A yodelling diploma won’t solve the European debt crisis, but humor can go a long way to get people through bad times—at least that’s what German social media users seemed to feel this week.
Twitter and Facebook spheres have been buzzing with tributes for the country’s most beloved humorist Loriot, who died Monday aged 87, while his videos have been topping the most popular lists at online retailers.
Although Germans are often teased for not having a sense of humor, even the country’s Chancellor showed how she valued the experience of being cheered up.
“For a long time to come, his works will make young and old laugh—and enlighten them on the essence of being German,” Mrs. Merkel said in a condolence statement.
Loriot, born Bernhard Victor Christoph Carl von Buelow, gained huge popularity in the country with his high-brow satire on daily life, winning numerous awards throughout his career, including one of Germany’s highest decorations—the “Great Cross of Merit with Star” in 1998—and receiving lifetime achievement honors from the German Film Academy in 2009.
Born in Berlin in 1923, ‘Vicco’ von Buelow started drawing cartoons for the German magazine Stern in the 1950s.
In the 70s he took on the name Loriot, based on the French name for an animal in his aristocratic family’s coat of arms. Throughout his 60-year career he created numerous cartoons, sketches, songs, books and movies , and many of his characters’ phrases have that made their way into everyday German language.
On Wednesday, in an allusion that would be apparent to most Germans, daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung titled an article about problems in eastern Europe “Das Bild haengt schief,” or “The painting is hanging crooked,” the name of a famous Loriot sketch about a lonely battle to get a painting to hang straight.
Loriot pointed many of his humorous jabs at Germans, commenting in his work on typical bourgeois values, like efficiency and order, and the German sense of ‘Gemuetlichkeit’, which translates most closely as ‘comfort’ or ‘coziness.’
He also liked to turn the camera on gender relations, as portrayed in his movie Oedipussi. Loriot himself said that he was most interested in the miscommunication between people and the absurdity of many everyday situations. If he was little known outside Germany, it is the fault of the language barrier and not his comic timing.
In the decades when Americans and Britons, for example, laughed at comedy that pushed the envelope, like the rough and outrageous John Belushi and the sometimes surreal antics of Monty Python, Germans continued to enjoy the low key Loriot, with his banal, middle-class characters.
They inhabited mostly drab surroundings, with grey or brown wallpaper and Biedermeier furniture, having conversations that painstakingly attempt to be polite and formal, no matter how ridiculous the circumstance.
In one of his most well-known episodes, he sends up Germans’ love of certificates and diplomas, as well as their reputation for being too serious about everything, in “Yodeling School.”
What would a Loriot in his pomp make of Germany’s current woes, being leaned upon by the euro zone’s peripheral countries for aid? Loriot’s sketches were concentrated on Germans but perhaps if he was working now, he may have widened his world view to contain figures of fun from other countries and their own perceived ‘Gemuetlichkeit.’
Chancellor Angela Merkel put it: “We will miss Loriot’s unique ability to hold a mirror up to our faces with a sense of affection.”
This articles was published in the Wall Street Journal’s The Source section on August 26, 2011.