From the origin of the carnival

the fool himself

So you've made up your mind,
you want to laugh off the evening with all your heart, you want to replenish your feel-good hormone balance, you want to relax your soul and just be happy with yourself and the whole world and then that?

First you shell out a whopping 50 euros per person for yourself and then the same amount for your companion. That's what 2 tickets cost at the big carnival ball. Then you tried it on, took it off, gave it up, held your breath, practiced making faces and sucking in your stomach, until your old clown costume fitted again and what is: Nothing is - the ball falls out! All other mask celebrations are sold out, even on a small scale!! Disappointing, but then one more ray of hope: next weekend, the carnival parade in the neighboring community. Again masked, made up, grin practiced, then rain, sleet!
What now?

Research on the internet! Masks, ball, event, mask run, disguise, fasnet, carnival, carnival session. Now just quickly enter all the relevant terms and then there is only this:
www.maskenmuseum.de
What? You don't believe that there's nothing else on offer?
Then take a look for yourself, try it in foreign languages ​​too: ball du masque, mummery, masquerade, danca de mascara, festa des mascheres - and again:
www.maskenmuseum.de
You wouldn't believe that yourself!
Always only: www.maskenmuseum.de
What's that supposed to mean! You want to have fun and experience something, don't you? A museum, you haven't been there since you were a child, was that horrible for you? Do you remember?
Why should this mean anything for you now?
You click on it - only because nothing else relevant is offered. You don't want to leave anything untried!
And there it is in black and white - well, there are still a lot of colorful pictures in between:
This museum is really exciting and there are tons of impressive, horrible, funny, caricatured, frightening, strange, simple, artistic faces inside. Faces that stare at you, make faces at you, that take you to other countries and each of these 5000 faces can tell you its special story! You're sure to find someone there that you want to talk to. You wanted to be told funny but also exciting stories, right? You wanted to have a good time! They also wanted to have fun, if I remember correctly!

From the clown itself, from the eternal clumsy:
Well, that's how it starts!

act 1

Longobard and Greek death masks.
That sounds terribly outdated and boring, maybe a bit scary or rather sad. You can't make anyone laugh, can you?
Perhaps one wanted to prove to the neighborhood in the past, as the Longobard great heir in the village, that grandpa, who was lying there in the grave, probably would have been quite right that his fortune wasn't left lying idle for so long, but rather just like that Fast squandered and squandered. What to do? Well then you just take that nasty mask of glued cloth off your dried up skull that was supposed to keep him well beyond death in his final years and give it to the next best slave or a cheap sleaze comedian. Then you just let this guy with grandpa's death mask rattle off true-untrue hymns of praise for his admittedly wayward grandson at the next family celebration, to which all the deceased are invited. Now the neighbors will finally see

Act 2
Socrates and the Cynics: Not philosophically extravagant, but something very pragmatic: Never try to convert someone to your opinion in a know-it-all way - that gets on your nerves and the other one blocks. In conversation, act rather ignorant and clumsy, lead the other by letting them lead. Skillfully ask ignorant questions that put the other person on the right path in your opinion! That's how it works!

Act 3
Saturnalia - by the thunder of Zeus, what does that mean?
With the Romans and Greeks, at the end of the old year or at the beginning of the new, all the servants and slaves were allowed to slip into the role of their masters and heartily, in such a funny, because unusual way, say what they think gentlemen disguised as servants, then had to be respected as such. Unfortunately, it only hides an upside-down world, but it also turns out to be a helpful role-playing game that should lead to a better understanding.

Act 3
Comedia dell Arte or just folk theater from village life?
Every village has its special characters who have grown into village life: the priest, the teacher, the village idiot, the rogue - always the same roles, you know what to expect and then the plot is mixed up a bit and everything becomes varied, exciting and funny: maybe like "Schillerstrasse" for example. Well, it's more interesting, because the television wasn't on all the time in the Baroque era.

Act 4
King Lear, the leprosy, the plague, the shame block:
Now imagine: the television really isn't on every evening anymore: that's worse than the plague! What will they do then? Well (see above) because there are no more free places for carnival events, I could only threaten you with the museum: ugly faces, tortured and caricatured. Expensive entrance fee of 5 euros per person with a scary tour or 20 euros for the group!
It was free in the baroque! Tortured Faces: Leprosy and the plague were rampant and if not in your own village, there was the shame stake and torture where unwanted people were tormented until their faces contorted in pain. Tasteless but cheap, what do you think? Yes, yes: people laughed at those marked by illness and fate. Half glad that you weren't affected yourself, half gaping out of pure curiosity and at the same time frightened by all the bad things. They laughed at the hunchbacked dwarf, the limping clumsy man, the drooling old man.

