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February/March 1997
Mayhem, Mischief, and Moguls:
The Katzenjammer Kids Turn 100
By Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers
The imagery of childhood has a way of enduring. Anyone who's seen the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane knows the meaning of "Rosebud," the last word uttered by the dying
mogul. Those around him go off on a frenzied search for what he might have meant: A mistress? A secret code? In the end "Rosebud" is revealed as the one thing that the great man truly loved: his
childhood sled.
Citizen Kane is, of course, a thinly veiled portrait of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. And if Hearst had died muttering the equivalent to Welles's line in the movie, it
might well have been: "Max und Moritz." But unlike in the movie, there's no mystery behind the meaning of these names and what they meant to Hearst.
Max and Moritz are the stars of an illustrated children's book that he came to love, as a boy, during his travels to Europe in the late 19th century. The brainchild of German artist
Wilhelm Busch, the book relates the adventures of two hell-raising boys, who delight in tormenting any adult unlucky enough to cross their paths. Hearst rekindled his love for these little rascals years later
when, at the helm of his publishing empire, he was inspired to use them in the creation of The Katzenjammer Kids, one of the most brilliant moves in the history of newsprint.
Featuring the wild antics of two German rapscallions--Hans and Fritz- -the "Katzies" visually and virtually exploded on the page. A complete thumb in the eye to the conformity
of the time, they were a success from the moment they first scrambled into the Sunday color supplement of the New York Journal on December 12, 1897.
Not only was the Katzenjammer Kids the most popular strip of its time, but their gifted 20-year-old creator Rudolph Dirks--the son of a German immigrant--is credited with being one of
the "founding fathers" of the comic strip. With the Katzenjammers, Dirks established many of the visual, comic, and storytelling conventions that define the genre. And he helped raise the lowly cartoon
to a respected form of artistic expression that influenced generations of cartoon artists.
A peek in the Guinness Book of Records reveals that the Katzies are also the "most durable cartoon strip" ever. This year marks the 100th birthday of these archetypal
anarchists, though their popularity has waned over the decades. "The remarkable reception, longevity, and universal appeal of the Katzies [is] completely without parallel in comics history or that of other
popular arts," asserts Richard Marshall in his book America's Great Comic-Strip Artists. In 1995 their pivotal place in history got the official "stamp" of approval when the U.S. Post Office
included them in a set of colorful commemoratives along with 19 other classic American comic strips.
At the turn of the century color comics were a powerful promotional tool. With the commercial advent of television and radio years away and movies still in their infancy, the
"funny papers" were the hottest entertainment of the day. "When the first color comics came out, it must have been a real sensation for the readers. People had never seen color in a
newspaper," says Jim Lowe, an authority on The Katzenjammer Kids and their creators.
It was Hearst's genius in business that converted his sentimental childhood memory into hard cash. Popular comic strips engendered enormous loyalty among a paper's readers and rarely
failed to boost circulation. With the Katzenjammers, he finally gained an edge over his archrival Joseph Pulitzer, with whom he was locked in a fierce circulation war. For Hearst, the Katzies were an immediate
cash cow. For Pulitzer, they must have caused a Katzenjammer in the literal German meaning as in "headache" or "hangover."
Credit for the Katzies' longevity goes largely to a wonderfully endearing cast of characters. The family matriarch, Mamma--Hans and Fritz's mother--is a good-natured, broad-beamed
woman, blissfully unaware of the havoc wreaked by her offspring. The original cast also included a Papa Katzenjammer and Grandfather, but Dirks must have felt they didn't yield enough comic material, and so they
met the cruel fate of his eraser. In their stead came the Captain, a rotund seafarer with a walrus mustache. He joined the team in 1902, becoming somewhat of a surrogate father to Hans and Fritz. The initial
quintet of core characters was finally completed in 1905 with the arrival of the Inspector, an explosive, bearded little man in a stovepipe hat representing authority in general. It wasn't until 1936 that the
main cast was expanded to include Rollo, Miss Twiddle, and the girl Lena, the latter an occasional love/hate interest for the boys.
But it's Hans and Fritz themselves who stand at the center of the calamitous Katzenjammer universe. With their huge appetite for boyish destruction, deception, and even cruelty, they
still manage to inspire love for their quick wits and wildly imaginative stunts. Dressed in their "Sunday best" of lace collars, striped pants, and spiffy bow ties, Hans and Fritz are the picture of
innocence. But as anyone who has ever been one (or been responsible for one) can attest, boys are neither devils nor angels: They're both. And it's probably this realistic, if exaggerated, portrayal of the
"boy species" that accounts for the fanatical love that Katzies fans have harbored over the decades.
