In the animated film Asterix erobert Rom, released in 1976, Asterix and Obelix must obtain Passierschein A38, pass A38, from das Haus, das Verrückte macht, the house that drives you mad. Officials send them from one counter to the next. In German, Passierschein A38 became a common phrase. People use it to mock or complain about bureaucratic madness, when they are sent from office to office. The phrase came back in March 2020, when Germans joked about needing a pass to leave home during the first coronavirus lockdown.
humor
Bookbinder Wanninger
In Karl Valentin’s sketch Buchbinder Wanninger, a bookbinder phones the construction firm Meisel & Co. He only wants to know when he may deliver the books he has bound, and whether he should send the invoice with them. He is passed from one extension to the next. Nobody feels responsible, not even Herr Meisel. When he finally reaches the right person, he is told to call again tomorrow: wir haben jetzt Büroschluss! We are closing now. His last words are Saubande, dreckate!, a Bavarian curse. A recording with Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt dates from 1940.
Hurz!
In July 1991, Radio Bremen’s comedy show Total normal aired a hidden-camera prank by Hape Kerkeling. Kerkeling played a Polish tenor, and Achim Hagemann played his pianist. Before an audience that suspected nothing, they performed an excerpt from a so-called progressive opera. A recited text with atonal piano was broken again and again by a squeaked Hurz! Some listeners could not hide their amusement. Others then sought, seriously and with feeling, a dialogue with the fake artists about the meaning of the work.
Eighty-Four Million National Coaches
During football tournaments, Germans say the country has as many Bundestrainer, national coaches, as it has inhabitants. In July 2026 a Berliner Zeitung columnist recalled the saying that 84 Millionen Bundestrainer sat in front of screens and in pubs and joined the discussion. During the Covid pandemic the saying moved into medicine. In May 2020 the comedian Carolin Kebekus mocked the 80 Millionen Hobby-Virologen, the 80 million amateur virologists, in a video released ahead of her ARD show.
Duty, Not Inclination
In 1785 Immanuel Kant published the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. It is taught in upper-school philosophy classes, for example in North Rhine-Westphalia. Of kind acts done from inclination, Kant writes that such an act, so pflichtmäßig, so liebenswürdig sie auch ist, however dutiful and however kind it is, still has keinen wahren sittlichen Wert, no true moral worth.
In the Xenien, the satirical couplets of Goethe and Schiller published in 1797, a reply appeared under the title Gewissensscrupel, scruples of conscience: Gerne dien’ ich den Freunden, doch thu’ ich es leider mit Neigung, / Und so wurmt es mir oft, dass ich nicht tugendhaft bin. I gladly serve my friends, but sadly I do it with inclination, and so it often bothers me that I am not virtuous. The answer followed: Da ist kein anderer Rath, du musst suchen, sie zu verachten, / Und mit Abscheu alsdann thun, wie die Pflicht dir gebeut. There is no other advice. You must try to despise them, and then do with disgust what duty commands.
TEAM: Great, Someone Else Does It
A German joke reads the word TEAM as an acronym: Toll, ein anderer macht’s. Great, someone else is doing it. In 2014 a book on teamwork appeared with the title Team: Toll, ein anderer macht’s! Die Wahrheit über Teamarbeit, the truth about teamwork. In the same year a German media-studies journal turned the joke around in the title of a review: Teamwork. Toll, wir machen es tatsächlich gemeinsam. Great, we actually do it together.
Buying Your Way In
Kir Royal, Helmut Dietl’s series about Munich society, first aired on 22 September 1986. The glue manufacturer Heinrich Haffenloher, played by Mario Adorf, wants to appear in the gossip column. He tells the reporter Baby Schimmerlos: Ich scheiß’ dich sowas von zu mit meinem Geld, dass du keine ruhige Minute mehr hast. I will bury you in so much of my money that you will never have a quiet minute again.
Two Gentlemen in One Bathtub
Herren im Bad, gentlemen in the bath, is one of Loriot’s best-known sketches. It first appeared in his television series Loriot, which ARD began to broadcast in 1976. Herr Müller-Lüdenscheidt and Dr. Klöbner end up in the same hotel bathtub, because Dr. Klöbner got the room number wrong. Neither man gives way. They argue over whether the rubber duck may go into the water. Die Ente bleibt draußen! The duck stays outside! In the end they compete over who can stay under water longer. At the end a third man appears and asks: Ist das hier Zimmer 107? Is this room 107?
An Application for an Application Form
In 1977 the singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey released the single Einen Antrag auf Erteilung eines Antragsformulars, an application for the issue of an application form. In the song, a man who needs a form is sent from one office to the next. He meets a stand-in who knows nothing, a doorman, an office closed for a party and an official on leave. A form of the word zuständig, responsible, appears in the song. In the end he learns that the form is no longer in use.
Toni Erdmann
In Maren Ade’s film Toni Erdmann of 2016, Ines works in Bucharest on her career as a management consultant. Her father turns up as the invented figure Toni Erdmann and keeps stepping into her working life. At her birthday brunch, meant as team building, Ines declares the brunch a naked party. The film premiered in the competition at Cannes in 2016 and was nominated for an Oscar.