The very unusual-looking man in the photo is man named Karl Valentin. A true Bavarian original. A comedian. For almost 100 years he has been admired by the residents of Munich – and by me as well. Maybe someone might be wondering now, why I am dedicating a blog entry to him and my answer to that question is the following: because he kind of made me fail writing this very blog entry – and in doing so, he helped me realize something very important about myself.
Everything begins in Munich. Dirndls, Lederhosen, beer, Oktoberfest – yes, that place. It’s where I was last week for several days which included “my Saturday”. I came across many photo-worthy moments there but I quickly realized that my blog entry would – and should – focus on Bavarian humor and the special role it has historically played in general and, above all, for me personally. Like how revealing it has always been, how anti-authoritarian, how honest, how bold – just to name a few characteristics of it. It really has had a major influence on me, how it made me see life and people and how it helped me to cope with both. Karl Valentin was one of its most eccentric founding fathers of it. A true idol so to say.
But somehow, throughout the entire past week, none of my drafts felt quite right. Romanticized and idealized, an over-the-top tribute to Bavarian humor – well, it didn’t fit right at all, it actually made me even feel sad whenever I started writing about it. In the end I’d say I ended up in some kind of writer’s block that forced me to dive deep inside of me and listen to what might be hiding behind of it.
Over the days I realized that there’s a connection with my present perception of me and life around me these days and that it’s just not the time where I can go out into the world relying on humor alone anymore. That humor, right now, needs to be accompanied by something else. Anti-humor, for example, or a more factual approach. It sounds cryptic, I know – but it simply didn’t feel right to use humor as the only vehicle or topic for that blogpost where humor has been often used by me to push other, more serious things aside, to keep things light or to delay things until, well, Godot may finally arrive.
So, I let go of my original plan. I accepted that it didn’t work for my anymore, that it was a failure. A good one. What soon followed was relief. New spaces opened up, a broader perspective. And I recognized a very special irony behind it all. The circle closed. An a hundred years long one.
Back in the mid 30s of the past century Irish writer Samuel Beckett was struggling with depression and writer’s block. He decided to learn German and, in an attempt to counteract his bleak state of mind, he traveled to Germany to explore the land of Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Dürer. He arrived in a country in political upheaval, and the inspiration he had hoped for did not come – at least not until the very end of his trip. In a coffeehouse in one of Munich’s suburbs he came across the comedy duo Karl Valentin and Lisl Karlstadt. In his travel diary, Beckett wrote:
“I actually saw Karl Valentin in 1937, performing in a café-theater on the city’s edge. I laughed a lot – filled with sadness.”
Enthralled, Beckett arranged a personal meeting with Karl Valentin through a German friend. It turned out to be a very surreal encounter – partly due to the language barrier between Beckett’s Irish English and Valentin’s deep Bavarian dialect. Karl Valentin showed him his cabinet of curiosities which was still under construction in Munich at the time. One of the installations was a cinema full of wax figures, all waiting for a film to begin but, and here’s the punchline, the film never started.
After returning from his trip, Samuel Beckett wrote his masterpiece “Waiting for Godot”, a landmark work of absurdist theater that would bring him worldwide fame.
To conclude my very special, unplanned blog entry this week I want to share a few quotes from Karl Valentin. I have my doubts that the absurd wordplay and humor can truly be translated from German into English but I want to give it a try nevertheless.
“Even the future used to be better in the past.”
“The only thing that’s certain is that nothing is certain—so I stay suspicious, just to be on the safe side.”
“Today, I’ll treat myself and pay myself a visit. Hopefully, I’m home.”
“I know no fear! Unless I get scared.”
“Hopefully things won’t be as bad as they already are!”
“Raising kids makes absolutely no sense – in the end they’ll just copy everything they see from adults anyway.”
“Everything has been said, just not by everyone (yet)!”
I’ve said everything now and sometime in the future I’ll definitely go back to Munich to, maybe, see a stage performance about either Karl Valentin or Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” by myself.