An insightful article on the difference between German and English humour.

Of course, stuff like Monty Python, especially the movies, have always had a big cult following in Germany. But my generation was brought up on slapstick. When I was a kid, there'd be old Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang shows on Friday evenings. Among the biggest comedy stars was a chap called Dieter Hallervoorden, who got by on virtue of having a pliable, ugly face.

Lately I've occasionally been watching episodes a mid-'70s game show called Am Laufenden Band (which was very well put together and brilliantly presented). One episode I watched this weekend featured an English slapstick act called The Nitwits. The audience was in stitches over the antics of a funny looking guy -- an older and viler and much shorter version of John Cazale -- who seemed to get much laughter from flicking his tongue in and out. 38 years after it was screened, I remembered it.

But where I differ with the author is that German humour isn't all slapstick. German satire can be brutal, and doesn't require signposting, much less a wink and a smile.

On a related subject, can anyone point me back to the thread that linked to a chart whose headings were something like "What the British say", "What Europeans hear" and "What the British really mean"?

Maybe, when you get round to the Monday Morning Quiz.

Stewart Lee did an article on the same topic a while back, focusing more on the linguistic element.

Referring to the article that G-Man linked to:

By wooing the audience for laughs with physical gestures rather than words, the sketch managed to tap into a specifically German distrust of language

It's a pity the author doesn't explain what he means by "specifically German distrust of language".

I've lived here half my life and don't understand what he means. It would be reasonable to assume that the majority of people who read The Guardian haven't had the same exposure to this alleged distrust and therefore also don't know what he's talking about.

And yet the core of Loriot's act was essentially physical.

No it wasn't. There was the "food on the face" sketch that the author refers to. There was Loriot's rather unfunny obsession with orchestra conductors. And there was the same amount of tripping over things as you get in most other comedies, regardless of where they come from.

But most of Loriot's stuff was verbal. You often hear people quoting great big chunks of Loriot's work ad verbatim (which is as irritating as people quoting Monty Python stuff, but that's not the point).

I'd dispute the implication that Dinner For One is repeated endlessly on New Year's Eve because people find it so funny. For me, that's similar to claiming that the Queen's speech is broadcast every year on December 25th because so many people think that what she's got to say is so interesting.

On New Year's Eve, most people are too busy worrying about their fondue and their boiled sausages and their Bleigießen and about which of the neighbours they're going to try and get off with; they don't give a shit about what's on television.

I reckon the state channels repeat Dinner For One because, as programme scheduling goes, it's the lazy bastard's option.

The Stewart Lee piece is interesting, especially the bit about finding humour in blunt, direct statements made in seemingly inappropriate contexts. The example he mentions is very similar to something that happened to me a few years ago.

I was in Southwark Cathedral looking round the place with a few friends, one of whom was a German guy called Pete. He speaks superb English with a reasonably strong German accent. The cathedral was all jolly nice and interesting but just as we were about to pass quietly from the nave into the chancel, Pete paused with an exasperated expression on his face. "You know," he said in a loud voice, "I can't *believe* our boys missed this place. It's even built in the shape of an X, for Christ's sake."

The thing is, that's hilarious.

Indeed. But then again, Lee's point is that German humour is funny, just that it typically takes different forms than we're used to.

Surely GMan that should be 'Ze German Humour'

Most of my german colleagues are pretty switched on humour wise, so I don't go along with any lack of humour.
However (of course there would be a however), I think they can be a little bit literal.
When I first saw a Tom and Jerry cartoon in Germany, I noticed they had a voice over. Just in case the kids couldn't follow the plot, or the idea of hitting a cat in the face with an iron, isn't really that nice.
My German wasn't up to much so I don't know what the voice over was saying; but it was one of the episodes with no human speech so god knows.
"The Hobbit" is called 'Der Kleiner Hobbit' - just in case readers thought he could be a large one.
And best was Airplane which I seem to recall was called "Der Stupid Airplane" (Airplane still spelt in English if I remember).
Obviously it was introduced by Lufthansa's insistance in case people believed it was a serious film.

I tell Germans I can't do humour until I have a Deutscher Humor certificate from the Volkshochschule.

VTTB — you're right about German film titles for Hollywood films; they're either astonishingly literal or really crap. The worst recent example was Made in Dagenham, which became We Want Sex.