Each episode of the strip showcases Hans and Fritz's genius for causing trouble. More pain and agony, more risk to life and limb, more visual cunning is invested in most Katzies' romps
than you'll find in any ten minutes of an Indiana Jones movie. Naturally, the figures of authority--the hapless Captain and the officious Inspector--bear the brunt of most of this devil-spawned trickery and
humiliation.
Among the boys' favorite schemes, executed in endless variations, is the lighting of a firecracker under the Captain's chair. When, in one strip, the Inspector foils this plot, his
beard is permanently anchored in a fishtank filled with cement--the 1920s equivalent of Superglue. Even as the Kids' protectress, Mamma can't entirely escape their capers. In one strip, she becomes completely
bamboozled by dirty kittens that appear, disappear, and then re-appear in her bathtub.
According to historian Ron Goulard, Hans and Fritz "took the practical joke...and raised it to an art." Even though their pranks usually succeed, justice reigns in the end.
Most final panels have the boys supine, over one knee or another, receiving a royal walloping of some sort. Even then they are grinning through their tears: They will live to inflict themselves on
someone--triumphantly! --another day.
In the early years, most episodes were set in a nondescript Katzenjammer home. But to spice up what Lowe calls "essentially a one- joke comic strip," the family embarked on a
number of journeys. They visited the Grand Canyon in 1915, saw Panama in 1916, opened a circus in Peru one year later, and roamed the Amazon in the mid 1920s. In 1936 they settled permanently on a tropical
island off Africa known as Squee-Jee. In fact, most people probably know The Katzenjammer Kids only as a strip set in this location.
Though The Katzenjammer Kids is not a message-driven comic strip, topical events occasionally found their way into the story line. A strip from 1925 makes visual reference to the Scopes
Monkey Trial, which led to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Post-World War II episodes often deal with technological advances such as the atomic bomb and such speculative fancies as flying saucers.
At times the dialogue is infused with literary quotations, which proves especially humorous when coming from the mouths of these plain-spoken characters: "Ah! Ha! So dot's der rottenness vot iss in
Denmark!" exclaims the Captain in Shakespearean indignation.
The German-English patois spoken by the entire cast was a reliable source of amusement at the time The Katzenjammer Kids was first penned. Their clothes, haircuts, and household decor
leave no doubt about their ethnicity. "Today it's politically incorrect, but back then ethnic humor was much more popular and accepted," says Lowe. "The reading audience not only enjoyed the humor
of the situations but also the humor of how poorly these characters could express themselves."
Anti-German sentiment during the two world wars did little to abate the popularity of The Katzenjammer Kids, although their identity was briefly changed as a result of World War I. The
strip from July 7, 1918 shows the whole family going before a judge and explaining to him that they are really Dutch not German. Could they please change their name from "Katzenjammer" to
"Shenanigan" because it's such a nuisance being mistaken for, as they say in their inimitable way, "Choimans?" And so, for about two years, the strip was actually known as The Shenanigan Kids
and Hans and Fritz became Mike and Aleck.
While the Katzies were spared such foolishness during World War II, another well-liked strip starring Germanic characters, called Dinglehoofer and his Dog, succumbed to moral pressures.
The dog's name, after all, was Adolph, and this just didn't play well in 1936. And so, like soap opera characters of today, Adolph was written out of the plot. A little dachshund named Schnappsy replaced him.
Comic strips featuring Germanic characters were ubiquitous in the early 20th century. The Katzenjammer Kids concept alone was copied many times, not just in the United States but all
over the world, including France, Britain, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, and Israel. "People just couldn't get enough of these mischievous little kids running around," says Lowe. But the most
important spin-off came from Katzenjammer Kids creator Rudolph Dirks himself--albeit against his will.
Dirks had drawn the Katzies for Hearst's New York Journal for 15 years when, in 1912, he asked for a leave of absence to go on an extended journey. Hearst would have none of that, and
when Dirks announced he would move to the World, the rival Pulitzer paper, taking the Katzies with him, Hearst sued. In a Solomonic decision, the judge allowed Dirks to retain the copyright to the characters
while Hearst kept the title. Now an employee of the World, Dirks drew exactly the same strip, with exactly the same characters and exactly the same type of plots, only under a different title. Initially, he
called it Hans und Fritz but changed it to The Captain and the Kids in 1918. This strip quickly garnered its own loyal following and became as successful as The Katzenjammer Kids.
