Culture

Can be German literature funny?

Long the works of German writers were heavy diet of international literature. However this will change due to Festivals, book tours, and, above all, Germany’s image change.

Friedrich Nietzsche would not have brought it as a comedian likely to be far, but, nevertheless, he was convinced of the importance of humor. He meant to know why only man among all the creatures have to laugh, the ability to: “Because only man suffers so much that he had to invent Laughter.”

This finding seems to also have over a century after Nietzsche’s death is not in relevance lost – especially when it comes to the infamous German sense of humour. In the framework of the “Festival Neue Literatur” was the American audience of 25. to 28. February German literature will be presented. This year’s Motto of the event is “Seriously Funny” – translated: seriously funny.

Deliberate Provocation

According to the curator, Ross Benjamin, the title is supposed to provoke. Finally, the reputation of the German humor in the foreign well known. The German writer Christopher Kloeble and Sibylle Berg talked with Deutsche Welle on the edge of the festival about the importance of humor in their works. The content of the two differ enormously from each other.

Through Humor, to compassion: Christopher Kloeble

While Kloeble operated only once in a while for the humor to complex issues, raises mountain outright with wit and humour. What both have in common are the difficulties that you encounter as a German-speaking authors in other language circles. “Germany has the second-largest publishing industry in the world, but, nevertheless, annually, less than one percent of all the new books from Germany translated to English,” complains Kloeble. He says, people abroad often have the impression that German literature was “very top heavy” and “not to read a particularly entertaining”. Sibylle Berg puts it even more specifically to the point: “German authors have a reputation to be boring.”

Humor in times of war

At East Carolina University literary scholar Jill Twark deals intensively with the importance of humour in the German language. The expert believes that the negative prejudices about the German literature can be attributed to several circumstances. For example, there is the large, heavy Tome from the Sturm-and-Drang of the German Nobel laureates of the 20th century. Century, with their conflict actions rich long as a translated established masterpieces of literature, but also stay have left an impression on the German Psyche.

Less than one percent of all German books are annually translated into English

Whether Goethe’s “Faust” or Remarque’s “Nothing New In the West” – again and again the existential anxiety emerges as a leitmotif in the literature. With such a heavy food, the light-footed entertainment, could not keep pace and remained for a long time untranslated. Instead, you read in the foreign works, the well-known prejudices confirmed.

Black Humor – not only for British

It is the “dark side” of the German soul, which uses skillfully the humor – even during the Second world war. According to Twark to the fore comes just at the time of the suffering of the German wit to illuminate the “thoughts of the past and current injustices” new: satires, such as Heinrich böll, “Where are you, Adam?” about a German soldier in the war, or Marta Hillers’ “A woman in Berlin”, in which the writer deals with the help of scorn and derision their repeated rape by Russian soldiers in the post-war period.

Since reunification, it has become even acceptable, as in Timur Vermes’ “He’s back” about the Nazis and other dark sides of German history funny. But even in the self-irony of German authors seek to come to terms with difficult topics at times, are still scarred by uncertainty and injustice.

“Hope is but what a Coward” and other aphorisms

Sibylle Berg is sitting in her room in the Hotel Ritz-Carlton on Central Park in New York and looks out the window. “Down there in Central Park, a pretty horse. You could write,” she says and drops her gaze. “And, behind it, a small alley with a couple of homeless people. You could also write. Me at least it is much more interested in how people in New York to survive, if you are not located exactly at the Ritz.” Mountain comes from a Jewish family in East Germany and fled with 17 years in the West. You look at life as hard and unfair, but also absurd and paradoxical. Instead of writing Exegesis about how hopeless the human existence, she takes life with a shrug, the way it is.

In the USA, Sibylle Berg is completely unknown, but this may still change

“Hope is but what a Coward”, is not claimed mountain, joins the man to the hotel bed, and protested: “If you ask me, so I think once in true love.” At least, she thinks, but obviously a sense of Humor. “Humor, a way of life. A pure matter of attitude.” And with this attitude, she writes. Because “actually there is nothing funnier than a serious writer”. It is by no means indifference but rather a question of your readers tell how ridiculous life is. It is the limits of humour deliberately, “A Neo-Nazi, I’m going to reverse the polarity with a joke. Nor a gay-hater. Listen to one way or the other, not on me.”

Humor as a do-gooder

Christopher Kloeble, in contrast, believes that you can blast through Comedy and wit limits. For him, Humor is both a weapon and as a coping strategy. In his books he tries, through a humorous dealing with certain issues, especially compassion and understanding. “You can fight back through Humor, quite against his enemies,” explains Kloeble. “Or you can reprocess in order for the own or collective past”.

Jill Twark it looks similar to: “Humor works, especially if it triggers something in people, for example, with prejudice, clears up. Therefore, the ability of humour to be able to really in the world change something confirmed.” The reputation of the German sense of humour for a change also gradually, says Twark, as by the growing cultural diversity in the country a “increasingly multi-cultural group of humorists” with long-established prejudices to clean this diversity also outwardly represent.

‘In the United States, I am nobody’

Sibylle Berg’s books are in Germany on the bestseller lists. She writes columns for the “mirror” and Recently in the case of the talk show “Schulz & böhmermann” as a “guest goddess”. In Germany, they celebrate your successes all along the line, “but here in the USA, I’m nobody.” Nevertheless, they often think about how it would be to be successful in America. “I’d like to be famous. So a winter home in L. A. might not be bad. But you have to want it fucking hard. I don’t know if I’m ready to fight so much for that.”

Kloeble is currently on a promotional tour. He is one of the few German writers, to be translated into English. When he isn’t touring through the USA, he lives in Berlin or in his adopted home of New Delhi. “Now I can at least prove my Indian friends that I’m really a writer,” he says enthusiastically. In his first translated into English, the novel “Mostly everything very fast” (in English: “Almost Everything Very Fast”) deals with topics such as incest, death, and mental illness. “However, the question of whether or not you are after reading the book to my friends is.”