Joachim Ringelnatz

Ringelnatz, Joachim (pen name of Hans Bötticher, 1883–1934), German writer and cabaret performer whose connection to the Dada movement was reflected in the satirical children's tales and nonsense rhymes he created. His Kuttel Daddeldu character, found in Ringelnatz's poems and short stories, is a cynical seaman and storyteller whose colourful stories often blend dialect and foreign phrases with political criticism and nonsense, while subverting narrative conventions and audience expectations.

Bibliography

• Pape, Walter (ed.), Joachim Ringelnatz: Das Gesamtwerk in sieben Bänden (1983).
• Ringelnatz, Joachim, Kuttel Daddeldu erzählt seinen Kindern das Märchen vom Rotkäppchen (1923).
• Zipes, Jack (ed.), Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days (1989).

— Mary Beth Stein

Ringelnatz, Joachim, pseudonym of Hans Bötticher (Wurzen, 1883-1934, Berlin); the name is that of the harmless watersnake (Natrix natrix, common on the Continent, but not indigenous to Britain), and it is well suited to a humorist, satirist, and ironist, who was also a man of goodwill. Ringelnatz was restless in his youth, running away to sea, later becoming a librarian, then a cabaret singer with the cabarets Simplizissimus in Munich and Schall und Rauch in Berlin. In the 1914-18 War he became a naval officer and an air pilot. He was highly successful in reciting and singing his own sarcastically satirical pieces, which guyed current intellectual and social trends and fashions. He published many volumes of comic verse and nonsense poetry, including Schnupftabaksdose (1912, with R. J. M. Seewald), Kuttel Daddeldu (1920, extended edn. 1923), Nervosipopel (1924), Allerdings (1928), Kinder-Verwirr-Buch (1931), Gedichte dreier Jahre (1932), and Gedichte, Gedichte (1934); posthumous publications include Und auf einmal steht es neben dir (1950) and Kasperle-Verse (1954). He was also the author of stories, collected as Ein jeder lebt's (1913) and Die Woge (1932), and of autobiographical writings, Als Mariner im Krieg (1928) and Mein Leben bis zum Kriege (1931, reissued 1966). Correspondence appeared posthumously, including an edition by Ringelnatz's wife whom he called Muschelkalk (Reisebriefe an Muschelkalk, 1964). Das Gesamtwerk in sieben Bänden, ed. W. Pape, appeared 1982 ff.