And what happened to Katzies? Hearst quickly found the ideal replacement for Dirks: a cartoonist named Harold Knerr, another German American, who had spent practically a decade
"auditioning" for the part. He was the creator of the Katzie spin-off The Fineheimer Twins, which featured--no surprises here--one blond and one dark- haired boy, a mother, an overweight retired sea
captain, all speaking in a funny German accent. Knerr filled Dirks' shoes with ease. "I've referred to him many times as the most successful stepfather of any strip," says Lowe. In fact, Knerr did such
a good job that probably few people were aware that another artist was at work. The most dramatic change he made was to switch the boys' names, making the blond boy into Hans and the dark-haired one into Fritz.
The Katzenjammer Kids and The Captain and the Kids ran simultaneously, but in different newspapers, for almost 65 years. Apparently, Knerr and Dirks never met in person, but they
undoubtedly knew each other's work and occasionally even copied each other's story lines. Six weeks after the Katzenjammers became Dutch, the Captain and his Kids declared they were Dutch also. And in the 1920s,
while the Captain and the Kids had adventures with the natives in the Cannibal Islands, Knerr sent his troops to the Squee-Jee Islands.
After Knerr's death in 1949, a string of other artists, including Doc Winner and Joe Musial, continued the strip, none too successfully. Musial even displayed somewhat of a sadistic
streak. "He was given to extreme, cruel acts of violence," says Marc Johnson, head archivist for King Features Syndicate, which still distributes The Katzenjammer Kids today. "The characters'
teeth had become sharp like broken glass, and usually toward the end of the strip the Captain or others would be in physical pain," he adds. Musial was succeeded by a couple of minor talents, and today the
strip is drawn by Hy Eisman. As for The Captain and the Kids, it stayed in the family. After Dirks' retirement in 1958, his son John took over the strip until its cancellation in 1979.
While the debate about whether Knerr or Dirks was the better artist continues, there's little disagreement about the latter's importance to the history of the comic strip. Scratch
beneath the ink of any Rube Goldberg panel, or even the far-out 1960's innovations of R. Crumb's Zap Comics, and you'll find Katzenjammer footprints leading to them. The conventions Dirks established include the
dialogue balloon, the multi-panel story (as opposed to the single-panel cartoon), and a regular cast. Dirks also moved the cartoon from a one- gag vignette to a storytelling device. And finally, it was he who
gave the comics an entire visual vocabulary of their own. Stars symbolizing pain, sweat beads representing fear or effort, motion lines, and footprints were just a few of his contributions that have since become
mainstays of cartoon illustration.
Even though it's the longest-running comic strip in history, The Katzenjammer Kids is sadly threatened with extinction. Only 18 newspapers around the world, including two in the United
States (the Sanford Herald in Sanford, Florida and the Martinsferry Times in Martinsferry, Ohio), still run the strip. Other countries have been more loyal, especially Mexico, where it runs in six newspapers,
including the Mexico City daily El Excelsior. The largest paper to run it is the Copenhagen magazine Ugeblatet Hjemmet, which, excluding an Icelandic newspaper, is also the only European newspaper to carry the
Kids.
Johnson puts blame for the strip's gradual demise on the "parade of bad cartoonists after Mr. Knerr died." He also agrees with Lowe's opinion that the ethnic humor, which
worked so well when the Katzies were conceived, is no longer acceptable in today's politically correct age. The newspaper comic strip in general has suffered a decline since the 1950s, largely because of
competition from television, radio, and the cinema. And, like seemingly everything else these days, the funnies have been downsized. In their heyday, a single comic strip took up an entire page. Today, six or
more are crammed onto a single page, leaving artists little room for creativity.
Many historians claim the comic strip as a uniquely American art form, but it was certainly the product of influences from many different cultures, most notably European. Britain's
William Hogarth's 18th century The Harlot's Progress and Marriage à la Mode are among such early prototypes of the comic strip, as are Swiss artist Rodolphe Töppfer's illustrated characters Crepin and
Crypto-gramme.
It's a shame that grandfathers and grandsons won't be able to curl up together in a rocking chair over the Katzies and share in the smirking realization that, yes, boys will be boys.
