German Joys

How Duesseldorf Gave Birth to 'Stand-Up Tragedy'

Famous Duesseldorfers include Kraftwerk, Heinrich Heine, and Josef Beuys (sort of).  Plus, never forget that Robert Schumann went insane in this city!  Unfortunately, few of these names rings a bell outside of Germany (although they should, they should!).  Therefore, I've been on the lookout for other famous Duesseldorfers. 

And I found one. The one, the only, the inimitable Brother Theodore:

Brother Theodore (11 November 1906 - 5 April 2001) was a German monologuist and comedian known for rambling, stream of consciousness dialogues [sic] which he called "stand up tragedy." He was born Theodore Gottlieb into a wealthy family in Düsseldorf, Germany, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore attended the University of Cologne. Under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp until he signed over his family's fortune for one Reichsmark. After being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland he went to Austria where Albert Einstein, a family friend, helped him escape to the United States. He worked as a janitor at Stanford University, a dockworker in San Francisco and played a bit part in Orson Welles' The Stranger before moving to New York City.

His 'act', if you can call it that, explored what would happen if you re-animated Schopenhauer, glued mutilated chunks of a silver wig on him, stuck a gun in his back, and ordered him to 'be entertaining.'  Here is BT from one of his sixteen legendary appearances on the David Letterman show.

Now, I'll admit, a little of Brother Theodore goes a long way.  In fact, 2 minutes or so is enough to last most people their entire lives.  But I couldn't get enough of the man. As I watched the flickering, glowing television screen in my suburban home, I thought to myself: "One day, I must go to live in the city that brought forth this diseased man-child!"

Some of Brother Theodore's other aphorisms:

"The best thing is not to be born. But who is as lucky as that? To whom does it happen? Not to one among millions and millions of people."

"All the great spiritual leaders are dead .... Moses is dead .... Muhammed is dead .... Buddha is dead .... and I'm not feeling so hot myself!"

"Her hair was of a dank yellow, and fell over her temples like sauerkraut, her face was sweaty like a chunk of rancid pork..."

"What this country needs, and I'm not joking, is a dictator. I feel the time is right, and the place congenial, and I am ready. I will be strict but just. Heads will roll, and corpses will swing from every lamppost."

Non-Bear Shaped Gummi Bears

Sex toys have been a topic on this blog before, albeit in the context of taxation. Now they're back: a trip to the store turns into a journey of erotic self-discovery when Harald Martenstein discovers (G) that his local department store now sells sex toys.

Special Offer

Harald Martenstein discovers an “erotic goods” section in the department store

I’m not really a lady. That’s why I rarely visit the ladies’ underwear department in the Karstadt department store. However, it came to pass one day that I got lost. I wanted to go to the CD section. Do not buy the so-called new Beatles CD Love, by the way, it’s horrible. I didn’t find the CD-section. Instead, I was suddenly standing before a gigantic, knobby dildo. The term dildo denotes a stylized recreation of the male reproductive organ. It is designed for leisure pursuits. There are ones with and without motors, just like with boats and two-wheelers. I explain the word because once, when I was a young man, I had to admit at a party that I didn’t know the word, and that was embarrassing. I actually thought “dildo” was that large, extinct Australian bird. It also wouldn’t be such a bad name, when you come to think of it. Dildo DiCaprio. Dildo Jetengine. Suddenly it came to be that if Ildikó von Kürthy tried to pep up a Franz Kafka novel with sex scenes, you would have something that would be about as patchy as the Love CD.

Teach me to Laugh, Herr Boyes

Roger Boyes is an Englishman and Berlin correspondent for the London Times. He can often be seen on German talk shows commenting on international affairs (in perfect German). Now he's written a book, "My dear Krauts," which is designed to help Germans learn to laugh. First, I'll give you the gist of Boyes, then I'll add my take:

Germany is in urgent need of "humor development aid," Roger Boyes, the London Times correspondent in Berlin.

The Germans are a nation of paranoid schizophrenics who can't decide whether to love or loathe themselves, says Roger Boyes, the Berlin correspondent for the London Times, whose new book "My dear Krauts" marks the start of a one-man mission to help the country lighten up.

"It's not that they can't be funny. In fact they like a good laugh. It's just that they're a bit slower on the uptake than the rest of the world. And they don't understand irony."...

German Joys Review: Forklift Driver Klaus

It's time for a subject that doesn't get enough attention on German Joys: industrial safety.

Yesterday I watched Staplerfahrer Klaus: Der Erste Arbeitstag ('Forklift Driver Klaus - The First Day on the Job'), a 10-minute long industrial-safety film directed by Jörg Wagner and Stefan Prehn. Forklift Driver Klaus opens in an office of a warehouse complex in some industrial suburb of a German city. All the forklift driver trainees are assembled; they've all passed their test, and all receive a badge signifying that yes, they too may join "the 37,000 specially-trained people in Germany who can rightly call themselves forklift drivers."

