Der Dachs Hat Heute Langeweile

When Badger gets up on the wrong side of the bed, he spreads his bad mood to all his friends, but by the end of the day, he finds a way to shed his own moodiness and needs to cheer up everyone else as well.

The fourteen chapters in this anthology feature original analyses of contemporary German-language literary texts, films, political cartoons, cabaret, and other types of performance. The artworks display a wide spectrum of humor modes, such as irony, satire, the grotesque, Jewish humor, and slapstick, as responses to unification with the accompanying euphoria, but also alienation and dislocation. Kerstin Hensel’s Lärchenau, Christoph Hein’s Landnahme, and vignette collections by Jakob Hein (Antrag auf ständige Ausreise und andere Mythen der DDR) and Wladimir Kaminer (Es gab keinen Sex im Sozialismus) are interpreted as examples of the grotesque. The popular films Lola rennt, Sonnenallee, Herr Lehmann, NVA, Alles auf Zucker!, and Mein Führer—Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler are reexamined through the lens of traditional and more recent humor or comic book theories. The contributors focus on how each artwork enriches four prominent postwall German cultural trends: post-unification identity reconstruction, Vergangenheitsbewältigung (including Hitler humor), New German Popular Literature (Christian Kracht’s ironic subtexts), and immigrant perspectives (a “third voice” in the East-West binary reflected here pointedly in Eulenspiegel cartoons). To date, no other scholarly work provides as comprehensive an overview of the diverse strategies of humor used in the past two decades in German-speaking countries.

Every Monday, Professor Bumble and his fishy friend Beluga go swimming at the lake. One day, Otter warns them of a mysterious creature lurking in the depths$1 (B a beast that $1! @(Bcould swallow a bear in one bite!$1 (B The ever-cautious Professor Bumble resigns himself to the safety of the shore, while bold Beluga decides to brave the water. But when Beluga$1 (Bs bowl suddenly tips and he disappears into the lake, it is up to Professor Bumble to save his buddy and face the Monster of the Deep.

Describes the life and accomplishments of the world-famous English physicist who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Wordplay involving several linguistic codes is an important modality of ludic language. This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the topic, discussing examples from different epochs, genres, and communicative situations. The contributions illustrate the multi-dimensionality, linguistic make-up, and the special interactive potential of wordplay across linguistic and cultural boundaries, including the challenging practice of translation.