But the honor of "grandfather of the American comic strip" surely goes to Wilhelm Busch and to his offspring, Max und Moritz. In fact, if you listen carefully, you will hear their mad laughter echoing
in Hanover, Germany. It's there in the Wilhelm Busch Museum (see sidebar) that you will come face to face with the original bad boys of comic art. And as the Katzies sail into their 100th year, you just might
see a slight smirk of self-satisfaction on the faces of these two young German scalawags who started it all.
Regular contributors Andrea S. and David Peevers write from Los Angeles.
SIDEBAR/BOX
Hungry for more on the Katzies and comics in general? You should be able to find the following books at your local library:
The Encyclopedia of American Comics: From 1897 to the Present. Edited by Ron Goulart. New York: Promised Land Productions, 1990.
America's Great Comic-Strip Artists. Richard Marshall. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.
The World Encyclopedia of Comics. Edited by Maurice Horn. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1976.
SIDEBAR TO KATZENJAMMER FEATURE
Max und Moritz: The Original German Bad Boys
When the Katzenjammer family first appeared in the funny pages of the New York Journal in 1897, Wilhelm Busch--the source of their inspiration--was only 55. He was living in a modest
cottage in the village where he was born: Wiedensahl, Germany. The oldest of seven children, he had moved in with his uncle's family at age nine for a few years before studying mechanical engineering at the
Polytechnical School in Hanover. Quickly he realized that his true talent and interest was art.
It is Busch's artistic legacy that is celebrated in the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover. Housed in the gorgeous neoclassical Georgenpalais--once a royal summer residence--the museum
showcases both Busch's well- known and more obscure accomplishments.
The most popular room of the three-part exhibit is the one dedicated to Max und Moritz which, for Katzenjammer fans, is tantamount to something of a holy shrine. Here they can worship
at a bust of the little brats, look at their exploits in translations from around the world, and--the pi?ces de r?sistance--admire the original drawings.
Before Max und Moritz catapulted to almost instant fame in 1865, it was the book that almost wasn't because Busch's publisher refused to print the stories. In the end a man named Caspar
Braun, the publisher of the humorous weekly Fliegende Blätter (Loose Leaves) to which Busch contributed his caricatures, recognized the quality of the work. Braun agreed to print it, and from then on Busch's
career as a cartoonist was made.
Privately, though, Busch's passion lay with another art form--oil painting--that you'll find showcased in the rooms adjacent to the Max und Moritz exhibit. The Katzenjammer
"grandfather" actually received considerable training as a classical artist at academies in Düsseldorf, Antwerp, and Munich. His early works--primarily moody landscapes and portraits--reflect the
influences of such 17th-century greats as Rembrandt and Rubens. Later on, though, he shed the traditional techniques in favor of a more individualized style that looked forward rather than back.
"His art is very expressive. The colors are very subjective and he uses the brush like a pencil," explains Dr. Hans Joachim Neyer, director of the Wilhelm Busch Museum.
"In fact, when people like Paul Klee saw his art for the first time, they said, 'He's one of us'." But Busch was very bashful about his paintings, and most were never seen in public during his
lifetime.
His other talents notwithstanding, Busch will always be remembered as the creator of Max und Moritz. Not only did the book become an instant bestseller, but it was also adapted to stage
and ballet and translated into more than 30 languages. It's a success story whose final chapter has not yet been written. "Children in Germany and around the world still read it, see it, and hear it,"
says Neyer. "They just love their Max und Moritz."
--Andrea Schulte-Peevers
Poverty In Germany--A Widening Gap as Unemployment Rises to Record High
By John Dornberg
BISS is a Munich city magazine, but not one of those glossy, four- color ones that you'd put out on the coffee table. It's black-and- white, and instead of buying it at a newsstand, you
buy it from shabbily dressed people sitting glumly on sidewalks or in subway stations, more often than not surrounded by shopping bags and pieces of cardboard, which they call home. The editorial contents are
fairly glum, too, for BISS, which means "bite," is an acronym for Bürger in sozialen Schwierigkeiten. That translates loosely as "citizens in social distress." It is a magazine by the
homeless and about the homeless in Munich--of which there are an estimated 6,500--launched three years ago with the support of several charity groups. The magazine is published bimonthly and costs only DM 1.50,
or about $1.00, of which the seller gets two-thirds. It has a circulation of 50,000--and that is just in Munich.
There are magazines like BISS in practically every other major German city today, and they are symptomatic of what may seem anomalous in a country where most of the taxicabs are
status-symbol Mercedes-Benz sedans.
