"The power of satire" (hr): Satire to power!

“Radically funny – the power of satire” – a documentary on Hessian television is devoted to this complex topic.

Frankfurt am Main – satire in politics is nothing new in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. As early as 1950 Werner Finck founded the “Radikale Mitte” in Berlin, a registered association “against the animal seriousness of the time”, which even Theodor Heuss joined. This was followed in 1998 by Christoph Schlingensief’s “Chance 2000”, which competed with the slogan “Failure as an opportunity” and finally in 2004 Die PARTEI, founded by the TITANIC editorial team, with the motto “Overcome content”. The latter plays a central role in the following, because once again I report – as a high-ranking member of this party – on the three-part short series “Radically Funny – The Power of Satire”. So you could accuse me of a certain partisanship. This time I dedicate myself to the last episode of February 17th, which aired at 10:30 p.m. on hr television.

The output is significantly more content-heavy than the previous ones, so a pleasantly small number of clips are used to fill the time. Thematically, we are now moving to my area of expertise (skilled), namely satire in politics and political satire in the media. “A satirist who becomes a politician can achieve a lot,” Oliver Maria Schmitt reports right at the beginning. “He can edit, damage or comment on the system from within.” Schmitt is an expert in the field because he is a founding member, honorary chairman and former candidate for chancellor of Die PARTEI, and he is probably still known in Frankfurt for his 2012 mayoral candidacy , in which he was able to obtain a clear government order from a whopping 1.8% of the voters.

But the program is initially dedicated to political satire in the media. Christina Schlag is again staged with a sketch by the Browser Ballet, in which she, as a lesbian, molests a heterosexual couple in the park and thus comically twists a realistic situation. In conversation, she points out that such numbers can be food for thought and give people the opportunity to take a different perspective. She adds that a higher interest in politics among young people has also led to a higher interest in satire. I myself cannot confirm this based on my own biography: in order to understand the jokes of, for example, Harald Schmidt, Ingo Appelt or even Otto during my adolescence, it was important to also follow current political issues. The joke has politicized me, but I make no claim to serve here as empirical evidence.

Jan Böhmermann takes up a large part of the time, of course without commenting on it himself, which would also be very atypical for him. The MEP and PARTEI chairman Martin Sonneborn takes over the part of the commentary and attests Böhmermann to have made the leap from comedy to enlightenment and thus to prepare facts for a younger audience. And if you only look back at the last three episodes of his show ZDF Magazin Royal, you can see a portrait of the super-rich Trump supporter Peter Thiel, the problem of psychotherapy places and the worldwide distribution of vaccines as the cover topics. Certainly no standard topics for cheap jokes, but extensive research and educational work. Ella Carina Werner adds that satirical formats such as the Heute Show and satirists such as Böhmermann enjoy greater credibility and trust among young people than classic news formats, which Till Reiners attributes to a significantly greater wealth of content, whereas tried-and-tested news formats are too shortened and not come along at eye level. In the course of this, Serdar Somuncu criticized the journalism of the leading media, which in his opinion only copied from Twitter and no longer researched properly itself. TITANIC campaigns such as #MioMioGate or Horst Seehofer’s fake termination of the Union faction support this thesis.

In a clip from the Today Show, Oliver Welke asked Martin Sonneborn whether times weren’t too serious to give his voice to a satirical party. Sonneborn then replies that “times are too serious not to react with satire.” Videos of his parliamentary work follow, in which he repeatedly points out misconduct and crimes by high-level EU politicians. In his words, education is the only way and the EU is just “a construct for large companies.” He can only rate the abolition of roaming charges as something positive for the citizens.

For the end credits, the music video “Hurra die Welt geht unter” by KIZ is played together with Henning May by AnnenMayKantereit. Henning May is probably less located in satire. He’s better known for a voice somewhere between Rio Reiser and Tom Waits, born into the body of a 14-year-old, the Philipp Amthor of the German musical landscape.

But be it. At the end of the series, I would like to briefly summarize my own experience as a satirical politician in this TV review. Since last year I have been a non-attached member of the Lahn-Dill District Council and non-attached city councilor in Wetzlar. The former parliament in particular is populated by a few alpha males who have to add their fine Dijon mustard to every topic, even if they don’t have any dissenting opinions. I saw an hour and a half of discussions in which a motion was finally approved unanimously from the NPD to the Left Party without any changes. For years I stalked the municipal parliaments from the outside and looked forward to once having settled down in the administrative body, to covering them with absurdities. So far, however, I have hardly been able to exaggerate such outlandish things, especially from the ranks of the CDU, AfD and NPD. In the end I too switched to enlightenment and was at least able to force a few reluctant Greens to deal with Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy. As Martin Sonneborn said: “Satire is self-defence!” (Dominic Harapat)