An Anna Blume

[1] Originally published in Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm magazine in August 1919, the poem made Schwitters famous almost overnight.

[2] Whilst Schwitters was never an official member of Berlin Dada, he was closely linked to many members of the group, in particular Raoul Hausmann and Hans Arp, and the poem is written in a dadaist style, using multiple perspectives, fragments of found text, and absurdist elements to mirror the fragmentation of the narrator's emotional state in the throes of love, or of Germany's political, military and economic collapse after the First World War.

Christof Spengemann[4] The publication of the poem in September, two months after Schwitters' first one-man exhibition at Walden's Gallery in Berlin, cemented his reputation as a leading experimental collagist and poet.

Richard Huelsenbeck in particular found the poem offensively sentimental and romantic; "Dada rejects emphatically and as a matter of principle works like the famous 'Anna Blume' of Kurt Schwitters.

The book uses the cathedral as a metaphor, a theme common amongst Expressionists such as Lyonel Feininger, and was to become a central feature of the organisation of the Bauhaus, with its system of Masters teaching 'apprentices' and 'journeymen' trades such as mural painting and weaving.

[8] The title of Schwitters's book, Die Kathedrale, reflects the Expressionists' embrace of the Gothic cathedral as an emblem of unification in the arts.

"[9] Schwitters' style became more constructivist after this, under the influence of El Lissitzky and De Stijl, the Dutch group co-founded by Theo van Doesburg, who was to become a close friend and collaborator.