Ä: Kolumnen

What is it - the author wrote a column for 20 odd years in a satire magazine called Titanic. These are articles from 1995-96.

This is impossible to rate. Some of it is brilliantly funny. Some of it is tasteless or needlessly provocative (subjective? times have changed and you'll notice...). It was written by a middle aged white guy in the 90s. It's impossible to understand without a LOT of cultural context (phrases, people, ads, places, etc). There is a lot of play on words. Only pick this up if you are willing to read something you won't always agree with, have an excellent command of German, and quite possibly a German native sitting next to you.

Difficulty: It's more precise than conversational German (= difficult) and playful (= a LOT of wordplay). The author writes in a stream of conscious style (abrupt shifts in topic and reference) and makes some poignant observations that make you think, and either wraps these into humour or something provocative. The humour often hits the mark, but most of his provocations were tasteless imo. From his perspective that was probably the point.

For reference I have comfortable C1 German and have close ties to Germany since more than a decade. I read this out loud to my German husband and he had to explain what felt like half of the gags. There were so many references unknown to me, I didn't even bother asking everything - I only asked if he had a good laugh that I totally missed. That happened about once a page for the best (funniest) articles. I would not have bothered reading it on my own, but it was fun reading it together. (In contrast, I can read narrative works with easy comprehension and rarely need any clarification. )