Whisper joke

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The whispering joke is a political joke that is passed on from mouth to mouth, is widespread in totalitarian and authoritarian states and is particularly directed against those in power or certain aspects of the system. As a rule, the spread of whispered jokes is punished by the totalitarian systems with punishment and / or professional disadvantages. Whispering jokes are a phenomenon of the 20th century and arose with the expansion of totalitarian systems.

Significance in the time of National Socialism

If you told a whisper during the National Socialist era and were denounced or caught by the Gestapo , you had to expect a complaint or arrest. In some cases, the accused were also tried in court. The reasons given were either insult, a violation of the “ Heimtückegesetz ” or, later, disruption of military strength . The thesis, which was often held in post-war Germany until the 1960s, that the spread of whispering jokes in the Nazi state was persecuted with draconian punishments, cannot be upheld against the background of recent investigations. So far, only regionally limited studies are available, but it seems clear that the jokes were primarily created in the lower social class and that NSDAP members were often among the spreaders of the jokes.

  • "What new jokes are there?" - "Two months in Dachau "

Whispering jokes were often not original new inventions, but rather re-texts of existing poems, sayings or hits and thus linked to texts that were already known, which contributed to an easier spread of the joke. examples for this are

  • "Age does not protect against protective custody ." And "Dear God make me mute that I do not come to Dachau."
  • “Dear Tommy , keep flying, we are all miners. Fly on to Berlin , they all screamed yes . "
  • "It will all pass, it will all pass, first the leader and then the party." Based on a popular hit by Lale Andersen at the time .

New jokes were also put into their mouths, some of them well-known regionally. Example:

  • Schäl: " Tünnes died." - "What about?" - "He was charred [colloquially for 'lied'] in the living room in front of the Volksempfänger !"

One of the main targets of whispering jokes was the person of Adolf Hitler , whereby - especially during the Second World War - the jokes were often associated with the traditional form of mad jokes:

  • About Hitler's book Mein Kampf you can learn "that it is only available on the clothing menu , since it belongs to the textiles."
  • An internist and a psychiatrist meet . The psychiatrist greets: “ Heil Hitler !” Then the internist: “Heil you him! You're the insane doctor! "
  • Hitler is visiting the psychiatric ward. The patients all stand in front of their beds and greet them with “Heil Hitler!”. Someone who stands apart does not greet them. Hitler is angry and asks him why. He says: “I am the head of the institution. I'm not crazy."
  • " Gröfaz " as a name for Hitler = "Greatest General of All Time".
  • In the Franconian-speaking area there were several poems and sayings that rhyme with dialect, e.g. B. “What is it, what's going on, there's no Hitler picture in the whole house! - Des is net woar, des ko net saa, aufm Scheisheisla hengara zwaa! ”(“ What's going on, what's going on, no Hitler picture in the whole house? - That's not true, it can't be, on the shit house hang two! ")

In addition to Hitler, leading Nazi rulers, above all Goebbels and Göring , were the target of ridicule. A large part of the jokes about Goebbels are aimed on the one hand at his tendency to exaggerate in Nazi propaganda and on the other hand at the discrepancy between the Aryan type propagated by the Nazi regime and the physical constitution of Goebbels.

As examples of Goebbels' propaganda machinery:

  • My leader! I'll report eight thousand SA men lined up in the Sports Palace and eight thousand in front of the Sports Palace - that makes eighty-eight thousand.
  • The inflated whiskey drinker on the other side of the canal [meaning Winston Churchill ], he shouldn't think that he can lie and cheat on his own, no - we can do propaganda too!
  • Jupp Goebbels gives a speech at a party meeting and says: "The German people are like the German eagle , the head is our leader, the right wing is the SS , the left wing is the SA" ... A worker stands up in the back of the hall and screams : "And the asshole, that's you!"
  • Goebbels opens the annual winter relief organization: Nobody should go hungry without freezing.
  • As an example of Goebbels' references to physical disabilities: Lies have too short a leg.
  • Goebbels' diction, in which market yelling mixes with sacred pathos , is caricatured in the following joke: We will not give the German soldier one, not two, not three - no, we will send the German soldier four-fruit jam to the front!

