Comedy – Helge Schneider for the 70th: Working and playing

The man doesn’t have it easy. In his most famous song, “Katzeklo”, says the lyrical ego of the tendency of a cat to eat continuously, and also imagines that the cat’s happiness in life is dependent on the fact that she can do her business in a litter box. This song, which made the entertaining artist Helge Schneider popular, is still his greatest fatality. The song (“Katzeklo, Katzeklo, yes, that makes the cat happy”), who appeared as a so -called single in 1993 and stayed in the German charts in 1993, made the musician and entertainer, “the singing cake from the Ruhr area), made a larger public known to a larger public. The song opened the door to success, paved the path that led him on the very big stages. But the result was that he could not play a concert for a few years, without a small or large horde of concert visitors pretending to ask for the presentation of this song.

The associated album on which the hit was “There was rice, baby”, was an enormous commercial success. Schneider has been working in many professions at the latest since that time: he is a comedian, writer, actor, director, singer, musician and multi -intumentalist. Although, as he once announced himself, he did not master at least two instruments: bassoon and oboe.

Because, as usual among many bad German comedians, he often wears brightly colored costumes, strange wigs or clownsque headgear as a professional and stage clothing, he is unfortunately often misunderstood as a Klamauk-Onkel and carelessly stuck in that drawer of artists in which figures such as Jürgen von der Lippe or the notorious Dieter Hallervorden are up to mischief. But not everyone who wear funny colorful hats and shrill glasses is bad German comedians.

Also read: Whoever asks why has already lost – with the film “The Trimperclown”, Helge Schneider congratulates himself on his 70th birthday

The art of Helge Schneiders, which is still in numerous newspaper texts as a “blead”, is fundamentally different from the action of the two above. But whenever the German difficulties have difficulty interpreting and understanding a cultural phenomenon, they describe it with the adjective adjective, which is as unspecific and inflationarily used. Therefore, every song and public statement in Schneider is considered “slanted”. In this life he won’t be able to change anything. In addition, there is often a second reception problem in this country: »In Germany, the comedian is an idiot because he is strange. He is always confused with his role. ”(Jörg Sundermeier)

Which in turn meant that Helge Schneider was long considered dubious and fax maker. But he’s just not. Something touching and spontaneous, as you know it from the behavior of children. Schneiders strongly from the principle of free play and the improvisation of living bizarre humor, which consciously uses silly as a stylistic device, in which classic punch lines are completely dispensed with, and in which the unfinished, the imperfect and deconstruction is constitutive, has more to do with the art of Karl Valentine or the large circus clowns together with the producing, at least To plump German consensus comedians.

Asked whether it annoyed him that many people do not understand how much work is in his art, he told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” a few years ago: “I see myself as a worker. As an artist or clown. A circus clown that can accomplish artistic brilliant performances like Charlie Rivel or Grock – whose meticulousness is not apparent to humans. And that’s how it is with me. “

Its beginnings are similar to the beginnings of many great artists: as a workers’ child, he is an outsider at the high school. If he is initially still a student, he throws school at the age of 16, some time later the piano studies started at the conservatory. A few years ago he commented in an interview with the “taz”: “I learned piano and cello. Two semesters at the university. I was with a special permit because I had no school leaving certificate, just stayed- and school-referred. I could have been a concert pianist, but I preferred to be a music teacher. Nothing came of it either. What luck! “

He breaks off training as a draftsman as well as a second to the landscape gardener. At times he earns money with casual jobs: decorator, zookeeper, upholsterer. At the beginning of twenty he begins to produce his own grotesque radio plays in home work, in which he speaks all the roles himself and that reminds of the spots of Heino Jaegers and Max Goldts in style and design. Only at 26 does he start earning money with music.

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Schneider’s great love applies to jazz, which he already discovered as a teenager. Already on his first two plates he played and alienated the jazz music in a playful manner, which is so much to him. In the eighties, he gave concerts with his fellow musicians, the organist Buddy Casino and drummer Peter Thoms (Helge Schneider & Hardcore), in the course of which it became very quick that the jazz variant presented here left visible traces in the jazz variant presented here. The entertainer often combines his jazz and improvisation passion (Schneider: “You compose in your head and play at the same time”) with a comedy that operates with mild forms of irritation and disorder. It fits that he wants to drive out jazz the articulated, the smoothly ironed, the Tillbrönner -like and to bring the humor, instinct and surprise back into it.

An intention for which he cannot be praised. As a pianist, he sees himself shaped by the great jazz auto -element acts and outsiders Thelonious Monk. The “time” he explained once two years ago: “Monk always finds a hidden pleasure in music. In general, as a musician, it is much easier, lustful and therefore funny because you are constantly playing. That’s why I make music full -time: I’m a player. “

For a few days, the ARD media library has been seen “The Clothing Perclown” for a few days, a autobiographical documentary filmed by Helge Schneider and his long-time colleague Sandro Giampietro, which is also a satirical film, which is therefore entirely on the spirit of playful and ambiguity, which is characterized by Schneider’s humorous work as a whole. The film takes 82 minutes. In other words, in the artist’s words: »The film is not particularly long, but it looks even shorter than it is. It’s always a good sign. “