A cartoon of Hitler on the cover of a Vanity Fair in November 1932. Rudolph Herzog, son of celebrated filmmaker Werner Herzog, was introduced to American readers this spring as the author of a newly translated book, Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany, a revealing reexamination of the history of joke-telling during the Third Reich. Herzog, 38, is also known as co-creator of the 2004 BBC series The Heist, a reality crime show, and for his 2006 BBC film about popular jokes aimed at Nazis, which, two years later, was the subject of his book for a German publisher. Hitler considered anti-Nazi humor an act of treason, and from 1942 to 1944, the infamous People’s Court of Berlin issued 4,933 death sentences, many of which were linked to “defeatist” jokes. Herzog argues, however, that it wasn’t as dangerous to make fun of Nazis as some have claimed, and that most people executed for...
- 6/22/2011
- Vanity Fair
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