Barebones but hilarious.
Karl Valentin (born Valentin Ludwig Fey, 4 June 1882 – 9 February 1948) was a comedian from Munich, Bavaria. Born as Valentin Ludwig Fey, he made several radio plays, four full-length movies and several dozen short films.
Influenced many other artists, among them Bertolt Brecht (who was a friend of him, in fact) and Loriot.
And in 1994, the German techno band K2 used some samples from his sketches on their CD "Der Berg ruft".
The official homepage is here
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Examples:
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Liesl Karlstadt, singing "Chinese".
- Bizarre Instrument: Karl Valentin built one, called "orchestrion", which was made of 20 standard instruments put together.
- Comically Missing the Point: When he finds that the record he wants to buy (does he?) is too expensive, he suggests taking half of it instead.
- Dada
- Disaster Dominoes: Once he wanted to start a film studio and bought five (expensive) spotlights. Then he wanted to move a board on the ground, causing this trope. It wasn't funny at all.
- Disorganized Outline Speech:
- "Honorable listeners and ladies! We allow ourselves, on the occasion - out of - un the occasion - of the procession - the entrance -" It goes on for longer.
- Also, this: "Here are a few kreutzer, there were no pfennigs yet at that time, and now fetch us two [cups of] coffee - one for me, one for you - one for the two of us - so, all in all, five coffee."
- Hypochondria: Himself in Real Life. He consulted dozens of doctors and took thousands of doses of medicine.
- Insistent Terminology: "Semmelnknödeln" dumplings are usually made from several rolls, not just one, so the word should reflect the plural.
- Also his name, which is pronounced with an F-sound, not a V-sound.
- I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Parodied in Die Raubritter vor München. Drummer boy Michl (played by Liesl Karlstadt) stirs up Bene (Valentin), a sentry sleeping on his post; Bene complains that he was just having a wonderful dream in which he was a duck, and had just espied a "very long, yellow" worm which he was just about to eat when Michl woke him. Michl argues that Bene should be grateful to him for waking him before he could eat the worm, as that would have been totally gross; Bene however insists that as in his dream he was a duck, the worm looked perfectly tasty to him, hence he would have preferred to eat the worm.
- Landslide Election: Once when meeting a radical nazi:Nazi: "Did you hear about the results for the latest plebiscite? 98% voted for Hitler!"Valentin: "That's strange, wherever I go, I only meet the two percent."
- The Prankster: Among other things, he tattooed his classmates with needles, poured turpentine oil in their mouth, electrified doorknobs and put glass shards on a meadow, so he could play first-aider for real.
- Starving Artist: Literally. When he died, he weighed about 50 kilograms.
- Straight Man: Liesl Karlstadt fulfilled this role in his sketches.
- Those Wacky Nazis: The one or other time he dared to make fun of them. Like in sieg-heiling and acting like he forgot that name.
- Traumatic Haircut: His mother cut off his quiff when he was asleep. He retaliated in the next night by cutting off her long braid.
- The Unpronounceable: "Wrdlbrmpfd"