Act 5
The Village Fright
Well, we know this old gentleman from our childhood, who occasionally had a droplet running out of the corner of his mouth – that was a memorable image. But this old woman, who put on make-up like a 16-year-old, also attracted attention in the village. But we were particularly shocked by the old war veteran, who was missing an eye and half his face, and we would have loved to pat Mama and ask why they had to look so ugly, so unusual. The decency we had been taught ruled that out. But Karl from the neighbors, he could imitate this old woman (who hadn't gotten anyone, as his father always said), Karl, he could imitate "d ólle Vettel" so well that we all had to laugh heartily. Exactly such "unfamiliar looking" people were at the carnival game in the villages, but always gladly worn masks. She could be fooled.

Act 6
The King's Fool:
Only children and fools tell the truth, because only you are allowed this almost ignorantly babbled outrage. The little hunchback, the king's court jester, was only allowed to blaspheme because one could look down on him, because one could turn anger at what was said into contempt. Well, fools could of course also be entertained, including funny jokes.

Act 7
And of course there was also Ullenspiegel
All those court jesters and white advisers who were not only viewed from above, but whose hidden oracular advice the rulers listened to nolens-volens.
So you know! As a child, I almost found Eulenspiegel boring again, with all its instructively incomprehensible, almost moralizing stories. Did you feel the same way?

Act 8
Loki and Prometheus.
In all old religions there are gods and heroes who shined within the heaven of gods and heroes by giving a new twist to the precisely regulated gathering of the heavenly beings with chaotic jokes and pranks. I read that with expectation. This is how the fire got to the people and the humor and excitement in the story.

Act 9
All the tricksters.
Remember that cartoon about a hilarious coyote who keeps getting blown up or otherwise damaged while playing his pranks? Now this story comes from the mythology of the Navajo and other desert-dwelling Indian peoples of North America: That's Trickster! But so is Prometheus in animal form. This is the prankster whose misfortune one rejoices in and whose deeds one enjoys - such a selfless fool!
Many of the monkey and chicken masks of Africa can also be classified here, the clown masks, the mudthrowers of the Hopi Indians as well as the grinning seal masks of the Inuit, the Bonges masks with sad as well as caricaturing symptoms of illness in Bali, the pockmarks from Hahoe in South Korea and the Cherokee of the Smokey Mountains. You can laugh about animal and disease masks. But also about the foreign. The pockmarked among the Indian peoples is the white invader who uses violence to make himself unpopular everywhere.

Act 10
Carne vale, carnival. Meat farewell and all joy too!
But why is everyone in uniform with a tricorne hat? It was the Frenchman, whose neat bold demeanor was well known in the 19th century. secretly admired, but who, as a hereditary enemy of economic interests, was forced to be hostile to, one should make fun of him. But today: Let more wool in? Schunkel, schunkel, kille, kille, who is allowed to laugh about whom today? We are disgustingly pejorative, mocking strangers: the Kerner with their Hucken, who descend into the Inn Valley and are carved into grotesque masks there as newcomers, the Rotschägata (raggedly dressed) in the Lötschental, the blue Jöid in the Rhön. They were strangers and therefore always a source of ridicule and persecution.

Act 11
White jester and smooth larva
But why do people laugh at this white jester, this smooth, finely cut and almost youthful face, this face that seems so reserved, so unassailable?
Haven't you ever asked yourself that? What is this harlequin doing in his beautiful white robes in the circus? The clowns make stupid jokes, fall, balls fall around. It's easy to laugh, isn't it?
But these white make-up, clean white clothes with elegant frills, they're not funny at all, they're rather dismissive. Without flaws without joke, right?
These uniform mask faces of the baroque masks, which were neither male nor female, neither old nor young, were completely uninteresting in terms of game character. But they were good at cloaking and hiding the face behind the mask. If someone was ill with leprosy, smallpox or the plague, he naturally wanted to hide such miserable physical ailments, which were so clearly written on his face. However, the patient was also obliged to prevent his terrible and unacceptable appearance from injuring the eyes of the general public when he was completely unveiled, without scarves and masks. Smooth masks, baroque masks were thinly carved, noble, painted with several layers of primer and therefore expensive - unfortunately only for the rich.
Last luxury before death. With masks like the Flecklesleuten in Upper Franconia like the Fasenickl from Kipfenberg with a bell attachment, so that the "jaundice" ("Göisucht) can be heard from afar, this connection becomes clear.

What are we laughing at?