In the jokes about Göring, the main focus was on his body:

  • The German Christmas goose in the Third Reich : "Fat like Göring, cackling like Goebbels, brown like the party and plucked like the German people!"
  • When does the war end? When Goering fits into Goebbels' pants.
  • At Christmas 1944, Göring wants to run naked through Berlin - so that the Berlin population can finally see fat and bacon again.

Political jokes were often made against the background of specific historical events. For example, many of the jokes in 1941 revolved around one of the Third Reich's most embarrassing surprises during the war, the flight of Rudolf Hess , Adolf Hitler's deputy, to Great Britain. Rudolf Hess flew on 10 May 1941, a Messerschmitt Bf 110 to Scotland with the leader - he believed in any case - the British peace movement, the Duke of Hamilton (Duke of Hamilton) to negotiate peace. He came into British captivity. His flight was publicly viewed by the Nazi regime as treason and Hess was declared insane.

  • In the summer of 1941 two concentration camp prisoners talked about the reason for their arrest.
    The first: "I said on May 5th that Hess was crazy!" -
    The second: "I said on May 15th that he wasn't!"
  • What is paradox? When the second man is the first to pile up in the Third Reich.
  • Hess has been introduced to Winston Churchill. Churchill asks him: "So you are the madman?" Then Hess: "No, only his deputy."

After the lost Battle of Britain , another Hess joke circulated: "The Fuehrer's deputy was the only one who succeeded in invading the island."

Hitler's first state visit to Italy may serve as a further example of the current political relevance of jokes. When he met Benito Mussolini , Hitler greeted him with the words: “Ave Imperator!” Then Mussolini: “Ave Imitator!” The imitation of Italian fascism by the National Socialists was frequent cause for jokes in the early phase of the Third Reich, an example:

  • What is paradox? - When an Austrian becomes German Chancellor with an Italian greeting and an American uniform.

A joke about a current event, the Reichstag fire in 1933, has been passed down from the early phase of the Nazi state :

Especially during the Second World War and with the growing tiredness of the war as the war progressed , numerous whispered jokes arose as a reflection of the discrepancy felt by the citizens between everyday life shaped by the war (including the food situation) and National Socialist propaganda.

  • What three types of nourished people are there in the German Reich? "The badly nourished, the undernourished and the under-nourished by-hand."
  • An Essen and a Berliner talk about the extent of the bomb damage. The Berliner says that the last bombing of the Reich capital was so bad that the windows fell out of the houses five hours after the attack . The Essen resident replied that that didn't mean anything, because in his city the pictures of the Führer were still flying out of the window 14 days after the last attack .
  • German Christmas 1943: The English throw the Christmas trees (luminous marker bodies for bombers on night missions) from the sky, the flak delivers balls, Göring donates the tinsel , Goebbels tells Christmas fairy tales , the German people light candles in the cellar and expect the gifts from above.

Towards the end of the war, when the defeat was foreseeable, numerous jokes arose that often expressed satisfaction about the end of the Third Reich, but also hope for a new beginning after the war:

  • Hitler, Goebbels and Goering sit in a sinking boat. Who survived Germany!
  • How fast time goes by! A thousand years have passed. (Allusion to the term "Thousand Year Reich".)
  • In which city are the most department stores? In Berlin. Everywhere you look: there were houses everywhere.
  • Volkssturm soldiers are now sent to the front in twos: One throws a stone and the other shouts "Boom".

