Review Ricarda Willimann: More sensational than Rilke? Anyway funnier

That was clear.

That there must be a reason for the whole malaise, for Otto's puking pug, Karl Dall's dirndl hunt on Kilimanjaro or Hirschhausen's overall appearance, i.e. for the tragedy of German humor (also available in simple language under the trade name "Titanic").

The fact that a woman of all people has to take all the blame is probably a poisoned victory for German feminism (not a comedy), but it doesn't help: It was how it was (Erika Fried), and it was - Willimann .

All.

Loriot's Lohse skits go back to them, as do Georg Kreisler's Taubenpoisonerlied, the giggle show "Der Klügere kippt nach" and all the jokes of the New Frankfurt School, which would otherwise have become as boring as the old one.

Even the lethal decline of humor, comedy,

At least that is what a major editorial and philological project in the other library of Hans Magnus Enzensberger, which was wrongly considered to be free of boller jokes, claims and proves, whose Maestro at large, Christian Döring, on his last days of editing – before a woman takes over here too – without false shame the inner Ulknudel out - and let the pranksters of the "Titanic" in.

The publisher of Volume 452, "Ricarda Willimann: Who was I?", is Elias Hauck, a cartoonist and half of the duo Hauck & Bauer, who regularly immortalize themselves in the magazine "Titanic" and in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

Hauck got all the virtuosos of wit in word and pen, who rightly pride themselves on their comic talent from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main,

Fictional in the dirtiest sense

Little by little, the outlines of a wild life bursting with lovers (Tex Rubinowitz was by no means the only one) emerge, which is in fact

, i.e. must be called fictitious in the dirtiest sense.

It stretched from Vienna via Cologne and the F-City to New York and Argentina, from the "Fix und Foxi" editorial team (Willimann was the driving force behind Rolf Kaukas Verlag, Ulrike Sterblich tells us, who definitely got it from her childhood friend Melanie knows) via the Eduscho editorial office “Kaffeesatz” to the country’s television editors.

Margarete Stokowski stole perfume with Ricarda Willimann, Tim Wolff tries to be an exegete of her late letters (“horse chestnuts have priority”).

It was well known that Harald Schmidt would have preferred to remain the organist in Nürtingen rather than moderate his late-night mess.

But the fact that he was pushed to his show by the lady who made Letterman great is another new finding that David Schuh has worked through.

From Julia Mateus, the current "Titanic" editor-in-chief, we learn that the objectophile Willimann, not just a joker, "was temporarily involved with a double bass".

Paula Irmschler sheds light on her ominous disappearance in front of the Eifler bakery at Frankfurt Central Station, and Moritz Hürtgen takes the trouble to relate Willimann's poetry ("But we never continue on Sundays / in bed we like the Extra Lord"), which uses extremely lucrative brand names to the similarly lucrative, if of course simpler "Obi rain barrel variations" by Jan Wagner.

Rilke, hardly unpacked in Marbach, can pack up again.

In the long run, however, even the funniest texts cause trouble if they always follow the same pattern and are so harmless.

The contributions unfairly placed further back by Hauck or Döring therefore have a hard time arousing enthusiasm for the disclosure of what else is supposed to be behind Willimann, who may have had good reasons to be unknown.

Nobody can drink that many bottles of French fries.

This is where German humor comes into its own in all its narrhalla-marsh penetrance.

What Max Goldt whispers knowingly to us is certainly aimed at them: “Now Ricarda is old and indeed already slightly shaky.

People don't like to say things like that.

But what do you like to say besides 'Hello'?" (Well, "Palim, palim" of course, dear MG)

As instructive as the early Otto Waalkes

The drawings in the volume are more incendiary than all the anecdotes about the personified German joke, and that is not least due to the fact that they include some of the best picture bombs of the last eons, which of course were just stolen from Willimann.

In the case of Hauck & Bauer, that's a bit of a taste, as they once sued TV clown Florian Schroeder because he reenacted their funniest comic ("Well, your kid isn't gifted. You're just both very, very stupid").

And now it turns out they stole it themselves.

Til Mette's delicious drawing of two champagne fat cats in a deckchair by the sea - "It must be something like that for people who only have the bare essentials" - is no less great in the damn similar variant of Ricarda Willimann.

In the carefully edited diaries there are also some gems like this one: "Joyful reader: 'Vollhorst' instead of 'Albrecht Dürer'".

And the book is at least as instructive as the early Otto Waalkes, or did you know that the English translation of "Otto Normal Verbraucher" is simply "Udo Jürgens"?

Unfortunately, Willimann is now suffering from dementia (technical term: "comedy"), but she deserved this loving obituary during her lifetime.