The camera focusses on Klaus, a cheerful, innocent-looking blond-haired young man, beaming with pride as the firm's president pins his forklift-driver badge onto the lapel of his blue work overalls. Accompanied by peppy, burbling industrial-training-film music, Klaus walks confidently to his designated forklift and puts it through an initial safety inspection. Everything works. Klaus is about to start his new career as a forklift driver!

A near-accident at the warehouse entrance isn't Klaus' fault, it's the fault of the foolish pedestrian who ignored the sign clearly marking separate paths for motorized and pedestrian traffic. Unfortunately, Klaus cannot so easily be absolved of blame for the series of "cruel but informative accidents" (to quote the film's English-language website) that happen next.

Adolf and the Leasing Contract

Something for the German-understanders out there.

Some lovable misfits took an audiotape of a comedian's routine (don't know which comedian) about an utterly banal legal dispute with a car dealership relating to a "Leasing-Vertrag" (leasing contract). They then synchronized it seamlessly to a videotape of a speech being given by a controversial German Austrian statesman in a large assembly hall filled with torches and flags.

I laughed until I cried, and then was filled with shame. Then I forgave myself, and watched the video again. (Hat-tip Ed P.)

Clever Marketing

The ad is for a funeral-services company. The slogan: "Just come closer." (Hat-tip P.H. & Ed P.)

 

England. Germany. Humo[u]r.

Hat-tip to Jo for pointing me to an article in the Guardian by English comedian Stewart Lee. Lee went to Germany to stage a play set in an English stand-up comedy club, and reflects, interestingly, on the differences between the German and the English sense of humor. The article's accompanied by a picture of Harald Schmidt, Germany's answer to David Letterman, dressed as a bobsled. (!)

Lee's conclusion: "[B]e assured, the German sense of humour not only exists, it actually flourishes, albeit in a form we are ill-equipped to recognise." According to Lee, English humor is based on building up intentional confusions of meaning that are resolved, with a funny paradox, at the end of the sentence. This sort of humor doesn't work in Germany, because "[t]he German language provides fully functional clarity. English humour thrives on confusion."  Furthermore, English humor about bodily functions doesn't translate well: "A German theatre director explained that this was because the Germans did not find the human body smutty or funny, due to all attending mixed saunas from an early age." (!!)

Therefore, Germans don't really warm to English stand-up humor:

[T]he idea of stand-up is somewhat alien to the Germans. They have a cabaret tradition of sophisticated satire, cross-dressing and mildly amusing songs, and there are also recognisable mainstream, low-brow comedy tropes in the form of vulgar popular entertainers. But the idea of the conversational, casual, middle-ground of English speaking stand-up comedy is unknown to the Germans.

To Lee it "seemed to me that their sense of humour was built on blunt, seemingly serious statements, which became funny simply because of their context."

All well and good, I'd say, from an outsider's perspective. Here are some other sorts of German humor that appear in "forms we are ill-equipped to recognize":

Worse and Better Ways to Die

I don't want to interrupt the philological discussion going on about the last post, but I came across a few nice specimens of German humor I thought I'd share.  The first comes from the April 2006 Titanic, p. 39, submitted by Tibor Rácskai:

Suggestion for Improvement

In the subway station: ultra-modern screen displays keep us in the loop: "200 Dead in Beluchistan, the new Brigitte is in newsstands now, Careful! Train arriving!"  For the last few days, one of these devices has been stoically delivering an additional piece of news: "The end of the lamp's life-expectancy has been reached."  I'd like to have something similar, when it's come that far; let's say, three days before.  Then there'd be enough time to clean up a bit, bring the old bottles in for recycling -- simply to check out properly.

And now Greser und Lenz (G) the comic team specializing in mordant satirical cartoons.  The FAZ newspaper is hosting a collection of Greser and Lenz drawings, and interviewed the two in their favorite bar, the "Schlappeseppel" in Aschaffenburg.  They liked it so much they drew the bar owner a little cartoon for his beer coasters:

It shows two drunks dressed in angel's robes, sitting on a cloud.  "Cirrhosis of the liver! And you?" asks one, with a grimace.  The other's hand and feet are bandaged.  In his left hand he still holds a fragment of the broken steering wheel, with the beer bottle in his right hand he merrily salutes his colleague: "Thank God I didn't have to go through that!"

P.S. This one shows Condi Rice behind a podium, announcing: "As a transatlantic goodwill gesture, the CIA has ordered 150 Airbus planes for secret prisoner transports."  The caption: "Everything OK again now?"