Keeping Up With the Germans
Keeping Up With the Germans

Author: Philip Oltermann

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2012-01-31

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0571279910

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In 1996, in the middle of watching an ill-tempered football match between England and Germany, Philip Oltermann's parents tell him that they are going to leave their home city Hamburg behind and move to London. Inspired by his own experience of both countries, Philip Oltermann looks at eight historical encounters between English and German people from the last two hundred years: Helmut Kohl tries to explain German cuisine to the Iron Lady, the Mini plays catch-up with the Volkswagen Beetle, and Joe Strummer has an unlikely brush with the Baader-Meinhof gang. Keeping Up with the Germans is a witty look at the lighter-side of Anglo-German relations over the last 100 years.

The Politics of Humour
The Politics of Humour

Author: Martina Kessel

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1442642920

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The period between the First World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall is often characterized as the age of extremes--while this era witnessed unprecedented violence and loss of human life, it also saw a surge in humorous entertainment in both democratic and authoritarian societies. The Politics of Humour examines how works such as satirical magazines and comedy films were used both to reaffirm group identity and to exclude those who did not belong. The essays in this collection analyse the political and social context of comedy in Europe and the United States, exploring topics ranging from the shifting targets of ethnic jokes to the incorporation of humour into wartime broadcasting and the uses of satire as a means of resistance. Comedy continues to define the nature of group membership today, and The Politics of Humour offers an intriguing look at how entertainment helped everyday people make sense of the turmoil of the twentieth century.

Dead Funny
Dead Funny

Author: Rudolph Herzog

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1935554301

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The first ever history of humour directed at the Nazis: from the anti-Nazi theatre scene of the 20s and 30s, to jokes told during WWII, to the cracks told about Hitler in Germany today. In the light of the horrors he committed, many people in Germany still find difficulty and distaste in laughing at Hitler - indeed, those who do are often accused of trivialising the Holocaust. But there is a long history of telling jokes about the Nazis. Collected by acclaimed director Rudolph Herzog, Dead Funny chronicles this fascinating and often frightening history.

A Year in the Scheisse
A Year in the Scheisse

Author: Roger Boyes

Publisher: Summersdale

Published: 2008-04-07

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 085765294X

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Facing bankruptcy, English journalist Roger is advised by his accountant to make use of a legal loophole: in Germany married couples have their tax bill halved. So the search is on for a German bride. Writing incisively and almost without prejudice, Roger Boyes describes the peculiarities of everyday life in Germany in this laugh-out-loud romp.

Beyond the Racial State
Beyond the Racial State

Author: Devin Owen Pendas

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-11-16

Total Pages: 547

ISBN-13: 1107165458

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A fundamental reassessment of the ways that racial policy worked and was understood under the Third Reich. Leading scholars explore race's function, content, and power in relation to society and nation, and above all, in relation to the extraordinary violence unleashed by the Nazis.

Strategies of Humor in Post-Unification German Literature, Film, and Other Media
Strategies of Humor in Post-Unification German Literature, Film, and Other Media

Author: Jill Twark

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-01-18

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1443827819

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The fourteen chapters in this anthology feature original analyses of contemporary German-language literary texts, films, political cartoons, cabaret, and other types of performance. The artworks display a wide spectrum of humor modes, such as irony, satire, the grotesque, Jewish humor, and slapstick, as responses to unification with the accompanying euphoria, but also alienation and dislocation. Kerstin Hensel’s Lärchenau, Christoph Hein’s Landnahme, and vignette collections by Jakob Hein (Antrag auf ständige Ausreise und andere Mythen der DDR) and Wladimir Kaminer (Es gab keinen Sex im Sozialismus) are interpreted as examples of the grotesque. The popular films Lola rennt, Sonnenallee, Herr Lehmann, NVA, Alles auf Zucker!, and Mein Führer—Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler are reexamined through the lens of traditional and more recent humor or comic book theories. The contributors focus on how each artwork enriches four prominent postwall German cultural trends: post-unification identity reconstruction, Vergangenheitsbewältigung (including Hitler humor), New German Popular Literature (Christian Kracht’s ironic subtexts), and immigrant perspectives (a “third voice” in the East-West binary reflected here pointedly in Eulenspiegel cartoons). To date, no other scholarly work provides as comprehensive an overview of the diverse strategies of humor used in the past two decades in German-speaking countries.

Laughter in the Trenches
Laughter in the Trenches

Author: Jakub Kazecki

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781443838993

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Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives explores the appearances and functions of humour and laughter in selected novels and short stories, based on autobiographical experiences, written by authors during the war and in the Weimar Era (1919â "1933). This study focuses on popular and lesser-known works of German literature that played an important role in the socio-political life of the Weimar Republic: Storm of Steel by Ernst JÃ1/4nger (1920), Advance from Mons 1914 by Walter Bloem (1916), The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig (1927), and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929). The author shows that these works often share surprisingly similar narrative strategies in describing humorous experiences and soldier laughter to justify direct violence and oppressive power structures, regardless of the worksâ (TM) ideological assignment and their popular and critical reception. This book also examines the parodic imitations of All Quiet on the Western Front, the German text All Quiet on the Trojan Front by Emil Marius Requark (1930) and the American film So Quiet on the Canine Front by Zion Myers and Jules White (1931) as significant polemical contributions that use humoristic strategies to stress or undermine elements of the original text.

Comrades in Arms
Comrades in Arms

Author: Tom Smith

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2020-02-03

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1789205565

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Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.

How to be German in 50 easy steps
How to be German in 50 easy steps

Author: Adam Fletcher

Publisher: C.H.Beck

Published: 2013-07-10

Total Pages: 83

ISBN-13: 3406656838

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Breakfast lavishly, pre-book all your holidays years in advance, dress sensibly and obey the red man! «How to be German» presents all the little absurdities that make living in Germany such a pleasure. It’s required reading for all Ausländer and for Germans who sometimes have the feeling they don’t understand their own country. We learn why the Germans speak so freely about sex, why they are so obsessed with «Spiegel Online» and why they all dream of being naked in a lake of Apfelsaftschorle. At the end, the only thing left to say to Adam Fletcher’s love letter to Germany is «Alles klar!» This e-book is also available in German: «Wie man Deutscher wird in 50 einfachen Schritten. Eine Anleitung von Apfelsaftschorle bis Tschüss». The printed edition has been published as a bilingual turn-around book.