"Poverty in Germany" sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. After all, this is not only the country with the highest hourly wages and labor costs in the world, but it
also has a safety net of social welfare and amenities that provides comfort and security virtually from the cradle to the grave.
Consider just a few of the benefits to which Germans are entitled. They have comprehensive health insurance that provides complete medical and hospital care, and prescription drugs (no
matter how expensive) at a nominal average cost of only $3. If they lose their jobs, regardless why, they get unemployment pay equal to 60 to 67 percent of their last net wage for a period of up to 30 months, 53
to 57 percent thereafter. They are entitled to at least six weeks' paid vacation a year, 13 to 16 paid public holidays, and (until recently, when it was reduced to 80 percent) full pay when sick for up to six
weeks. The state pays parents the equivalent of about $145 a month for each of their first two children; $200 for the third child, and $230 for each child thereafter--until the offspring are 18 years old. One
parent is entitled to $300 a month (though still allowed to work 19 hours a week), for a period of up to 24 months for staying home and looking after a newborn baby. By law every three-year-old child is
guaranteed placement in a day nursery or preschool. Although there is a shortage of places, an average of 86 percent of the children are cared for, and by 1999 the rate is supposed to be 100 percent. Not only is
a college or university education free, because there are no tuition fees, but students from lower-income families receive up to $660 a month on which to live in the form of long-term student loans or grants.
But despite all the entitlements and social emoluments, some of which have roots going back more than 100 years to legislation enacted under the kaisers by the government of Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck, millions of Germans today live at or below the poverty level.
The facts and figures are astonishing: Some 4.7 million people are currently on welfare, double the number of two years ago, and at least another 2.5 million, according to the Deutscher
Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), the German Federation of Trade Unions, and the Deutscher Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, the German Nondenominational Welfare League, are entitled but too ashamed or ill- informed to
collect. Some organizations and sociologists set the actual number of German poor at 16 million.
Martin Berg, the social affairs director of the Frankfurt-am-Main city government, estimates that "only about half of the needy actually apply for and collect welfare
payments." In that city of 650, 000, more than 80,000 people are on the welfare rolls of the Sozialamt, the Social Welfare Office. Jochen Meurers, a local social worker, describes them as "the largest
homogenous population group in town," but adds that they account for only one-third of those in Frankfurt whom you could describe as poor. "Tens of thousands of others, who would be eligible for
payments, never even apply for welfare because they are too proud or are afraid of being stigmatized," says Meurers.
Some 180,000 people in Germany live on the streets and another 700, 000 are considered "homeless" but are put up in dormitories and so- called welfare hotels, boarding houses
and pensions, according to a study by the Nationale Armutskonferenz, the National Poverty Conference, an association of religious and secular charities and self-help groups.
Most of the overt signs of mass homelessness are similar to those in large American cities, though they shock Germans for whom the phenomenon is fairly new: people sleeping on benches,
under bridges, on sidewalk grates, in office-building and store entrances, and in subway or railroad stations. They truck their few belongings around in supermarket carts, and live in cardboard boxes. During the
daytime they line up for a hot meal or sandwich at one of the soup kitchens operated by various charities such as the Bahnhofsmission (Travelers' Aid Society), the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the Catholic
Church's Caritas, the Protestant Church's Diakonisches Werk, and numerous smaller organizations. They also beg and panhandle.
In fact, a stroll around any larger German city today will seem hauntingly familiar to American visitors, which was not the case as recently as a decade ago.
Less familiar will be what the authorities in Munich and Hamburg have been doing of late. They are dispatching police to chase the homeless out of the inner cities, especially subway or
railway stations and posh shopping areas, ticketing and fining them DM 100 (about $65) for loitering (which no down-and-outer can ever pay), or jailing them in lieu of non-payment. One man in Munich, Josef K.,
who occasionally hawks BISS magazine, has racked up DM 100,000 (about $65, 000) in fines, equivalent to 547 years in the pokey if he were to serve the time. The scene in Munich has merely shifted from the
Karlsplatz subway station, with its many underground shops, the main railway terminal, and on-and-around Marienplatz, to residential neighborhoods such as Solln, Nymphenburg, and Berg-am-Laim, where this
correspondent happens to live.
But there is more to the phenomenon of poverty in Germany than homelessness.