Whispering jokes in the GDR

The lack of freedom in the GDR also left the citizen only to joke as an opportunity for political protest. In the first few years this dominated a. the subjects of anti-communism , anti-Stalinism, economy of scarcity , reparations , prohibition of freedom of expression. Here, too, it was customary to pass on the jokes in a whisper and in front of the hand. After all, in the early years of the GDR, political jokes could be interpreted as "anti-Soviet attacks" or "sabotage of socialist construction" and given prison sentences. This first phase of the political joke in the GDR lasted until the building of the Berlin Wall , which increased the lack of freedom, but stabilized the GDR state. With the increasing detente also the political wit and consequently the penalties imposed soothed. The state even tried to promote an "officially sponsored joke" with the satirical magazine Eulenspiegel . Since, however, only marginal phenomena of domestic problems were addressed, the free joke continued to exist, which also did not leave out the taboos of government, party , military , bondage and state borders. In turn, cabaret in the GDR had to observe precisely these taboos. Official humor in the GDR was under the constant control of cultural officials who had to approve a program before it was published. Over the years, the audience learned to “read between the lines”. Ultimately, the joke in the GDR was a reaction to the contradiction between the idea and reality of a socialist state. And so the political wit and also the repression were more pronounced in the GDR than in the FRG. The following joke from this time therefore contains a tragic reality:

  • Walter Ulbricht asks Willy Brandt if he has a hobby. “Of course,” he says, “I collect jokes that people tell about me. And you? ”“ It's the other way around for me. I collect people who tell jokes about me. "
  • Why were there so many jokes in real socialism? Because nobody takes him seriously.
  • The GDR is to get a new symbol in its state flag : a goat and a chair. Anyone who complains has to sit down.
  • In a GDR prison, the prisoners started to roll call. "Tomorrow our President Wilhelm Pieck is coming, " the supervisor announced. A prisoner calls out: "But it was high time."
  • The GDR will only exist until October 7, 2014. Why not longer? Then she turns 65 and is allowed to leave. (Allusion to the regulation that citizens of the GDR were only allowed to leave the country after they reached the age of 65. The GDR was founded on October 7, 1949).
  • A man comes into a consumer goods store, looks around and asks a salesperson: "Say, you have no bread?" Answer: "There are no breads over there, there are no vegetables."
  • The annual competition in New Germany : First prize - one week in Moscow. Second prize - two weeks in Moscow. Third prize - three weeks in Moscow.
  • A man stands at a crossroads in East Berlin and yells over and over again: “Shit country, shit government. Fucking country, fucking government ... "A VoPo rushes over:" You are arrested! This is treason! That's 5 years in jail, my dear! ”- The man:“ But you don't even know which country I'm talking about. ”- The VoPo scratches its head and slowly moves on. Then he turns around, runs to the man and calls out: “You are arrested! There is only one fucking country and only one fucking government! "
  • "You papi, why is the Trabant 601 called Trabant 601?" "Because 600 have ordered it and someone will get it."
  • “What was the difference between a craftsman and a Honecker ? The craftsman didn't come and Honecker didn't go. "
  • “What do the GDR and the FRG have in common? You get everything for West-Mark. "

Whispering jokes in the Soviet Union and Russia

  • Brezhnev claims at a party: "I collect jokes about myself." To which he is asked: "And how many do you already have?" Brezhnev replies: "Already three prisons full."
  • A fox asks a crow with a piece of cheese in its beak : “Are you going to vote for Putin ?” The crow is silent. The fox asks again: “Are you going to vote for Putin?” The crow is silent. The fox for the third time: “You are going to vote for Putin?” The crow opens its beak and says “Yes”. The cheese falls out and the fox grabs it and runs away. The crow thinks: "Would it have changed anything if I had said no?"

