NewsBreakingOnline

Death of man who ‘taught Germans to laugh’ knocks the battle for Tripoli off the front pages Germany is known for many things: reliable cars, punctual trains, a national reluctance to cross the road if the lights are on red. Comedy, though, not so much. And yet, when the most famous German comic of the postwar era died this week, aged 87, the country went into mourning. It is a measure of the devotion inspired by Loriot that when his death was announced the foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, told journalists at the start of a press conference on Libya that he would take questions on Loriot only after he had answered all Gaddafi-related queries. Loriot – real name Bernhard Victor Christoph-Carl von Bülow, better known as Vicco – was a national treasure who combined the eloquence and linguistic dexterity of a Stephen Fry with a Peter Sellers-style sense of the absurd. Pretty much every German newspaper on Wednesday carried a picture of him on the front page, or one of his cartoons, rather than a photograph of the battle for Tripoli. “Thank you for the laughter” was the headline in the tabloid Bild . “Through him, Germans learned to laugh”, said die taz . “What did Germans laugh about before Loriot came long? Nothing.” A graphic designer by trade, von Bülow started sketching cartoons in 1950 under the pseudonym Loriot. Having spent three years as a Wehrmacht soldier fighting on the eastern front, Loriot returned to a Germany very different to the one he had left. The cities were still reduced to rubble; families had been ripped apart. There was very little to laugh about. By the time his first cartoons appeared, in magazines such as Stern and Quick, Germany had been split into two. Though he was born in the East German state of Brandenburg, it was in West Germany that Loriot found fame. The high point of his career came between 1976 and 1978 with his eponymous TV sketch show, with its hugely popular mixture of straight-faced slapstick and wry jokes that touched on key German stereotypes. Loriot was particularly good at poking fun at the German devotion to formality and earnestness. One of his most famous cartoons featured Herr Müller Lüdenscheid and Herr Doktor Klöbner, two naked men sitting in a hotel bath . The skit begins with the former saying, “I don’t wish to appear rude, but I would really like to be alone.” The latter answers: “Who on earth are you?” The two then introduce themselves, with full honorifics. Herr Müller Lüdenscheid then says: “Would you mind telling me what you are doing in my bath?” To which the other man replies: “I was down in the basement ping pong room and got my room number mixed up.” And on it goes. In one TV skit, Loriot is on a plane, chatting up an attractive younger woman , played by his long-term sidekick, Evelyn Hamann (who died in 2007). The two have a tremendously highfalutin conversation, quoting their favourite Rilke poems while struggling with the logistics of eating elegantly on an aeroplane. In another popular sketch, ( here with subtitles ) a group of distinguished adults are taking a class at the Modern Institute of Yodelling. In one famous line, a lady is asked by a radio journalist why she, as a woman, has been so keen to gain her yodelling diploma. “I think, of all people, a housewife with children should have vocational qualifications. Then, when the time comes, and your grown-up children go away or anything happens, then after two years at yodelling school I will have my yodelling diploma.” Loriot’s trademark was his poker face. “You will not see laughter in any of my films. Nowhere. The audience should be the ones laughing,” he once told Die Zeit . Four classic Loriot Sketches (with English subtitles) German for Foreigners Grocery Shopping The Noodle The Picture Isn’t Hanging Straight The Breakfast Egg (Das Frühstücksei) See if you can crack the German sense of humour by watching this video and reading the transcript below. Him: Berta! Her: Yes … Him: The egg is hard! Her: [silence] Him: The egg is hard!!! Her: I heard you … Him: How long did the egg cook for? Her: You always want them to be cooked for four and a half minutes … Him: I know … Her: So why are you asking? Him: Because this egg cannot have been cooked for four and a half minutes! Her: But every morning I cook your egg for four and a half minutes. Him: So why is it sometimes too hard and sometimes too soft? Her: I don’t know! I’m not a chicken. Him: Ach. So how do you know when an egg is ready? Her: I take it out of the water after four and a half minutes, my God. Him: You use a clock or what? Her: Intuition. A housewife just has a feeling. Him: A feeling? You have a feeling? Her: I just feel it when the egg is ready. Him: But it’s hard … maybe your feelings aren’t quite right. Her: My feelings aren’t right? I’m in the kitchen all day, doing washing, sorting out your things, making the flat homely, getting irritated with the children under my feet, and you’re telling me my feelings aren’t right? Him: Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. If you cook an egg using your intuition then, if it does cook for exactly four and a half minutes, that will be a coincidence. Her: It shouldn’t matter to you whether the egg coincidentally cooks for four and a half minutes. The main thing is that it cooks for four and a half minutes! Him: I would simply like a soft boiled egg and not a coincidentally soft egg. I don’t care how long it cooks for! Her: Aha! You don’t care. So you don’t care if I slave for four and a half minutes in the kitchen! Him: No – no Her: But it does matter. The egg must be cooked for four and a half minutes Him: That’s what I said! Her: But you just said you didn’t care! Him: I only wanted a soft boiled egg … Her: God, men are primitive. Him: [grim faced] I’ll kill her. Tomorrow, I’ll kill her Germany Europe Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk