One of the best ways to avoid devastating cultural differences – or personality differences for that matter – become serious problems in the workplace is the ability to laugh at ourselves. Humor is also a great way to get a deeper understanding of another culture.

When I first moved to Germany I was fortunate to be introduced by a friend to the comedy work of Bernhard Victor Christoph Carl von Bülow (1923-2011), known professionally as Loriot. He created animated cartoons, wrote and performed in live comedy sketches and made several humorous films.

It was through sketches by Loriot that I learned a lot about German values, priorities, assumptions and mannerisms. The next several links will require some knowledge of German to appreciate. These are among my favorites.

Loriot's "best of" collection is voluminous. I know because I own the box set of DVDs. At one time each was individually available on YouTube. But since von Bülow's passing, his family have exercised their copyright and most have disappeared. But Vimeo still has some, mostly in collections. Following are some links worth viewing. About 90% of them are much funnier if you understand some German:

https://vimeo.com/8936845 Loriot's 4-minute spoof on scientists appearing on TV

https://vimeo.com/20638878 Husband/wife dialog over his desire to avoid exercise in 3 1/2 minutes

https://vimeo.com/230961458 A family's addiction to the TV set -- even when it is broken.

https://vimeo.com/46083093 Delivery of a piano becomes a family event.

https://vimeo.com/100570056 A 35 minute collection of sketches.

https://vimeo.com/8183273 Another 40 minutes of Loriot cultural humor

A few of my favroite which you should find in the above collections:

Two refined gentlemen who through a confusion about their room numbers end up in the same bathtub. Their efforts to maintain decorum and control of the situation while using formal language despite their nakedness takes the sketch way beyond slapstick into beautiful irony.
In the next sketch, Loriot explores the differences between typical male and female ways of approach a topic as simple as boiling an egg for breakfast. He didn't need to go to Venus and Mars to highlight some differences.
The third sketch is live acting with Loriot playing a very tradition manager who has developed a heretofore unstated affection for his secretary whose first name after 15 years of employment he does not yet know. The move from formal to informal and then back to formal is quite fascinating, not to mention hilarious.
And one more live sketch I would like to call your attention to is a professional man being asked to wait in the waiting room of the person he wants to visit. The runaway striving for perfection is a real treat to watch.

After reviewing these sketches to share with you, it dawned on me how similar in some ways Loriot was to one of the earliest TV comedians in the US, Ernie Kovacs (1919-62). Here he does some conducting in a live TV sketch from 1956. http://youtu.be/MN5v9aCvPJw

Here is another little taste of Kovacs humor. http://youtu.be/nmqyhKCLRYM

Perhaps you know of some culturally revealing television segments to share. Please add them to the Comments section.

And no matter what happens, keep smiling!

-Herb