Seriously funny Germans

You must have heard the joke about the thinnest book published in the last 50 years? It's title-German Humour Since the Middle Ages.

The Germans would be the first to acknowledge the superiority of English humour. They celebrate it every New Year's eve by broadcasting on German television what they regard as the pinnacle of British comedy: a 20-minute sketch from a 1962 Blackpool variety show called Dinner for One. Freddy Frinton, who plays the loyal butler, not only serves the dinner at the 90th birthday party of his mistress; he also stands in for all of her guests (who have not shown up, because they are dead). Circling the dinner table, Frinton repeatedly trips over the head of a tigerskin rug, spilling the wine he is serving-but not enough to avoid becoming increasingly drunk with every toast he proposes in the variety of roles he assumes. This sketch has achieved cult status in Germany (where it has been broadcast since 1974), despite the fact that Frinton hated the Germans and refused to utter one German word (this incidentally explains why his Admiral von Schneider character says "skol" instead of "prost" when he clicks his heels). In Britain, actor and sketch have long since been forgotten. Things, and comedy, have moved on.

The Goethe-Institut in London wants to prove that things have moved on in Germany as well. Under the catchphrase "ve haff vays of meking you laff," it is showing a series of new German comedy films (13th May-10th June). Many of these films have been hugely successful in Germany-triggering a national debate about the renaissance of a German sense of humour.



It all started with M??nner (Men) 1985, a depiction of men as overgrown children wearing gorilla suits: Doris D?rrie tells the story of a bourgeois husband who wins back his wife by turning her lover, a hippy artist, into a copy of himself. "A piece of fluff" said the New Yorker. But D?rrie started a mini-boom culminating in S?nke Wortmann's Der bewegte Mann, in which a philanderer, thrown out by his girl, moves in with a homosexual. "Funny-for a German movie" was the verdict, when the film opened in London as The Most Desired Man.

In Germany, Der bewegte Mann was a hit: 7m people went to see it-the most popular German film in 1994. Filmmaker Hark Bohm attributes this to a generation change: "My generation, the '1968ers,' still carry the Nazi guilt of our parents. Our children have thrown this off and just want to have fun."

The Goethe-Institut series includes an earlier and less successful S?nke Wortmann film, Kleine Haie (Little Sharks), which "stands out from the recent tales of relationships like a beacon" (Die Zeit); Katja von Garnier's Abgeschminkt (Making Up), an "above average single women's date comedy" (Variety); and Detlev Buck's Wir k?nnen auch anders (No more Mr Nice Guy), an example of what the Goethe-Institut calls "reunification comedy." This German genre may be funny but it does not travel at all well.

This was not always the case: much of the cosmopolitan Yiddish humour of Hollywood and Broadway owes its American home to the Nazis. Fascism cut short a sparkling tradition of German political satire: in the Fliegende Bl??tter and the Simplicissimus; in the great cabarets; and in writers such as Kurt Tucholsky. By comparison, postwar humour has been parochial and bland.

The Germans love to laugh, but-at least until recently-they have done so in a less uninhibited way than the English. In his book Germany and the Germans, John Ardagh puts it well: "To be frivolous or ironic about serious or important subjects, in the British or French manner, can still make many Germans uneasy. This is a trait that goes deep into their past and may be related to an old idealism and love of absolutes, but there may be another explanation, too: because they still feel insecure about their democratic values, they are not able to be flippant about what others might take for granted. Around a dinner table, there can be plenty of jokey conversation on personal matters, and then, if someone mentions a 'serious' topic, the tone changes and lengthy debate ensues."

The bravest choice in the Goethe- Institut series is probably the film Pappa Ante Portas (directed by Vicco von B?low). The director is known to German audiences only as Loriot and is a national institution. His television sketches are the closest Germany has ever come to producing something like Monty Python. Although his feature-length films are not his best works, Germans can become slightly misty-eyed when they think back to the innocent age of comedy he personified: the images of a strand of spaghetti wandering over the face of a man trying to propose to his girlfriend in an Italian restaurant, or the Loriot sketch of two strangers in a bathtub fighting over a rubber duck.

Things have moved on, but they have not got more subtle. The new generation of German comedians on television is loud, brash and rarely funny. Would-be David Letterman imitator Harald Schmidt is pushing against the boundaries of German comedy. He is also pushing against the boundaries of good taste. He has launched a cabaret barrage on German VIPs: long overdue, you might say, among the over-respectful Germans (just compare the British and German versions of Spitting Image). But Schmidt also targets minorities, women and Poles. No joke is too naff. Schmidt's show aims to offend-the more people the better.

The new wave humour represents a welcome normalisation, but also a less attractive Wir sind wieder wer German self-confidence which easily shades into bumptiousness.