page_title: German humour
section_title: Literature and television
hierarchical_section_title: German humour / Types of humor / Literature and television
caption_attribution_description: English: Atze Schröder Deutsch: Atze Schröder@ PHOENIX-See Flutung
context_page_description: German humour refers collectively to the conventions of comedy and its cultural meaning within the country of Germany. Comedy is a staple of German culture, with many Germans making light of situations in social conversation, and with a large amount of time allotted to comedy in German television broadcasting.
  Germans distinguish between "Comedy" and "Komödie". "Comedy" refers to post-1990s TV-comedy, which is characterized by comedic entertainment in the form of stand-up comedy, stage shows, modern satire, cabaret and adaptations of foreign comedy concepts, including airing of foreign shows. "Komödie" refers to films and plays.
context_section_description: The oldest popular forms of German comedy were the Posse and the Schwank which could take the forms of stories, plays or improvisations. The German comedic play (Lustspiel) was refined and updated by playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing who, in Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (1759) described the early 18th century comedies as relying heavily on dressed-up characters, magic tricks and fights. His comedy Minna von Barnhelm (1767) and Heinrich von Kleist's The Broken Jug (1811) joined especially various translations and adaptations of plays by early Greeks, Racine, Shakespeare, Molière, Calderon and others to form the basis of later developments.
  The German Classical and Romantic periods saw a lot of humorous polemical, parodistic and satirical exchange between writers such as Goethe, Schiller, Ludwig Tieck, the Schlegel brothers, as well as many critics and philosophers both in the literary journals and in their own publications. Probably the most renowned ironic texts and poems in that era were written by Heinrich Heine, who developed a very distinct tongue-in-cheek style of writing, embracing Romantic ideals while mocking at the same time, often even within one poem. Up until today Heine remains to be titled one of the most insightful and witty among German writers.
  One of the most important figures in the beginning of filmed comedy in Germany was stage comedian Karl Valentin who produced short films from 1912 to 1941.
caption: Atze Schröder, a German comedian on a live show 2010
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