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Executed in 1921, Zu Besichtigen was made at the height of the inflation years in Germany that followed the First World War and the November revolution of 1918. In an era of complete moral, political and financial bankruptcy when paper currency had lost its value and only food, work or lodging remained commodities of real value (other than gold and US dollars) Schwitters, alone in Hanover, established a one-man avant-garde and declared the “Merz Revolution.” Taking its name from a fragment of the words “Kommerz und Privatbank” that Schwitters had cut out for one of his collages “Merz” soon became a one-man artistic revolution in which art and life were to be merged through the “business” of assembling fragments and detritus of modernity into new glorified forms and expressions of the triumph of the human spirit. “Merz-Painting,” Schwitters announced at this time “aims at direct expression by shortening the interval between the intuition and realization of the work of art” (Schwitters, quoted in F. Lach, ed., Kurt Schwitters: Das literarische Werk, Cologne, 1981, vol. V, p. 51).
As Schwitters' friend and neighbor in Hanover, Kate Steinitz recalled, at this time Schwitters was frequently to be seen on the streets of Hanover, “a crazy, original genius-character, carelessly dressed, absorbed in his own thoughts, picking up all sorts of curious stuff in the streets... always getting down from his bike to pick up some colorful piece of paper that somebody had thrown away” (K.T. Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life, Berkeley, 1968, p. 68).