karlsruhe) and a member of the Deutscher Werkbund. In 1934 he loses his contract with the council.

1932

Records ‘An Anna Blume’ and the ‘Ursonate’ on disc

In 1932 both works — the poem ‘An Anna Blume’ and the ‘Ursonate’ — are recorded on a gramophone record in the author’s own performance.