Dieter Roth
Liter­at­ur­würste

A total of 25 copies of Dieter Roth’s so-called Literaturwurst (Literary Sausage) were published in 1970 as edition no. 29. In 1961, at a time when he was working intensively with artists’ books and book objects, Roth had already produced his first Literaturwurst from an issue of the Daily Mirror, which he gave to his artist friend Daniel Spoerri. Roth realized the idea for a series of Literaturwürste from 1966 onwards, whereby he decided on an edition of 50 copies. The Literaturwürste are created in a manufacturing process in which individual titles of contemporary literature and selected magazine issues are chopped up and mixed with fat and spices according to selected recipes (e.g. Italian pepper sausage) and subjected to a sausage-making process. While the texts are literally sausaged and the writing becomes unrecognizable, the sausage objects stand for the processed content in that each is provided with a label – cut out from the title page of the book or magazine. The size and shape of the respective editions vary depending on the size and content of the original texts. Like real sausages, they can be hung up by a string with which the two ends are closed. Unlike the first 25 copies of the Literaturwürste, which used a natural casing to make the sausages, the 25 copies published in 1970 by Edition Block were made with an artificial casing. However, the series of Literaturwürste published in 1970 differed primarily in the selection of the “sausaged” literature, as Roth now chose German newspapers and magazines such as Quick, Bunte, Der Spiegel and Stern instead of contemporary literature. One magazine is included in each Literaturwurst, with the exception of one, in which Roth uses an issue of Bild and Welt. The Literaturwürste are numbered, dated and signed on a small paper label on the object. The aversion to literary works at the beginning of these objects, especially German-language literature, which seemed ideologically questionable to him, can probably also be applied to the magazines: “I mangled the book”, here Roth is talking about Günter Grass’ novel Hundejahre (Dog Years), which was published in 1963, “and put seasoning in it like a disgusting sausage, the whole recipe, and then put it in the intestines, at that time there were still real intestines, and then I cut out these labels at the front and stuck them on the intestines. Hundejahre. That’s how it started. Then I realized it had an ironic value, you could do more. Andersch, Böll was also one of my favorite literary dogs.”
Text: Birgit Eusterschulte

Peter P. Schneider, Simon Mauerer, »Gespräch mit Dieter Roth am 15.5.1998«, in: Dieter Roth. Gesammelte Interviews, ed. by. Barbara Wien, Edition Hansjörg Mayer, London 2002, p. 473–487, here p. 486.