The "Spießer" - A Comedian's Favorite

What exactly is a "Spießer" (Unfortunately, I haven't found a corresponding English translation for this. Therefore, I'll stick with the German word)

The most striking characteristic of a "Spießer" is their narrow-mindedness and their fear of change, while simultaneously railing against existing conditions. This leads them to a constant state of rejection. In relationships with others, they accept only themselves as the only coordinate.

On the relationship level, the bourgeois seeks a status relationship. For them, there is only the gap between top and bottom. To avoid being emotionally submerged in their world of authoritarianism, the "Spießer" prefers to devalue others rather than be devalued themselves. They demand care because they feel like a victim of the situation. To maintain their advantage, they look for weaknesses, especially in those who care for them.

As an authoritarian character, the "Spießer" likes to combine their victim behavior with blame.

The "Spießer" type is nowhere near as productive as the shame-ridden high-status person, who lives in constant fear of failure and therefore does everything in his power to avoid losing his high status. But he is also not as constrained as the low-status person, held back by feelings of guilt, who profoundly sees himself as the true evil in the world and unconsciously does everything to atone for his imaginary guilt.

In his limited environment, the bourgeois acts like a petty despot, behaving entirely according to his own rules. Outside of his enclave, however, he ducks those above him and, accordingly, kicks those below him. This makes the "Spießer" an ideal buffer between "those at the top" and "those at the bottom."

The "Spießer" fundamentally want nothing to change. The "Spießer"means bringing the dynamic interplay of opposites to a standstill. The "Spießer" stated goal is that nothing should exist that could truly change the situation.

the "Spießer" latent dissatisfaction is simultaneously balanced by a certain contentment. The more the "Spießer" has internalized the immovable gradient of authoritarian status thinking, the more he blocks any impulse that could bring about a change in status or perhaps even a dissolution of status thinking.

The "Spießer" thus represents the unfinished end of a status relationship.

Even when circumstances point in a different direction and when status positions could be exchanged or even transformed, the "Spießer" blocks the status change: the wonderfully dynamic status principle of two opposing poles becomes a rigid static state.

It sometimes seems as if the bourgeois has united the opposites within himself by skillfully moving back and forth between high and low status. But in reality, he merely plays the opposites off against each other. Depending on where he hopes to gain the greatest advantage, he leans more towards one side or the other. Interestingly, the "Spießer", like fools, straddle a narrow path between two extremes. This makes the "Spießer" subject to constant fluctuations triggered by changes on one side or the other. Nevertheless, the "Spießer" and fools pursue very different goals, although they share certain characteristics. When it comes to interpreting things to their own advantage, the "Spießer" displays considerable talent and a fascinating mischievousness in subverting established rules.

Despite his kinship with the fool, the philistine turns out to be an extremely humorless person. Humor strikes the "Spießer" as just as he makes jokes exclusively at the expense of others.

 

Comedians and comedians delight in the "Spießer"

No one is better suited as a counterpart to humor than the "Spießer"

Because the "Spießer"fundamentally distrusts anything that could shake up his world, he is resistant to humor in a way that presents the greatest challenge for any fool, as soon as the fool attempts to restore the entrenched interplay of opposites in status.

An example of a humorous yet socially critical interpretation of the "Spießer" soul is the well-known 1970s television series "Ein Herz und eine Seele" (A Heart and a Soul). Like a modern-day Till Eulenspiegel, the Brechtian actor and comedian Heinz Schubert, in the role of the disgusting Alfred Tetzlaff, attacked the television nation of the time with reactionary remarks and verbal filth. Schubert embodied the role of the disgusting Alfred extremely convincingly and presented his audience with the prototype of the German  "Spießer" As such, he dominated and tyrannized his television family: in addition to his daughter Rita (Hildegard Krekel), this included his son-in-law Michael, the "long-haired anarchist," played by Dieter Krebs, and his wife Else, "the dimwitted cow," played by Elisabeth Wiedemann, at his side, thus serving as the marital counterpart in the patriarchal duo. The very funny, yet depressing truth that thus entered German living rooms provoked not only laughter but also deep thought.

