Timur Vermes Hitler novel: Can the Führer be funny?
A satirical novel that follows a bemused Hitler on a journey through todays Germany is a publishing sensation. But is the dictator responsible for the horrors of the Third Reich a fitting subject for comedy?
It is an unlikely premise for a German novel: Hitler returns to Berlin and gets mistaken for a look-alike. After nearly seventy years in a coma, he is surprised by the way the modern city looks. Where have all the Russian soldiers gone? And why are there so many cyclists wearing flimsy helmets with holes in them?
He looks for his favourite newspaper, the Peoples Observer, but it doesnt seem to be on the stand only Turkish papers. The shop owner befriends him and lets him in: Dont steal anything, OK? Do I look like a criminal? You look like Hitler. Exactly responds the Führer.
Eventually, Hitler gets into the swing of the modern world and becomes a celebrity and a politician. He goes on a chat-show (hosted by a German of Turkish background) and goes into politics, striking a popular chord with his proposals to get tough on dog mess.
It is a story which has captivated Germany. Er ist wieder da (Hes back) has already sold 400,000 copies. The audio version, too, is a best-seller. Translations into 28 languages are on the way. So is a film.
The appeal is well worn, that of a throw-back from a previous age trying to cope with our own times Rip van Hitler, as you might call him, is baffled by computers and mobile phones and all the paraphernalia of Berlin today.
But this is difficult territory. Hitler as buffoon is a joke as old as Charlie Chaplin. But Hitler as human being also makes many uneasy. The reviewer, Cornelia Fiedler, of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, attributed the books success not to its literary quality but to an unsettling obsession with Hitler. A very strange fixation on Hitler has developed in Germany and it has something of the manic about it. The focus on Hitler be it as a comic figure or as the embodiment of evil risks washing away the historical reality.
Is it ok for Hitler to return as even a satirical comedic figure?
I don't think this is a very inappropriate position to put a figure like Hitler in. One of the most hated men in world history in a comedy? I don't think so. But hey, I laugh at Hitler jokes on Instagram sometimes, so maybe it is funny.
