Fountain with statue of Karl Valentin in a market in the city centre of
Munich.
Karl Valentin (* 4th June, 1882 in Munich; + 9th February, 1948 in
Planegg near Munich; real name, Valentin Ludwig Fey) was
a Bavarian comedian, author
and film producer who had significant influence on German
Weimar culture.
Valentin came from a reasonably well-off middle-class family; his father had a partnership in a furniture-transport business.
He began his career as a carpenter's apprentice (which proved useful in the construction of his sets and props later in life). In
1902 he began his comic career, enrolling for three months at a variety school in Munich, under the
guidance of Hermann Strebel. His first job as a performer was at the Zeughaus in Nüremberg. A three-year break followed, in the wake of his
father's death, during which time he constructed his own twenty-piece one-man band (with
which he eventually toured in 1906).[1]
Valentin's naïve sense of humour produced sketches that fell somewhere between dadaism, social
expressionism and the Neue Sachlichkeit.
His art centered mostly around linguistic dexterity and wordplay—Valentin was a linguistic anarchist. His comedy would often
begin with simple verbal misunderstandings, in which he would persist as the sketch progressed.[2] The notable critic Alfred Kerr praised him as a Wortzerklauberer, or someone who
tears apart words and language to forcefully extract and dissect its inherent meaning.[citation needed] His sketches often parodied and
derided "shopkeepers, firemen, military band players, professionals with small roles in the economy and the defence of
society".[3] Bertolt Brecht, who was a former member of Valentin's ensemble, compared him to Chaplin, not least for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology."[4] Brecht wrote:
- "But the man he [Brecht writes of himself in the third person] learnt most from was the
clown Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall. He did short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral
musicians or photographers, who hated their employer and made him look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, a
popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice. When the Augsburger [Brecht] was producing his first play, which included a thirty minutes' battle, he asked Valentin
what he ought to do with the soldiers. 'What are the soldiers like in battle?' Valentin promptly answered: 'White.
Scared.'"[5]
That anecdote has become significant in the history of theatre, since it is in Valentin's idea of applying chalk to the faces
of Brecht's actors in his production of Edward II that Brecht
located the germ of his conception of 'epic theatre'.[6]
Younger artists, from film-maker Herbert Achternbusch to Christoph Schlingensief ("Valentin is one of the greatest for me!"), trace their artistic roots
back to the great Munich artist.[citation needed]
Works cited
- Benjamin, Walter. 1983. Understanding Brecht. Trans. Anna Bostock. London and
New York: Verso. ISBN 0902308998.
- Brecht, Bertolt. 1965. The Messingkauf
Dialogues. Trans. John Willett. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0413388905.
- Calandra, Denis. 2003. "Karl Valentin and Bertolt Brecht." In Popular Theatre: A Sourcebook. Ed. Joel Schechter.
Worlds of Performance Ser. London and New York: Routledge. p.189-201. ISBN 0415258308.
- Schechter, Joel. 1994. "Brecht's Clowns: Man is Man and After". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 68-78).
- Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Companions to Literature
Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521414466.
- Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects.
Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. ISBN 041334360X.
- Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970.
Introduction. In Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry
and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 041603280X. p.vii-xvii.
References
- ^ Calandra (2003).
- ^ Schechter (1994, 70-71).
- ^ Schechter (1994, 70).
- ^ Quoted by Willett and Manheim (1970, x). Brecht is shown
participating in the Valentin sketch Oktoberfestschaubude in a photograph reproduced in Willett (1967, 145).
- ^ Brecht (1965, 69-70).
- ^ Benjamin (1983, 115).
External links
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