Deutschsprachige Texte im Wiener Ma

Abstract

The Viennese Ma (May 1920 to June 1925) is seen today as one of the most important journals of the so-called classical avant-garde. Its influence on the international avant-garde movement in the 1920s and also later is well known. Apart from these very general observations, there have hardly been any more in-depth discussions on the journal. In a number of academic studies the authors examined the relation between Ma, or the members of the group associated with Ma, and its Viennese environment. A consensus was more or less reached that neither the circle in Vienna nor the journal had any real echo. These studies base their arguments on testimonies such as the reminiscences of those involved with the journal and newspaper reports from that time. The present essay explores the same question by analyzing the German-language texts published in the journal Ma to show the image of the journal and of the group that emerged for contemporaries who did not speak Hungarian. For the first time a scholarly study seeks to show what exactly was rejected by readers in Vienna between 1920 and 1925.