ConWatch: Week 1,810
Does Germany have a constitution yet?
Editor’s note: On behalf of Kurt Tucholsky, The Bupkes would like to apologize for the absence of ConWatch: Week 1,809. Tucholsky promises to be better with deadlines in the future.
What can satire get away with?
Mrs. Vockerat: “But surely one must also be able to find joy in art.”
Johannes: “You can get much more from art than joy.”
— Gerhart Hauptmann
If one of us here dares crack a sharp political joke, half of Germany sits on the sofa in offense. Satire seems like a thoroughly negative thing. It says: “No!” A satire for war bonds is no satire. Satire bites, laughs, whistles, and bangs the mercenary's big, colorful drum against everything sluggish and stagnant. Satire is a thoroughly positive thing. Nothing reveals those who lack character faster, nothing shows the clueless clown for what he is more quickly — he who attacks one today and another tomorrow. The satirist is a wounded idealist. He wants the world to be good; it isn't, and so he charges at the ones who make it bad. The satire of an artist with character, fighting for good, does not deserve the bourgeois snub and the indignant hiss with which this art is dismissed here. The German makes one mistake more than any: He confuses the depicted with the depicter. When I want to show the consequences of addiction — to fight the vice — I can't do so with pious verses from the Bible. I am instead most impactful with the stirring portrait of a hopelessly addicted man. I tear back the curtain shrouding the decay and say: “Look!” In Germany, they call this “crass." But addiction is an evil thing. It weakens society — and only the unpolished truth can help. As it was with the miserable weavers once upon a time, so it is with prostitutes today. The influence of provinciality has corralled German satire into a sorry pen. Big issues are almost completely overlooked. Only "Simplicissimus," back in its biting heyday, dared to tip the sacred German cows: the abusive corporal, the pencil-pushing bureaucrat, the cane-wielding instructor, the strumpet, the bloated businessman, and the chickenshit officer. Think about these issues however you like, and it is certainly your right to find one attack unjustified and another over the top, but the right of an honest man to lash his era does not get to be put down by indignation. Does satire exaggerate? It must — and is to its core unjust. Only by magnifying the truth can you see it best. As the Bible says: The righteous suffer with the wicked. But deep in the German spirit now lies the annoying habit to think and act not as individuals, but in classes and hierarchies. Woe be he who gets too close to one. Why are our jokes, our skits, our comedies, and our films so lame? Because no one dares go up against the swollen octopus — fat, lazy, life-deadening — that is sprawled out over the country. German satire can't even stand up to its enemies. We certainly should not emulate the hideous French war caricatures — but what force they had, what fundamental rage, what punch, what effect! Truly, they held nothing back. Meanwhile, our lackluster U-boat tables harmed no one and were read by no one. We can't be so unimaginative. All of us — teachers and merchants and professors and editors and musicians and doctors and officials and women and commissioners — have our faults, our strange sides, our weaknesses small and big. And we must not always erupt in protest ("Master butcher, defend your highest values!") when a really good joke gets us really good! It can be malicious as long as it is honest. A man is not respectable, and a class is not upstanding, if it cannot take a proper punch. Go ahead and use the same means to defend against it, strike back if you must, but do not go off feigning hurt, indignation, and signaling virtue. If fewer took offense, a purer wind would blow through public life. This is how class conceit swells into megalomania. The German satirist dances a delicate dance among ranks, stations, confessions and functions. It's certainly graceful, but tedious over time. True satire filters the blood. And healthy blood makes for a clear visage. What can satire get away with?