Stumpy Pepys wrote:
The worst recent example was Made in Dagenham, which became We Want Sex.

Gives a whole new meaning to 'Industrial Relations'.

VTTBoscombe wrote:
And best was Airplane which I seem to recall was called "Der Stupid Airplane" (Airplane still spelt in English if I remember).


Worse than that. It was called Die Unglaubliche Reise in einem Verrückten Flugzeug (The Unbelievable Journey in a Crazy Aeroplane.)

What did they call Airport? Or Alive?

Obviously it was a German film. but Run Lola Run, which comes off the tongue with a certain rollicking quality that certainly is more like the film itself, is just Lola rennt (Runs) in German.

Dull, dull, dull!

Worse than that. It was called Die Unglaubliche Reise in einem Verrückten Flugzeug (The Unbelievable Journey in a Crazy Aeroplane.)

My favourites, as I've mentioned before, are Zwei Glorreiche Halunken ("Two Glorious Rapscallions") for "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" and Ich glaub', mich knutsch ein Elch ("I Think I'm Being Snogged By A Moose") for "Stripes".

Ginger Yellow wrote:
Or Alive?

Die Menschen in dem Flugzeug, der gar nicht sterben

Flynnie wrote:
Obviously it was a German film. but Run Lola Run, which comes off the tongue with a certain rollicking quality that certainly is more like the film itself, is just Lola rennt (Runs) in German.

Dull, dull, dull!

Ah, but the year after that, Chicken Run came out, and the Germans - brilliantly - titled it Hennen rennen.

Particularly in my first year, I was caught out innumerable times by this. There was the vocabulary test that my classmates had warned me about that never happened, the boy who said his father was the prime minister who wasn't, the teacher who said he had been drafted into the Oxford and Cambridge boat race at the last minute who hadn't. They had all told blatant lies without raising an eyebrow. Deadpan joke-telling seemed to come from the same mentality as the British art of understatement: the point was that you would by all means avoid making an outward show of what was going on inside your head.

I must say that I didn't have that experience in England. The big absurd lie told for the sake of an entertaining story was too often literally believed. (certainly amongst the er, anglos, whereas the children of immigrants of all hues seemed much more attuned to the big lie) I think that if this poor lad went to school in ireland he'd have gotten an awful shock altogether.

For instance I once saw a glaswegian convince a room full of successful young oxford educated professionals, that the Haggis was an endangered creature that had nearly been hunted to extinction, and lived on motorway grass verges. I basically had to shove my fist into my mouth to not give the game away.

I've spent a bit of time in Germany at various points of my life - when I say "a bit", by the way, that's not English understatement, I genuinely mean a total of about four months, spread over nearly 25 years, so I'm not claiming to be an expert. But anyway, in many ways I think it's a fucking great place.

If ever the subject of German "humourlessness" comes up in conversation, though, I always say the same thing. My impression is that Germans joke and laugh at least as much as any other country I've been to (with the exception of England, where humour is both a saving grace and a fatal flaw... it sometimes feels like over here, it's a bit of a faux pas to ever say anything that isn't supposed to be funny). Compared to Italy, for instance, the place seems to be permanently shaking with laughter. The concept of Germans as stern-faced robots is ludicrously far off the mark.

The problem with German humour, it's always seemed to me, is simply that it's not very funny. As a bit of a Germanophile, I would love to be proven wrong here. I've simply not experienced much German humour that wasn't based on scatology so basic it wouldn't pass muster in an English playground, or on someone dressing bizarrely and behaving like a fool, or someone being extremely rude for no particular reason, or some other lone comedy building block, crying out to be dropped into a more sophisticated structure. Can anyone help me out?

I did laugh a lot at a chap who showed me round Hamburg, who seemed consumed with a seething hatred of Bavaria - but I couldn't tell whether he was being funny or whether he just genuinely despised people from Bavaria. "Which of these sausages is the best?" I asked him in a restaurant. "They are all good," he replied, "except that one. Do not order that one. It is a Bavarian sausage. You do not want to eat that."

I sensed the outline of a slightly different kind of German humour here, rather as one sees a dark shape pass behind frosted glass and thinks they've seen a person. It still wasn't funny as such, but I laughed... and couldn't tell from his response whether he was pleased I'd laughed at his joke, or whether he was pleased I'd laughed at Bavarians, or both.

I find this stuff fascinating.