Forerunners of Dada were found in Berlin as early as 1916. The reviews Neue Jugend (New Youth), edited by the Herzfelde brothers, and Die freie Straße (The Free Street), edited by Raoul Hausmann with the collaboration of Johannes Baader, were important precursors of Dadaism in Berlin. In 1917, Richard Huelsenbeck came back from Zürich. These Berliners were soon joined by other German and foreign-born artists to create a Dada movement in Berlin. German Dadaism cannot be separated from the political and social context of postwar Germany. Acutely sensitive to the political collapse of the country and the horrifying aftermath of the war - the dead, the wounded, the disabled, and the starving, unemployed masses - Berlin Dada was anti-Prussian, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalistic from the start. Siding with the Spartacist revolutionaries, the Dadaists strongly opposed the creation of the Weimar Republic; and their strong politcal commitment determined all of their activities. Artistically speaking, even if they denied it, these artists had all been influenced by Expressionism, and some by Cubism and Futurism; after 1920, they were heavily influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. Throughout their history, they used the collage technique they had inherited from Cubism; and eventually combining this technique with photography, they excelled in photomontage.

The leaders of the "Berlin Dada Government," all of whom had adopted official-sounding titles to mock the organization of society, were Richard Huelsenbeck, the "Welt-Dada" (World Dada), who created a big stir in 1920 when he published his Dada Almanach, and the painters Raoul Hausmann, "Dadasopher," George Grosz, "Marshal Dada" or "Propagandada," Johannes Baader, "Oberdada" (Chief Dada or Dada Superior), and John Heartfield; the group also included Hannah Höch, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Paul Citroën, Arthur Segal, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz, and Otto Dix.

Following the example of the Zurich artists, the Berliners formed a "Dada Club" in 1918 and began publishing reviews such as Die Pleite (The Plague).