Comedy – Hagenbuch and Hüsch’s hundredth

Hagenbuch has now admitted that, towards the end of this again worrying year of 2024, he is now thinking about the coming year of 2025 with the greatest trepidation, less for political reasons, says Hagenbuch, of course, but actually, he had to admit, purely for reasons personal motives. Because, according to Hagenbuch, after all the anniversary celebrations of the Kafka, Kästner, Kant and Karl Kraus year 2024 have finally and finally been rushed through and dealt with, Hagenbuch says literally, public interest will undoubtedly turn to jubilee candidates for 2025 , and then, according to Hagenbuch, it cannot be ruled out, in fact it is to be feared, that someone will notice that this is happening in front of them The annus horribilis is the 100th birthday of the so-called cabaret artist Hanns Dieter Hüsch.

Actually, Hagenbuch continues, this anniversary is a completely unimportant one that one can safely ignore. At least he would be happy to ignore this anniversary, but even a superficial search on the Internet produces the astonishing finding that Hüsch has by no means been forgotten disappeared from the scene and therefore no reason for any anniversary commemoration, but that his “work” obviously still enjoys considerable popularity, at least distributed in book form and on recordings become. And here, says Hagenbuch, he himself comes into play, as a person affected, even as a sufferer, because because he is one of the central figures, perhaps even the best-known figure in Hüsch’s work, he is still being spread and therefore has to be part of this anniversary face considerable discomfort. Unbe-hagen/Hagen-buch, he hopes the little pun has arrived.

Of course, Hagenbuch knows that you can’t choose your parents or your creators and you have to make do with what fate has planned for you. For him, Hagenbuch, fate had Hüsch as the creator, and one had to accept that. However, he still struggles with the fact that Hüsch has made him into what he is now forced to appear in public as for all time: a talkative idiot.

Just this mania to always quote him in indirect speech, page after page of this completely artificial, meaningless chatter in indirect speech, constantly repeated trivialities or “funny” ideas, for example the names of his, Hagenbuch’s, supposed buddies: Fugger, Wiesendanger, Wolgensinger, Comforter, Paul in the trees and Heinz over the mountain. They all got their names from Hüsch, while he, Hagenbuch, at least according to Hüsch, did not get his name from Hüsch, but rather “for no particular reason / From an innkeeper and master butcher / Who for some time / Also mayor / Of the town of Zug / Not far from Zurich / Was / And later died / I took over from a fall / From the stairs in the town house / I took over”. Hüsch wrote something like that for no particular reason; it doesn’t say anything at all, but it should be perceived as powerfully original and, of course, also as a work of art, which everyone can recognize from the lack of punctuation and the line breaks that are reminiscent of poetry. However.

In any case, he, Hagenbuch, never felt the need that Hüsch imputed to him, as an alleged fool, to voluntarily admit himself to an institution with the silly name Bless-Hohenstein and to receive the “Tryptichon therapy” from the “medical team Löchel Pietsch and Zehetbauer”. in the Rondo procedure / intensive care unit then offensive ward then defensive ward” because, according to Hagenbuch, “the world was created from a completely wrong understanding be”. His actual function is clearly that of embodying Hüsch’s ideology, according to which this self-proclaimed “black sheep from the Lower Rhine” was able to stylize himself after the end of his phase as a political and of course left-wing cabaret artist into a guy who was at war with normality and was able to portray and sell himself as a poetic outsider alongside animals, children and fools like him, Hagenbuch.

This abuse of the concept of poetry alone is actually justiciable, but perhaps it is just pitiful how someone desperately tried to be more than a small artist who squats on the stage, hammering on his little organ and staccato his banal, but ostensibly philosophical or poetic outpourings into the reverent audience. And all of these tapeworm lyrics then reliably led to a particularly meaningful finale, the highlight, the punch line, which then sounded like this: “If there is a water in Europe that I long for / It is the black and cold puddle / On which a child sadly / In the breath of the twilight / Lets his little boat drift delicately like May butterflies.«

It’s all terribly stupid stuff, but my goodness, says Hagenbuch, if people liked it. If they appreciated humorous nonsense, such as the story according to which he, Hagenbuch, “during his London time / Never touched a musical instrument // On the other hand, during his Warsaw time he composed / The greatest oratorio in music history / Yes in world history,” then Of course you have to tolerate that. And that was the case, they appreciated it, en masse, and weren’t bothered by the fact that Hüsch never missed an opportunity to emphasize that he was “singing” “for the crazy.” But not only the audience, but also the critics were willing to fall for it all, hailing Hüsch as “Don Quixote from the Lower Rhine”, a “good shepherd from the Lower Rhine” or as an “old child”. Only a Berlin “daily newspaper” correctly dubbed him a “sheep in sheep’s clothing.”

According to Hagenbuch, there were certainly contemporaries who analyzed the Hüsch principle with sufficient precision and even exposed it, yes, indeed, exposed it. Robert Gernhardt, for example, has already written everything down sufficiently: Hüsch “celebrates outsiderism” and “unabashedly places himself in a row with Yesenin, van Hoddis, Lichtenstein”; »As well-tempered as he chatters and organises to himself, the feelings that his lecture arouses are just as lukewarm and vague. No climate for criticism or comedy.” Hüsch’s “community,” Gernhardt continued, enjoys “sweet and sour absurdity, cloudy poetry and diffuse significance.” And that says it best: a diffuse significance, as already expressed in the motto of Hüschen’s book “The Hagenbuch Case” (1983): “I dedicate / These pieces of writing / to all adults / who suddenly look / like children / Who haven’t dealt with anything yet / But have understood everything.” And it’s child’s play to understand all the nonsense if you just look at that pretentious word “pieces of writing.”

According to Hagenbuch, the whole case could also be dealt with briefly and succinctly by quoting Eckhard Henscheid, who once called Hüsch “the most obnoxious one,” “the most merciless of all the New German satirists and cabaret artists and cabaret artists.” And then he, Hagenbuch, realized again how unfair things were not only in life, but also in art, because he could have finally seen the light of day in the literary world as a Henscheid character, a role in the “complete idiots”. von Henscheid, for example, that would have been it, says Hagenbuch. But that didn’t happen. He is and remains Hagenbuch, and he will have to come to terms with that at some point, for better or for worse. Even in the most beautiful Kästnerkantkrauskafka year, he, Hagenbuch, fell into the deepest hush depression, and he wanted to have said that before the hush hymns came over all of us, all of us, according to Hagenbuch, and that he was really fed up with it this Thomas Bernhard-esque style. For him, Hagenbuch, that’s enough. “I’ve had enough,” said Hagenbuch. It works.