Television Comedy
German Humour: Does Germany Have a Sense of Humour?
Course 1 · Chapter 8 · Television Comedy, Cabaret and Satire Since 1950
After 1945 German comedy had to start again. West Germany rebuilt its cabaret, found a generation of comedians for the new television, saw a blockbuster film comedy made by a comic from East Frisia, invented its own late-night and satire formats, and, from the 1990s, imported the stand-up club. East Germany developed its own entertainment (see Chapter 6). This chapter surveys the main strands since 1950: postwar cabaret and the political satire shows, the wordplay comedians, the big names of the 1970s to 1990s, the stand-up boom and a new generation with roots in migrant families, and the unlikely story of Monty Python in German. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
Postwar Cabaret
A fresh start
Cabarets reopened in the years after 1945, among them Die Schaubude in Munich, with texts by the writer Erich Kästner, and Die Stachelschweine ("The Porcupines") in Berlin from 1949 (check). They had to rebuild an art that the Nazi regime had broken (Chapter 4).
Munich
Die Münchner Lach- und Schießgesellschaft ("Munich Laughing and Shooting Society"), founded in 1956 by Sammy Drechsel and Dieter Hildebrandt, became the best-known West German political cabaret (check). Hildebrandt (1927 to 2013) was its leading figure for decades.
Television
Hildebrandt later ran the satire programme Scheibenwischer ("Windscreen Wiper") on television from 1980 (check), which brought cabaret into the living room, and sometimes into conflict with broadcasters and politicians (check).
The Wordplay Tradition on Screen
- Heinz Erhardt. A comedian (1909 to 1979) who combined puns, nonsense verse and a mild manner. He starred in many film comedies from the 1950s and became a well-loved television performer. His poems of wordplay remain popular (check). He represents the pun tradition of Chapter 2 at its most polished.
- Ritual comedy. Recorded sketches, such as Dinner for One, filled the schedules of the new television in the 1960s and 1970s and shaped a shared repertoire (see The German Festival Year, Chapter 3).
Names of the 1970s to 1990s
| Performer (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Otto Waalkes | Born in 1948 in Emden, East Frisia, which links him to the East Frisian jokes of Chapter 2. A comedian of silly songs, impersonations and visual gags, whose film Otto – Der Film (1985) was among the most successful German films of its time. |
| Dieter Hallervorden | Born in 1935, a comic known for television series such as Nonstop Nonsens (from 1975) and for the Berlin theatre and cabaret Die Wühlmäuse, which he took over (check). Later also a serious actor. |
| Helge Schneider | Born in 1955, a jazz musician and absurdist who performs improvised, rambling shows and films, known for the nonsense song "Katzeklo" (1993) (check). |
| Hape Kerkeling | Born in 1964, a comedian of disguise and television pranks, and later author of a bestselling book about walking the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela (check the title and date). |
| Anke Engelke | Born in 1965, a comic actress and presenter, with a long career in sketch shows and in dubbing work (check). |
| Michael "Bully" Herbig | Born in 1968, a Bavarian comedian whose western parody Der Schuh des Manitu (2001) became one of the highest-grossing German films of its time (check). |
These are a selection, not a canon. German television has also had many successful quiz and entertainment shows with comic elements, and the arrival of commercial channels in the mid-1980s (RTL, Sat.1) widened the market and produced new formats (check).
Satire on Screen
- extra 3. A satirical news magazine on the public channel NDR, running since the 1970s, which offers short pieces mocking politics and news (check the dates).
- Die Harald Schmidt Show. A late-night show on Sat.1 from the mid-1990s, modelled on American late-night television and notable for its ironic, sometimes provocative host (check the dates).
- heute-show. A weekly satirical programme on ZDF, in the style of a spoof news bulletin, begun in 2009 and presented by Oliver Welke (check). It is one of the best-known political satire formats on German television.
- Die Anstalt. A ZDF political cabaret show from 2007, known for dense, documentary-style sketches and for citing sources on screen (check).
- Jan Böhmermann. A satirist whose programmes since 2013 mix mock news and stunts, and whose 2016 poem about a foreign head of state led to a legal and diplomatic controversy (see Chapter 9, check).
The Stand-up Boom
| Development (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Quatsch Comedy Club | Opened in Hamburg in the early 1990s by Thomas Hermanns, who brought the format of the English-language comedy club to Germany (check). |
| The 1990s and 2000s | Stand-up comedy grew quickly, with television showcases, regional clubs and stars such as Michael Mittermeier (check). |
| Stadium shows | The comedian Mario Barth, who tells jokes about relationships, sold out Berlin's Olympic stadium in 2008 (check the figure), a sign of how large the audience had become. |
| Comedians from migrant families | Performers such as Kaya Yanar, Bülent Ceylan and Fatih Çevikkollu draw on German-Turkish and other family backgrounds, with humour about stereotypes, family and identity (check). They show a changing country. |
Monty Python in German
Exercises
Choose three performers or programmes from the chapter and describe for each the type of humour, the era and a British counterpart.
Explain how the arrival of commercial television and of stand-up clubs changed German comedy, and what evidence you would use to show it.
Use the Monty Python episodes as an example of cross-border comedy: what makes it work, what is lost, and what it shows about the stereotype.
Quick Reference
- Cabaret: Die Schaubude, Die Stachelschweine, the Münchner Lach- und Schießgesellschaft (1956), Scheibenwischer
- Wordplay: Heinz Erhardt
- Names: Otto, Hallervorden, Helge Schneider, Kerkeling, Engelke, Herbig
- Satire: extra 3, heute-show, Die Anstalt, Böhmermann
- Stand-up: Quatsch Comedy Club; comedians from migrant families