Loriot, or Why German Humor is a Laughing Matter

Humor is one of those strange facts of existence. It's universal, everyone has it to some extent. It heals, it hurts, it unites, it divides. It helps us to understand, it clouds our understanding. It's important for me just for the way it makes life go down easier, not to mention how it helps do something I'm not always good at: connect.

Humor, of course, is difficult to translate across cultures, and living in another country, the change in humor can have, if you'll take the analogy, similar emotional effects to the change in diet. There are exciting new surprises, but there are certain dishes you grow up with that you start to miss. Here in Germany, I love Swabian comfort food , I've been pleasantly surprised by the varieties in pork and I'd take my wife and mother-in-law's cooking to any fancy schmancy chef. At the same time, I miss good, old-fashioned American chicken dishes and fresh chocolate chip cookies (ok, whenever fresh chocolate chip cookies are unavailable, I miss them, regardless of the cultural context). If you travel a lot, a menagerie of things you miss becomes quilted to your brain so that regardless if where you plant your feet, you're acutely aware that you are missing something. But better to have tasted than to have never tasted, or to have laughed than to have to have never laughed. Better, also, to remain in the present (usually).

Even as I miss semi-ironic banter with my sisters, Saturday Night Live, the Onion, or Jon Stewart, I've found that German humor is a foreign delight. This might surprise you, as every other country in the world judges the Germans as less funny than their own culture. Just across the North Sea, the English judge the rest of the world as less funny than their own culture, and they doubly judge the Germans. My parents have a book of joked about different culture, and it has only one joke on the Germans. It's a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "German humor is no laughing matter." Of course, in Germany, not taking yourself seriously is very serious business, which is why Twain's short piece, "The Awful German Language," sits front and center in most downtown bookshops.

But let me once again insist, German humor can be delightful, and my case and point is Loriot, the German comic died on Monday. Like many of the best comedians, Loriot was a master of his own language, so a proficiency in Deutsch is necessary to get it. Although some of it translates well, and I'll leave it to Philip Oltermann to explain how in his great post on Loriot (he also does a service and links to some of Loriot's best sketches).

I had never heard of Loriot until his obituary was the front page of every newspaper and the feature segment of news station. For the past two nights, my wife and I watched documentaries about him and his work. We laughed together. Loriot's sketches produce that uncontrollable, uninhibited belly laughter, the best kind. Between breaths I notice: life is better now.