In this combination, the "Spießer" is an excellent comic role model. He functions as a distorting mirror of social norms and thus becomes a figure of fun.

 

My Personal "Spießer"

I called my very personal bourgeoisie Hermann. In this character, I was able to indulge in clownish behavior that I would otherwise never have allowed myself. Through Hermann, I was able to unleash hidden negative and certain dark sides, just as they slumber within each of us, exaggerating them in a clownish way and revealing them for laughter.

I always got really into it when I could reveal my Swabian heritage: I abandoned my refined High German and let my tongue do the talking in the broadest "Aolen" dialect instead of my mind. Nowhere can you be so wonderfully emotional, and nowhere can you give free rein to your feelings as freely as when speaking a dialect. A truly comic delight, which I savored with relish and even made the audience laugh!

Of course, I had no guarantee that the audience would always laugh. After all, laughter depends on how many squares are in the audience. In case of doubt, they can't distinguish between satire and reality at all!

 

The New "Spießer"

Compared to the 1970s and 1980s, the image of the "Spießer" has changed considerably in our time:

While we used to amuse ourselves with Loriot's comedy about the "Spießer" Mr. Müller-Lüdenscheidt or take aim at the proletarian Alfred Tetzlaf as a bastion of distorted social structures, dealing with today's "new" "Spießer"is proving to be considerably more complicated. The new  "Spießer" is less tangible and, at the same time, has built a moral bulwark around himself that not even comedy can penetrate.

So what does he look like, the new  "Spießer"? Is it  "Spießer" like not to be a  "Spießer" ?

Remember the LBS advertisement with the slogan "Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a "Spießer" too!"    (LBS is an insurance group that provides building society loans)

Looking around today, it seems that the little girl has actually made it. The offspring of a hippie dropout from the 1970s has landed in the mainstream of society and is shaping today's new bourgeoisie, initially with sneakers and now increasingly with a new moral code. And just as the "Spießer" and his cronies once guarded their own narrow bourgeois order as a kind of vigilante group, today the newly established morality of good and evil is also fiercely defended to the outside world.

This also creates new rules for us comedians, which should by no means be simply laughed off.

Few dare to venture into the minefield of the new "Spießer". The new social arrangements are too opaque, and the potential consequences seem dangerous.

As long as we could locate the "Spießer" in the civil-right camp, there was no danger of doing the wrong thing. Even if the boundaries of good taste were occasionally crossed, comedians could feel confident they were on the right side. But the boundaries of what is sayable and what is laughable have shifted massively. And it's unclear who actually determines these boundaries.

Has satire been hijacked? Or has it always been ideologically one-sided, and we just haven't noticed because we haven't questioned it until now?

With my Herrmann, I was still allowed to dive into my own bourgeois depths as the mood took me, without having to fear inadvertently violating the politically correct moral alphabet if, in a fit of"Spießer" exuberance, the N-I-Z-Sch-A word had accidentally slipped out.

Satire has always been allowed to be immoral and even anarchic. But what happens when the "Spießer" comes from within our own ranks? Does the joke then run the risk of serving the wrong people? Is it humor when you no longer laugh?

What happens when satire is overtaken by its own intellectual and moral standards?

It seems that what we socially call the good, the true, the decent, and the right is not suitable for humor. Even if the new, well-intentioned, rigid form comes across as no less bourgeois and takes on forms just as narrow, rigid, and distorted as the traditional evil. Since then, even comedians have had a hard time exposing the humor in its distortion, as Didi Hallervorden recently experienced in his new sketch. (German Comedian)

Do the bad guys have more sense of humor, or can the good guys just not laugh at themselves?

Satire loses its appeal where it must behave decently and morally. Because it is precisely where we are indecent that the truth sometimes breaks through. Perhaps the new "Spießer" is simply not evil enough. Or does he cover it up so well that people don't dare to do him an injustice? That's why many comedians still like to fall back on the old bourgeois. The old jokes still work and, above all, don't hurt anyone.

Only, satire then becomes entertainment, and the comedian's sting hits the void, where it can no longer sting or provoke.