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The mood is far from being as relaxed as the home office outfit suggests.
How tense the population's souls are after months of lockdown is not only noticed in traffic.
Annoying others, some bring up more ambition in a few seconds than the German national soccer team in 90 minutes against North Macedonia.
There is grumbling and grumbling about what it's worth, and the choice of words has in part become as hearty as the grill plate, which you can only vaguely remember because the Balkan restaurant around the corner has been closed for so long.
We fight about toilet paper, about minimum clearances, about yeast and nasal coverings.
If the situation weren't so serious, one could easily get the idea of making a TV series out of the most unusual outbursts of anger of some fellow citizens.
Many years ago, if it hadn't been for someone who set the bar for on-screen abuse so damn high.
After the reactionary philistine disgust Alfred Tetzlaff ("One Heart and One Soul") had ceded, Edward Leonard, or Ed O'Neill for short, took over the top of the best lists of all TV meanness in 1987 under the name Al Bundy.
A beastly ladies shoe seller in the series "A Terribly Nice Family".
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Trapped in lockdown: a successful high school footballer who meets Peggy at a party and gets her pregnant.
Al gives up his sports career and turns his vacation job into a profession.
While his daughter Kelly is growing into a pretty but intellectually limited blonde (he calls her "dull cheek"), son Bud is born.
Al soon said of him: "My son is already a man - a fool!"
Al Bundy is a real family angry citizen.
He hates his job, his wife Peggy disgusts him, and he knows from his children that they are only interested in his money if he happens to have some in his pockets.
Out of frustration, Bundy relies on heavy sarcasm.
His only joys: his 74 Dodge, the toilet, beer, bowling, a men's magazine, two TV magazines, occasional visits to the nude bar and of course his friends, with whom he founded the association “No Ma'am”, a “national organization of Men against Amazons Exercise of Power ”.
Ed O'Neill is celebrating his 75th birthday this Monday.
An occasion to investigate the question these days: Is there a bit of Al Bundy in each of us due to the lockdown?
Turns 75 this Monday: Ed O'Neill, here at a gala in 2018
Source: pa / Geisler-Fotop / Dave Starbuck / Geisler-Fotopress
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“It takes some effort and I find it difficult, but my answer is yes.
After all that I'm observing at the moment, it unfortunately looks very much like that.
However, I hope that we can all tackle this with joint forces, ”says Carolin Lüdemann.
She is an etiquette expert, has written guides on good behavior and has to laugh when she thinks of Al Bundy: “I see him chewing gum, his knees pointing in different directions.
It was amusing to watch how he did not adhere to any social conventions at all. "
Rüdiger Bahr, 82, has been with Al Bundy from the start, because he is his German voice.
He says, “I probably know him better than his wife.
I breathe with him, chew with him, drink with him.
He's so close to me, that's unbelievable. ”Around 60 voice actors had applied for the role of the terribly nice family man, but Bahr beat them all at the audition in Munich.
Especially with his honesty: “I resisted this role.
I said, friends, you really can't do that.
We have to change a few things in German. ”But the producers wanted the character of Al Bundy exactly as Ed O'Neill had given him.
Bahr: "I was embarrassed, at the beginning I just found him repulsive."
The makers promised Bahr only 13 episodes and that all of them would be broadcast very late.
Thomas Reimer, 53, remembers: “I set the alarm clock so that I could be there at half past twelve.” Reimer has been chairman of the largest German fan club since 2003 and calls himself the caretaker of Bundyworld.
He was fascinated by “this complete otherness.
Compared to the Bundys, everything else was mainstream.
They stayed in the supermarket on hot days because they couldn't afford air conditioning at home.
Today you might say a somewhat weird Hartz IV family, ”says Reimer.
Bundy is a cult
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The success of the series was enormous, also in Germany.
In the end, 259 episodes were filmed, broadcast many times over, because ProSieben still repeats the series on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the dusty 4: 3 format.
The next generations have long been infected with the Bundy virus, and despite major social changes, an antidote is hardly in sight.
Bundy is a cult.
The “Al Bundy Sprüche” page alone has 31,000 members on Facebook.
There are rankings of his “best” quotes.
In it you will find sentences like: "Sometimes I think we are not a family, but a biological experiment." "I am the only guy in the world who has to wake up to have a nightmare." "I will never forget." how Peg's mother rolled past our television one evening.
