British laugh against the authorities

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British laugh against the authorities

The British rely on your Parliament. From the outside, it can be certainly served at the say. Because of political mistrust has a long Tradition in the British, says of the English Department of Hans-Dieter Gelfert in the DW-Interview.

DW: Prof. Gelfert, you are a great connoisseur of the British Psyche, the British soul. The Brexit decision, above all, a freedom of decision of the British was?

Hans-Dieter Gelfert: you can see it that way. Because freedom, which is the innermost and furthest-reaching the nerve of the British soul.

In her book on the cultural history of English humour, you write: “English rather laugh with the troublemaker against the order”. If the EU is the regulation, which provides the political framework for action, leaving the British with the EU, in contrast, Anglo-eight?

In a sense, Yes. You need only to make it clear once more what Humor is after. It’s a social mechanism to tension in society, and this mechanism is developed where it is most needed. So there where people are together in a confined space to live, and since the tendency is to gain through Laughter towards the authority of free space is the Key. Only, you must be able to afford it in a state such as the German, from nine neighboring Nations, surrounded with open borders, because you will have a hard time to laugh the authority from the Socket.

We laugh more with the order against the disturber, but on an island you can afford it, to see the state as the most dangerous opponent and keep him small. Therefore, the British have for many centuries, this tendency, for which you have not even invented a word, we know not, namely, to Bathos. This means: to make The Sublime ridiculous. And the order always occurs with a lofty claim, and irritating to every Englishman, to laughter from the Socket. Sometimes with dire consequences.

For us, the European Union is German, far more than a political Union – if only for historical reasons. It is sort of sacrosanct. Why is the British in the EU, above all, a unloved, not respected authorities?

This probably has mostly to do, perhaps even exclusively, in order that the British look back at least 700 years old Tradition of parliamentarianism and that the Parliament is the ultimate arbiter, making the balance of interests between the government and the people. You have no Constitution, you can rely on. You leave only to the fact that the Parliament, which you choose yourself, making this compensation. And you have the feeling, if you get a regulation from Brussels that they could not relate. That’s right, it de facto also. Still, the European Parliament is not the decisive factor in the EU.

The Briton per se, then, is politically anarchic than the German?

He is, per se, by Tradition, mistrustful of any authority. Compared to the own, but compared to a outside the UK’s borders, trying to England to interact with, and therefore, a danger that the can layers, to the detriment of the British the sole is always. I was just in the BBC the speech by Michael Gove (a candidate for the party presidency of the Tories after Cameron, ed. d. Red.) .

Expert for the British sense of humour: Hans-Dieter Gelfert

Designing a program of change, and every sentence he speaks, one would have to say, everything he could reach, together with the EU much easier than alone. If he wants to draw the dragon, the Margaret Thatcher at the time of the leash has left, now in front of the English car, in order to re-establish justice, would he be able to with Brussels, much easier to accomplish than if he tried it now alone.

How is the UK now, with the life on the edge of Europe – now also a political-economic – deal? We Germans can imagine Yes since the Brexit vote, only the Negative scenarios.

I think, since the whole of the European policy is a permanent Negotiation of compromises, you will find at the end of any modus Vivendi. The least would be an Association, such as Norway, with the EU, because the British had made a bad deal, because then you have the old Situation, but you just can’t join in the conversation now. Perhaps a further loosening, not specifically for the British, but then for the whole of Europe, to negotiate. Somehow Europe and the UK as muddling through. The dire consequences that were predicted not to occur is likely to be quite so bad. Although I’m quite convinced that it will bring for England at a considerable disadvantage.

Professor Hans-Dieter Gelfert was the English Department at the Free University in Berlin. He now works as a freelance writer and Translator. Among his publications include the cultural history of the English humour (“Madam I’m Adam”).

The Interview was conducted by Volker Wagener