I thank you warmly for your letter of 17 April. Of course we know your role in German Dadaism; with the result that no approval of our theses on this central question could be as precious for us as yours.
After the organized forgetting of Dadaism, the current official recognition appears to us as only a moment in a foreseeable process, a moment that comes with the decomposition of the culture and the ideologies that have reigned for forty years of generalized reaction. The next revolutionary crisis that totally puts into question the world (and its subsequent development) that you have confronted will recognize all of the truth of Dadaism.
As for us, we get to the bottom of this historical problem[1] as much as possible, that is to say: from immediate interest. We have found in your book Courrier Dada[2] a part of the rare, already available information. Do you know where it is possible today to consult the journal Die Aktion?[3] In a previous letter, you spoke to me of a new book on Dadaism, which you were working on.[4] I hope that we will see it appear soon.
If it is possible for you to send to me a copy of the translation that you made of the text by [Mustapha] Khayati [the "Address to the revolutionaries of Algeria and all countries"], we would be happy to make use of it in one of the publications in German that we sometimes attempt.
Please receive, dear Sir, the testimony of our sympathy and admiration (all of the things that public rumors accuse us, quite inexactly, of not according to anyone).
Guy Debord[1] Raoul Hausmann wrote: "[...] From 1916 to 1924, I was a collaborator on the review Die Aktion [The Action], for anti-authoritarian socialism and always against the ease with which the majority of the Dadaists treated this revolutionary renewal."
[2] Published in 1958 by Editions Terrain Vague.
[3] Burned in an autodafe by the Nazis.
[4] Chances, or the End of Neo-Dadaism, which never appeared.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, 1965-1968. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! August 2005.)