When her body released the screen again, it was morning. ”“ Al Bundy does what the ravages of time have done to my wife's face with every loudmouth. ”Or short dialogues like the one with Peg:“ Al, I saw Elvis ! "Answer:" Peg, there is only one dead person here, and he is standing in front of you. "Or the one with a customer:" I want shoes. "To Al:" The farrier is right next door. "
Bahr said all of this for Ed O'Neill in German, but his initial dislike changed.
Today he says: “I noticed that Al Bundy actually only speaks unfiltered.
Many think what he says.
We just add conventions such as learned politeness, and recently this absurd gender equality.
But if you check yourself how you think about it, you come to a different conclusion. "
Shoe seller and macho: Al Bundy, played by Ed O'Neill (center)
Source: pa / United Archives / United Archives / Impress
Is honesty a yardstick for meanness?
And does the lockdown actually ensure that we say what we think more often, even if it hurts?
Thomas Martin Köppl is a behavior coach.
He says: “Honesty is the key, but it can also be very hurtful.
Do I lie to protect someone or to gain an advantage? ”He explains that humans lie about 50 times a day.
Anyone who said they wouldn't do it was lying at that very moment.
The crucial question is rather: where does the white lie stop and when is honesty absolutely necessary?
Köppl says: “We have to find a sensibly dosed truth.
Fortunately for me, Al Bundy is very far from most people in this regard. "
Bahr sees it differently.
He observes how some are letting things slide a little at the moment.
“It's all getting on their minds, so they want to break free from convention,” he says.
"Because of the constant get-together with the family through the lockdown, some even get a different tone of voice towards their family, which is pretty close to Al Bundy."
Knigge connoisseur Lüdemann tells an anecdote about her five-year-old son.
When she was once in the indoor pool with him and a rather corpulent man was standing in front of them, the little one eyed him and said full of admiration: “But you have a big belly.” Lüdemann says: “I sank into the ground and apologized.
But the man only said to my son: 'You're right there.'
I admired his sense of humor and was grateful for it.
Still, I would be happy if such a situation doesn't overtake me again. "
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For them, too, merciless honesty is not necessarily part of etiquette.
As long as you could hurt or offend others with it, it is better to forego honesty.
"You should never keep people who you are not very familiar with their inadequacies in mind," demands Lindemann.
"Somehow, of course, there is something tragic about it: because it doesn't help the other person to improve, but you don't get them into an unpleasant situation either."
Thomas Martin Köppl, the behavior coach, has a guiding principle for good behavior;
he goes like this: “If I don't feel comfortable with myself, I can't deal well with others either.” This corresponds exactly to the serial character of Al Bundy.
Köppl is convinced that it will take a while for everyone to get rid of the habits of the pandemic months.
It is possible that even the etiquette will adapt.
"People like to complain"
"It may well be that some rules of behavior have changed completely after Corona," says Köppl.
"The most important thing for me is: respect, esteem and behavior is something that you have and don't just throw it off." Accordingly, the grumbling, the nagging and thin-skinned would be a snapshot, not a trend.
"If you look closely, everyone will find that their respect and respect for themselves has decreased enormously," says Köppl.
“Everyone is caught in a certain sadness.
This changes the priorities.
People like to complain.
Now we all have the same point of attack with Corona, and politics has to serve for what is not entirely fair. "
Fairness is a word that never made its way into the Bundys family dudies.
Bahr tells how he ultimately even fought to keep everything that way.
Over the years, changing authors and directors have tried to change the character of Al Bundy.
"There came 25 to 30-year-olds who wanted to incorporate a more modern language into their humor," says Bahr.
"That did not work.
So I defended his style during all this time and said to them: He doesn't talk like that.
And I really knew best how Al Bundy speaks. "
Shortly before the turn of the millennium, the ratings nevertheless fell, and finally the TV broadcaster Fox discontinued the series by seasons.
The fans have stayed.
The German fan club today consists of 95 percent men, says boss Thomas Reimer.
Women often struggled with the show's humor.
It is telling that it was a Michigan woman who called for a boycott of the series in the 1980s and made headlines.
A Persian proverb goes: "Courtesy is a capital that makes those who spend it richer." So Al Bundy resigned as the poor man he was all his life.
And one of his most popular sayings became a sad reality in the end: "Yesterday we were on the brink, today we are one step further."