The good tone

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The good tone is a series of drawings by the German humorist Loriot , which together with the subtexts supposedly give tips for good manners , but which completely contradict the general ideas of good behavior. The series first appeared between October 1956 and December 1957 in 30 episodes with the subtitle Ein Ratgeber von Loriot in the illustrated magazine Quick . While the series was still running, a selection of the episodes was published in a separate book. The series and the book were a great success and are considered the first high point of Loriot's career. Between June and August 1968, the Quick published another eleven episodes with the titleThe good tone of Loriot .

Content and analysis

The individual episodes of The Good Sound usually consist of around four drawings with associated advice, but there are occasionally up to eight of them. In the Quick they usually appear on a double page, with text and image divided between the two pages and thus separated from each other by the inner margin. The title The good tone is in Fraktur , for the subtitle Ein Ratgeber von Loriot an antiqua was used as for the titles of the individual episodes . The word Loriot appears as a typical signature of the draftsman.

In terms of content, Der gute Ton follows on from Loriot's earlier publications. In 1955, the Bärmeier & Nikel publishing house published the booklet Indispensable Advice for Behavior in Fine Society . In addition, in August 1956, i.e. two months before the start of Der gute Ton , there were four drawings on the back of the Illustrierte Weltbild entitled Knigge 1956 . The advice drawn and written by Loriot contradicts the usual notions of good behavior. The comedy often arises from the contrast between the elevated language of the texts and the rough behavior shown in the drawings. Since the bad behavior is also recommended, a second internal text contrast arises. An example of this is a drawing from the first episode, Behavior at the Table . Several people sit at an elegantly set table and throw their whole bodies at the food on offer. The legend recommends not to hinder the course of the meal by unnecessary hesitation, because only by grabbing quickly can you show the housewife that you are comfortable.

In other drawings, the comedy arises mainly from the fact that the viewer's expectations are not met and improper behavior is not criticized or criticized for absurd reasons. An example is the drawing of two apparently drunk men. One is pouring a glass of beer into a piano, the other is lying on the floor with his legs on an armchair. In the text, the man with the beer is presented as the host, who behaves incorrectly, because beer is only poured into the piano in strange apartments. The man with his legs on the armchair, apparently a guest, is criticized not for his impolite behavior, but for wearing a black bow tie with a tailcoat.

Chance brings Loriot also subtle irony in his texts one, such as in a drawing from the series on traveling abroad , on a German tourist a Frenchman in Paris three photos of soldiers from the French German War and the First and Second World War shows . According to the text, showing photos from the family album will win the hearts of the locals. They may also be interested in a hint that they felt very comfortable in the country during an earlier stay in 1940. The text thus becomes an ironic commentary on the behavior of Germans abroad and on German history.

The good tone with its dry texts imitates the style of the book language of the 19th century, which was also used by the advisors popular in the 1950s. Further similarities to these are the reference to illustrations as "Fig." Or "Figures" as well as cues at the end of the legend, which are introduced with "Note:" The frequently used juxtaposition of supposedly wrong and right behavior in neighboring pictures was used by the Berlin graphic artist Daniel Chodowiecki as early as the 18th century for civic upbringing in good taste.

publication

From May 1954 Loriot was permanently employed by the publishing house Th. Martens & Co. , in which the illustrated magazine Quick appeared. Initially, however, his work focused on the magazine Weltbild , for which he drew the True Stories from April 1955, for example . In the Quick between January and July 1956 with Adam and Evchen appeared for the first time a series Loriots. Two and a half months after this series ended, The Good Sound began . The first episode was part of the October 13, 1956 issue. Until the last issue of December 28, 1957, a total of 30 episodes had appeared.

While the series was still running in Quick , Diogenes Verlag , which had already published Loriot's book Auf den Hundkommen in 1954, now published the book The Good Sound with the subtitle Das Handbuch feiner Lebensart in words and images in the fall of 1957 . In addition to 70 of the more than 130 drawings in the series, the book contained a foreword written by Loriot in the dry style of captions as well as a parody of the subject indexes of real guides with entries such as “Enthusiasm, hypocritical”, “Humor, fits of” and “Staring around, shameless ". The drawings also include parts of the individual contribution What Mrs. Pappritz was hiding , which appeared in Quick in March 1957 in response to The Book of Etiquette by Karlheinz Graudenz and Erica Pappritz .

The book The Good Sound appeared in the following years in Dutch , Italian and Swedish . Parts of the later episodes of the series were in the follow-up book The Path to Success. An exhaustive guide in words and pictures published, which was published in the fall of 1958. In addition, some drawings are part of various anthologies by Loriot.

Between June and August 1968, more than ten years after the end of the first series, another eleven new character strings of Loriot were published in the Quick under the title The good tone of Loriot .

rating

The good tone was very successful. With over a year, the series ran significantly longer than comparable series and the book was a great sales success. The Germanist Stefan Neumann, who wrote his dissertation on Loriot, therefore rates the series as the first highlight of Loriot's career. Because of this success, advisors became the main subject of Loriot's work in the following years. In addition to individual drawings, the series The Path to Success and For the Fall followed between 1957 and 1959 , for which books were also published. Together with Der gute Ton, they mark the first main phase of Loriot's work, which made him known throughout Germany and established his fame.

Book editions

  • The good tone. The manual for a fine way of life in words and pictures . Diogenes, Zurich 1957.
  • Zo hoort het Eigenlijk. The handbook for the label in woord en beeld . De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1958 (Dutch).
  • God ton. En handbok i ord och picture . Folket i Bild, Stockholm 1960 (Swedish).
  • Le buone manner. Manuals del saper vivere . Baldini & Castoldi, Milan 1963 (Italian).

literature

  • Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the comedy. Life, work and work of Vicco von Bülow . Scientific publishing house Trier, Trier 2011, ISBN 978-3-86821-298-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 164.
  2. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 163.
  3. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, pp. 164-165.
  4. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 167.
  5. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, pp. 168-169.
  6. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 170.
  7. Dietrich Grünewald : Loriot and the art of drawing irony . Christian A. Bachmann Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-96234-023-0 , pp. 27-29 .
  8. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 35.
  9. a b c d Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 171.
  10. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, pp. 171–172.
  11. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 175.
  12. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 170.
  13. ^ Stefan Neumann: Loriot and the high comedy. 2011, p. 193.