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When people talk about the artistic avant-garde in Zurich, there is no getting around Dada – and right in the middle of it: the Zunfthaus zur Waag. In the summer of 1916, the first public Dada soirée took place in our house on the Münsterhof. An evening that made art history and forever marked Zurich as the birthplace of a movement that questioned everything: language, logic and conventions.
Zurich in the summer of 1916: while the First World War rages all around, something entirely new is emerging in the heart of Zurich's old town – a movement that turns art, language and thinking upside down. At the Cabaret Voltaire on Spiegelgasse, a group of artists who call themselves Dada is forming. What at first sounds like a joke quickly becomes a symbol of creative freedom, experimentation and new beginnings.
On 14 July 1916, the first public Dada soirée took place at the Zunfthaus zur Waag. In our historic rooms, where guild members usually met and did business, sound poems, improvisations and provocative texts rang out that evening. Among the performers was co-founder Hugo Ball, who opened his manifesto with the words: «Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it.»
It was an evening full of irritation and inspiration – an evening that showed that art knows no boundaries. The Zunfthaus zur Waag provided the setting for this bold premiere: a house with a centuries-old tradition of cloth weaving that became the stage for an artistic revolution on that summer evening. Why here of all places? During the war, Zurich was a place of neutrality and therefore also a refuge for thinkers, poets and visionaries from all over Europe. Among the narrow lanes and venerable walls, they found room for new ideas and for freedom of thought and action.
Today, more than a century later, the Zunfthaus zur Waag not only commemorates this historic moment but also carries its spirit forward: open to encounters, inspired by culture, rooted in history. Historic architecture meets contemporary cuisine, tradition meets inspiration. And anyone who walks through our old guild rooms today may still sense something of the spirit of new beginnings that filled Zurich in 1916 – when Dada quietly said: «Everything is possible.»
A visit to the Zunfthaus zur Waag is therefore not only a culinary experience but also a little journey through time. To a place where art, culture and hospitality have always gone hand in hand.
Cover image: Baugeschichtliches Archiv Zürich
Article image: Kunsthaus Zürich, Library, gift of Hans Bolliger, 1980
