Otto Nim

The world has missed his passing. I failed to find a single obituary of Otto Nim (b. Dresden, April 1,1930 – d. Tribeca, NY. 2011) This, despite single-handedly keeping the flame of Neo-Nihilism alive for almost a week after Efes Niemann died - even though Nieman left nothing at all of his ouevre for posterity. Otto Nim was not strictly a member of the little known German movement of the 30's due to being only three at the time. The Neo-Nihilists were founded by Efes Niemann and Kurt Antwort: of Sudeten origin, they moved to Potsdamer Platz in the German Capital, where they lived under a tarpaulin outside the kitchens of the Palast Hotel. On May 10, 1933, they observed the burning of books on May 10 in the Opernplatz in Berlin. The only copies of Niemann's pre-neo-nihilist works 'Kvatsch^#', 'Mistª' and 'Eier°' were consumed in the blaze.

Niemann and Antwort produced the group's manifesto, 'Das Nichts, Und Was Es Bedeutet'*, in the form of a rice-paper pamphlet, in June 1933. On the 10th of June, Niemann and Antwort were arrested in front of the Reichstag, when they gave an unauthorised performance in front of several people, wherein each of the two poets ate half of the pamphlet.

Later works published included: Antwort's '10,000 x 0', a thirty two page work consisting of the word 'null' potato-printed in ink; the same poet's 'Nichts¹' consisting of a hand-written manuscript of blank paper and Niemann's Meisterstück 'Absolut Nichts² ', which consisted of absolutely nothing at all.

Both poets moved to the United States in 1939, Niemann died of septicaemia caused by an ingrown toenail a decade later. Antwort married a Native American in New Mexico. He died aged 99 after fathering an illegitimate child, now writing his own poetry under the name Klaus Sinter. As for Otto Nim, perhaps by assuming this psuedonym, he has assured a particularly Neo-Nihilistic kind of posterity consisting of being completely forgotten.

# “Rubbish”

ª “Bullshit”

° “Bollocks”

* “Nothing, and what it means”

¹ “Nothing”

^{2 “}Absolutely Nothing”