Rudolph Herzog: "Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead"
Yesterday on NPR they interviewed a German named Rudolph Herzog who wrote the book "Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead", a collection of jokes that the German people told about Hitler while he was in power.
The book sounded *very* interesting for a number of reasons. First, I'm a big fan of humor, particularly the question of what people think is funny and how humor changes over time. Second, there's an honest in humor that you don't get in sincere writing: Herzog said that the World War 2 generation claimed that they never knew about the death camps, but he found jokes that told a different story. Third, I think there's always room for qualified, nontrivializing comparisons between Nazi Germany and today - a lot of the jokes seemed to work pretty well when substituting contemporary politicians' names[1]. I'd be curious to see how similar jokes about the camps are to today's humor.
At any rate I'd love to find a copy but it's not on Amazon. If anyone knows where I could get a copy please let me know.
[1] Q: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are in a boat out at sea. The boat sinks. Who is saved?
A: The American people.
The book sounded *very* interesting for a number of reasons. First, I'm a big fan of humor, particularly the question of what people think is funny and how humor changes over time. Second, there's an honest in humor that you don't get in sincere writing: Herzog said that the World War 2 generation claimed that they never knew about the death camps, but he found jokes that told a different story. Third, I think there's always room for qualified, nontrivializing comparisons between Nazi Germany and today - a lot of the jokes seemed to work pretty well when substituting contemporary politicians' names[1]. I'd be curious to see how similar jokes about the camps are to today's humor.
At any rate I'd love to find a copy but it's not on Amazon. If anyone knows where I could get a copy please let me know.
[1] Q: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are in a boat out at sea. The boat sinks. Who is saved?
A: The American people.