Movie

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The term is related to the term " whisper propaganda "; see. Brockhaus encyclopedia in 20 volumes . 17. Completely rework. Ed. Vol. 6, F-GEB. Wiesbaden: FA Brockhaus, 1968, p. 391.
  2. ↑ The whispering joke - When humor becomes dangerous  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ardmediathek.de  
  3. ^ Hans-Jochen Gamm: The whispering joke in the Third Reich , 1972; on the origins of the political joke cf. Hans-Jochen Gamm: The whispering joke in the Third Reich . 2nd edition Munich: List Verlag, 1964, p. 10f.
  4. ↑ Hans-Jochen Gamm: The Whispering Joke in the Third Reich , 1972 (PDF; 771 kB); on the origins of the political joke cf. Hans-Jochen Gamm : The whispering joke in the Third Reich . 2nd edition List Verlag, Munich 1964, pp. 7–15; on the peculiarities of the whispering joke in the Third Reich cf. Gamm's chapter The anthropological dimension in the joke against National Socialism , pp. 167–177.
  5. ↑ Cf. the study by Meike Wöhlert: The political joke in the Nazi era using the example of selected SD reports and Gestapo files . Frankfurt / Main 1997.
  6. ↑ Jokes about Adolf Hitler and an explanation of the historical and political background cf. Hans-Jochen Gamm: The whispering joke in the Third Reich . 2nd edition List Verlag, Munich 1964, pp. 104–116.
  7. ↑ On the jokes about Goebbels, cf. Hans-Jochen Gamm: The whispering joke in the Third Reich . 2nd edition List Verlag, Munich 1964, pp. 84-94.
  8. ↑ On the jokes about the flight from Hess to Great Britain see Hans-Jochen Gamm: Der Flüsterwitz im Third Reich . 2nd edition List Verlag, Munich 1964, pp. 48-50.
  9. ↑ Hans-Jochen Gamm: The whisper joke in the Third Reich . 2nd edition List Verlag, Munich 1964, p. 106 f.
  10. ↑ On the problem of the question of guilt, cf. z. B. Edouard Calic, Karl Dietrich Bracher u. a .: 1933: The Reichstag is on fire. Documentation about the arson from 27./28. February 1933 and the subsequent Reichstag fire trial . Edited by the cultural office of the city of Oberhausen: self-published, 1983.
  11. ↑ See the chapter The Inferno. Exit of the Third Reich , in: Hans-Jochen Gamm: Der Flüsterwitz in the Third Reich . 2nd edition. List Verlag, Munich 1964, pp. 154–166.

literature

  • The festival on the Elbe. In: Jürgen Bruhn: Hamburg broken. Die Hanse, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-434-52584-X , pp. 70, 76.
  • Marga Buchele: The political joke as a disguised expression of opinion against the totalitarian state. Diss. Phil. Munich 1955.
  • Alexander Drozdzynski : The mocked millennial kingdom, Verlag Droste, Düsseldorf 1978, ISBN 3-7700-0516-3
  • Alexander Drozdzynski : The political joke in the Eastern bloc. Eichborn, Frankfurt a. M., ISBN 3-7700-0395-0 .
  • Background. In: Brigitte Esser, Michael Venhoff. Chronicle of the Second World War. Chronik Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1999, ISBN 3-577-14360-6 , p. 121.
  • Franz Danimann : Whispering jokes and mocking poems under the swastika. Ed .: Franz Richard Reiter. Böhlau, Vienna, 1983; again: Ephelant, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-900766-13-4 .
  • Hans-Jochen Gamm : The whispering joke in the Third Reich . 2nd edition List Verlag, Munich 1964.
  • Rudi Hartmann: Whispering jokes from the Thousand Year Reich (collected by Friedrich Goetz), Munich, Droemer Knaur Verlag, 1983, 114 pages, ISBN 3-426-02115-3
  • Jan Ulrich Hasecke: “I'm a Hitler Jew too !” - jokes in the 3rd Reich. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. ISBN 1-4820-4637-7
  • Minni Schwarz, Hanna Dauberger ; Reinhard Müller (Ed.): Death likes laughter! Austrian whispering jokes in the Third Reich. Re-edition of the collection, Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2009, ISBN 978-3-7065-4719-2 (552 examples, first printed in 1946)
  • Arn Strohmeyer: Even the party laughs - whisper jokes from the GDR. Moewig, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-8118-6809-8 .
  • Arn Strohmeyer: New GDR Jokes & Demos. Eichborn, Frankfurt / Main 1990, ISBN 3-8218-2159-0 .
  • Meike Wöhlert: The political joke in the Nazi era using the example of selected SD reports and Gestapo files. Lang, Frankfurt a. M./Berlin u. a. 1997, at the same time master thesis Freie Universität Berlin 1995 (European university publications: series 3, vol. 725). ISBN 3-631-30779-9 .
  • Kurt Hirche: The "brown" and the "red" joke , Econ Verlag, 1964

Audio book

Web links

Wiktionary: Whispering joke  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations