The Germans take their humour very seriously. It is not a joking matter. Harsh, astringent and satirical is their style. The cabarets of pre-war Berlin are famous. Their bite was ferocious: the nearest modern equivalent is the British Spitting Image, but this is playful by comparison.
Classic German satire is to put the boot in and twist the knife.
Humour is used by the Germans to come to terms with life's reverses and hardships. Most of them know that the best laid plans will probably collapse into ruin. This is all quite natural for, if a German maps out his morning or a weekend trip away and it all goes wrong, he will meet the disappointment with fortitude, a wry joke and the quiet satisfaction that he knows how this wicked old world works.
The Germans don't view Sod's Law as the occasional irritant in the way the British do. Rather, it is seen as an Iron Fact of Life to which all must yield. If more than three things go right consecutively in a German's day it will occasion incredulous stares, astonished disbelief and fearful speculations about uncanny forces at work in the world.
The Germans' humour does not translate very well. Most German jokes when translated into English are no funnier than the average till receipt. Learn a bit of German, and you'll soon come to realize that there is a rich seam of humour running through German life. But their humour is largely a matter of context. There is a time and a place for being funny and for laughing. Ordnung decrees that humour is not the oil that makes the days run smoothly. You do not tell jokes to your boss (although levity with other colleagues may be all right at times), nor do you lard your sales pitch or lecture with witticisms. Irony is not a strong German suit and may easily be misunderstood as sarcasm and mockery.
German humour tends to have a target. After all, you don't throw a custard pie into your own face. While they are happy to laugh at others, and especially the misfortunes of others (other Germans, that is), their faltering self-confidence doesn't allow for self-ridicule. They do not joke about foreigners; jokes about East Germans only began after reunification. The butt end of German humour centres on regional characteristics: the stiffness of the Prussians, the brash, easy-going nature of the Bavarians; the bovine East Friesians, the quickness of Berliners, the slyness of the Saxons.
The Bavarians see jokes as a convenient way of taking revenge on their old archenemies, the Prussians. The Swabians don't mind jokes about their thriftiness, but prefer to be economical with them. Hence:
A Prussian, a Bavarian and a Swabian are sitting together drinking a beer. A fly falls into each one's mug. The Prussian pours away his beer with the fly and orders a new beer. The Bavarian picks the fly out of his mug with his fingers and continues drinking. The Swabian picks out the fly and then forces it to spit out the beer it has drunk.
To help you get a joke, Germans will gladly explain it to you. If they are of an academic bent - or from Stuttgart - the finer points of the explanation will be repeated so you cannot fail to appreciate it. For some Germans, humour is like a great painting, it must be planned, prepared for and built up in layers over a long period of time. For others, it is like the battered body of the Six Million Dollar Man; they have the technology and they will rebuild it so that it is better than nature made it. Either way, a joke or a shaggy dog story will be polished and honed, refined, revised, improved, re-worked and bettered in every possible way - until it is absolutely perfect and quite incapable of raising a titter.
Part of the problem is that most Germans apply the rule that more equals better. If a passing quip makes you smile, then surely by making it longer the pleasure will be drawn out and increased. As a rule, if you are cornered by someone keen to give you a laugh, you must expect to miss lunch and most of that afternoon's appointments. If you're lucky you may get home in time for Nachbarn (Neighbours).
Humour in Germany is also subject to an official timetable. A good example is the custom of the Karneval celebration which is particularly popular in the Rhineland. It starts officially at 11 minutes past 11 o'clock on November 11th (no insult to Remembrance Day is intended, it just happens that 11.11 is a very orderly numerical combination to the Germans, and order is also pivotal to emotional enjoyment).
Pageants, parties and performances continue for some months, all with the official obligation to be funny. To avoid disorder, strict rules have been set up to organise the merriment as efficiently as possible. During congregational speeches, which are endless concoction of jokes, every joke is marked by an orchestral signal so that nobody will laugh at the wrong moment. Disorderly humour is not only nothing to laugh about, it is often not even recognized.
Laughter is known to be one of the best ways of making friends. No good dating is possible without it either. Joking, horsing around, laughing make people more open, break any cultural barriers, and - yes! - help them fall in love.
There are some peculiarities of exercising your sense of humor with a German. Help yourself to some more advice from Lynne:
When it comes to humor, use some common sense. When you first meet most Germans, they might seem rather humorless, but after you get to know them, most of them can relax and enjoy a good belly-laugh as well as any American. And they tend to laugh at pretty much the same things -- except, of course, for anything specifically culturally or linguistically based. Your German date might not understand an English pun any better than you would understand a German pun, and he certainly WON'T know anything about "Leave It to Beaver" or anything about American culture in the '50s and '60s, though he MIGHT know more about American politics in the '50s than YOU know! He might also know Star Trek, the Simpsons, Home Improvement (called "Hoer mal wer da haemmert!" here), and quite a bit about modern Americana.
DON'T make any stupid, tasteless jokes about Nazis or saluting him and saying, "H eil Hitl er!", etc. He's no more likely to be Nazi or neo-Nazi than your next-door neighbor is, and he's more likely to be a little on the sensitive side on the issue than your neighbor might be. You can ASK him anything you want to know about Germany during WWII (though perhaps preferably after you get to know him a little better), but don't make any jokes at his or any other German's expense. Most Germans have a bit of a guilt complex on the issue, even the very young ones, partly because so many nations throughout the world continue to seek to punish Germany for what happened 55+ years ago.
And another thing: while dating a foreigner, remember that love is all that matters, and everything else - inevitable reaction of the relatives, foreign language, new food, different climate - are mere trifles and you can overcome them TOGETHER.
