German Comedy

German Comedy
Author: Peter Schneider
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1992-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0374523584

A tour of Germany after reunification provides anecdotes of the West German people, an East German baker, Bavarian yodelers, Stalinist functionaries, and Western capitalists

Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany

Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany
Author: Valerie Weinstein
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253040736

Today many Germans remain nostalgic about "classic" film comedies created during the 1930s, viewing them as a part of the Nazi era that was not tainted with antisemitism. In Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany, Valerie Weinstein scrutinizes these comic productions and demonstrates that film comedy, despite its innocent appearance, was a critical component in the effort to separate "Jews" from "Germans" physically, economically, and artistically. Weinstein highlights how the German propaganda ministry used directives, pre- and post-production censorship, financial incentives, and influence over film critics and their judgments to replace Jewish "wit" with a slower, simpler, and more direct German "humor" that affirmed values that the Nazis associated with the Aryan race. Through contextualized analyses of historical documents and individual films, Weinstein reveals how humor, coded hints and traces, absences, and substitutes in Third Reich film comedy helped spectators imagine an abstract "Jewishness" and a "German" identity and community free from the former. As resurgent populist nationalism and overt racism continue to grow around the world today, Weinstein's study helps us rethink racism and prejudice in popular culture and reconceptualize the relationships between film humor, national identity, and race.

Look Who's Back

Look Who's Back
Author: Timur Vermes
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1623653347

HE'S BACK AND HE'S FUHRIOUS! "Desperately funny . . . An ingenious comedy of errors." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times "Satire at its best." --Newsweek "Thrillingly transgressive." --The Guardian A NEW YORK TIMES SUMMER READING PICK In this record-breaking bestseller, Timur Vermes imagines what would happen if Adolf Hilter reawakened in present-day Germany: YouTube stardom. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. It's the summer of 2011 and things have changed--no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognize him--as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own TV show, and people begin to listen. But the Fuhrer has another program with even greater ambition in mind--to set the country he finds in shambles back to rights. With daring humor, Look Who's Back is a perceptive study of the cult of personality and of how individuals rise to fame and power in spite of what they preach.

German-language Comedy

German-language Comedy
Author: Bert Cardullo
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1992
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780945636243

This is the first English collection of the greatest comedies written in German from the late-eighteenth to the late-nineteenth centuries. Each of the translated comedies is placed in historical context and in relationship to its author's life as well as his other plays, and each is followed by a select bibliography of English-language criticism and interpretation.

Hitler Laughing

Hitler Laughing
Author: William Grange
Publisher:
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

When the National Socialist German Workers' party (Nazis) assumed power they vowed to cleanse the German theater of all things "un-German," which ostensibly included comedy. During the Third Reich nearly all German theaters, supported by enormous state funding, presented thousands of comedy productions. Perhaps it was a propaganda tool, however only a tiny fraction of these productions were outright propagandist efforts. French playwright and filmmaker, Marcel Pagnol described laughter as a "song of triumph... that] expresses the laugher's sudden discovery of his own momentary superiority over the person at whom he is laughing. That explains burst of laughter in all times in all countries." Hitler and his followers gladly embraced this triumphal expression. Yet, what did this laughter mean to the Nazi agenda and in what ways did it undermine its goals? Hitler Laughing offers insight into the world of comedy during the Third Reich and its role in the Nazi cultural agenda.

Landmarks in German Comedy

Landmarks in German Comedy
Author: Peter Hutchinson
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2006
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9783039101856

Public demand for comedy has always been high in the German-speaking countries, but the number of comic dramas that have survived is relatively small. Those which are still read or regularly performed all have a serious purpose, and this collection of fourteen essays on the most distinguished of them shows how laughter can be exploited to treat personal, moral, and social problems in a way that would not be possible in tragedy. The texts range from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century, and no fewer than half of them are by Austrian writers. The contributors show how these plays are often subversive, regularly arousing an uncomfortable, self-challenging laughter, and how they treat such widely ranging subjects as language and communication, the complications of the sex drive, the inflexibility of the Prussian mind, and the behaviour of Austrian celebrities during the Third Reich. The essays are all written by specialists in the field and were originally delivered as lectures in the University of Cambridge.

I'm Off Then

I'm Off Then
Author: Hape Kerkeling
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2009-06-16
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1439100489

I'm Off Then has sold more than three million copies in Germany and has been translated into eleven languages. The number of pilgrims along the Camino has increased by 20 percent since the book was published. Hape Kerkeling's spiritual journey has struck a chord. Overweight, overworked, and disenchanted, Kerkeling was an unlikely candidate to make the arduous pilgrimage across the Pyrenees to the Spanish shrine of St. James, a 1,200-year-old journey undertaken by nearly 100,000 people every year. But he decided to get off the couch and do it anyway. Lonely and searching for meaning along the way, he began the journal that turned into this utterly frank, engaging book. Filled with unforgettable characters, historic landscapes, and Kerkeling's self-deprecating humor, I'm Off Then is an inspiring travelogue, a publishing phenomenon, and a spiritual journey unlike any other.

Dead Funny

Dead Funny
Author: Rudolph Herzog
Publisher: Melville House
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2011-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 193555493X

In Nazi Germany, telling jokes about Hitler could get you killed Hitler and Göring are standing on top of the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the Berliners’ faces. Göring says, “Why don’t you jump?” When a woman told this joke in Germany in 1943, she was arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to death by guillotine—it didn’t matter that her husband was a good German soldier who died in battle. In this groundbreaking work of history, Rudolph Herzog takes up such stories to show how widespread humor was during the Third Reich. It’s a fascinating and frightening history: from the suppression of the anti-Nazi cabaret scene of the 1930s, to jokes made at the expense of the Nazis during WWII, to the collections of “whispered jokes” that were published in the immediate aftermath of the war. Herzog argues that jokes provide a hitherto missing chapter of WWII history. The jokes show that not all Germans were hypnotized by Nazi propaganda, and, in taking on subjects like Nazi concentration camps, they record a public acutely aware of the horrors of the regime. Thus Dead Funny is a tale of terrible silence and cowardice, but also of occasional and inspiring bravery.

Comedy: A Very Short Introduction

Comedy: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Matthew Bevis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2013
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0199601712

With a broad scope across the millennia, from high literature to popular culture, between page and stage and screen, this Very Short Introduction considers comedy not only as a literary genre, but also as a broader impulse at work in many other historical and contemporary forms of satire, parody, and play.

A Second Life

A Second Life
Author: Thomas Elsaesser
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1996
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9789053561836

In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers records the stories of computing's past, enabling today's professionals to improve on the realities of yesterday. The stories in this book clearly show that modern concepts, such as data abstraction, modularity, and structured approaches, date much earlier in the field than their appearance in academic literature. These stories help capture the true evolution. The book illustrates human experiences and industry turning points through personal recollections by the pioneers ... people like Barry Boehm, Peter Denning, Watts Humphrey, Frank Land, and a dozen others.