SOURCE: “Ball and Nietzsche: A Study of the Influence of Nietzsche's Philosophy on Hugo Ball,” in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XVI, No. 4, October, 1980, pp. 293-307.

In the following essay, Mann examines the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's nihilism, observations on morality, emphasis on the irrational, and critique of modern culture on Ball's thought.

When discussing Hugo Ball's life in his book Begegnungen, Siegfried Streicher (who had worked with Ball on the Freie Zeitung in Berne in 1917) comments on the great influence which Nietzsche's philosophy had on Ball. He writes: “Ball kam ganz aus der geistigen Essenz Nietzsches. Und er hat diese Herkunft nie verleugnen können, auch dann nicht, als er den, der Ecce Homo schrieb, geistig längst überwunden hatte, zu den Heiligen betete und den Teufel mit uralten magischen Formeln auszutreiben begann.”¹ Streicher wrote the above in 1933: up to the present, however, no-one has developed...