Translation and commentary: Meret Oppenheim, ‘Kaspar Hauser or the Golden Freedom’

Meret Oppenheim, born to a Swiss family in Berlin in 1913, was a key figure in Parisian Surrealism in the 1930s. While criticism has focused on controversial object-works like Déjeuner en fourrure (1936), her transmedial art (painting, sculpture, writing) offers complex engagements with European history. Kaspar Hauser, oder die goldene Freiheit, an unrealized screenplay written in Switzerland during the dark, wartime years of 1942–1943, displays the artist’s concern with Germanic cultural traditions and with metaphors of transformation and self-redefinition. Oppenheim died in Basel in 1985.