According to the Deutscher Kinderschutzbund, the German Child Protection League, 2.2 million of the 15.6 million children and juveniles under age 18 live in conditions of poverty, which
the league regards as a monthly net income of less than DM 1,250 (about $830) for a single mother with one child, DM 2,376 (about $1,580) for a family of two adults and two children. Since 1990 the number of
children under age two living off welfare payments has increased by 80 percent.
"Children under age 11," says Klaus Hurrelmann, professor of pedagogics at Bielefeld University and one of Germany's leading experts on juvenile sociology, "represent the
age group that is hit hardest by poverty, because it affects not only their mental but also their physical health." Hurrelmann recently conducted a representative survey among 3,200 kids aged 11 to 15, half
of them from families in the lowest income brackets, the other half with upper-middle incomes. Only 20 percent of the poor kids felt "normally healthy," compared to 50 percent of those from well-to-do
families. "If social inequality, that is poverty, affects children and juveniles on such a central matter as physical health and frequency of illnesses," says Hurrelmann, "then it is hypocritical
to talk about a society in which everyone is supposed to be born with equal chances."
Another shocking phenomenon is that there are an estimated 50,000 homeless street children in Germany. "The figure grows from day to day," says Heinz Hilgers, president of the
Child Protection League. By official count, there are about 3,000 in Berlin, 600 in Hamburg, and "merely" 250 in Munich. But such statistics depend on who puts them out. In Cologne, for example, the
municipal social welfare agency claims there are only 100 street kids, but the local Caritas gives the number as 2,000.
"Of course they're runaways in the classical sense that there have always been runaway kids," says Hilgers, "but an ever larger number are running away from poverty in
their families and from broken homes which are the result of poverty."
The majority live in groups, sleeping outdoors when the weather is good, in charity shelters, or even in cheap hotels. They subsist by begging, panhandling, prostitution, drug-dealing,
and stealing. The cliques with which they hang out at railroad stations are substitute families. The help that charity organizations try to give them is usually a drop in the bucket, like Cologne's House of
Hope, a refuge for teenage drug addicts, or Frankfurt's Sleep-In, each with only 20 beds for a night.
And, needless to say, as poverty has increased, so has poverty- related crime, especially among juveniles. A study by the Lower Saxony State Criminological Research Institute in Hanover
shows a direct link. Between 1987 and 1993 there was a 69.2 increase in cases of theft and larceny by juveniles, a rate almost identical to the rise in the number of youngsters whose parents are drawing welfare
payments. Studies in other states show similar patterns.
But what actually constitutes poverty in a land as ostensibly prosperous and affluent as Germany, especially as you do not see it in the form of the slums that make up cityscapes in the
United States and some other European countries (not to mention those of Latin America, Asia, and Africa)? And why has it risen so sharply in the past five years or so?
The German--and European Union--benchmark for poverty is a net income, or take-home pay, of less than half the national statistical average.
Today that means the following: The 1996 average monthly take-home income (regardless of source) was DM 1,952, or $1,300 at the present exchange rate. The poverty line was half of
that--DM 976 or $650 per month. More than 12 percent of Germans--one in eight--was at or below this line, according to a spring 1996 study by the Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaft (DIW), the German Institute for
the Economy in Berlin, one of the five leading economic think tanks.
But as Werner Hübinger, director of Frankfurt's Institut für Sozialberichterstattung und Lebenslagenforschung, the Institute of Social Research, points out, another 25.4 percent live on
the edge of the poverty line in what he describes as "precarious and increasingly threatened prosperity." These are the people whose net income is between DM 976 ($650) and DM 1,464 ($976) a month.
"Statistically speaking," says Hübinger, "they are not yet below the official poverty line, but because of a steady drop in real income as a result of rising fixed costs
and deductions from their paychecks, they find it harder and harder, year by year, to make ends meet and maintain their status at the lowest level of the middle class."
"Of course we don't count everyone earning less than half the statistical average as poor," adds Ulrich Schneider, one of the founders of the National Poverty Conference.
"A student on a monthly grant or loan of less than $650 a month, is not really poor. What matters are people's perspectives and chances of getting out of the rut, and how long they have been living on these
minimal incomes."
Nor do the same statistical criteria apply throughout the country. Frankfurt-am-Main, for example, has its own poverty line--DM 1,500 ($1,000) monthly net income plus DM 500 ($330) for
every additional member of the household, so that a family of four with less than DM 3, 000 ($2,000) is entitled to certain kinds of municipal aid. Although DM 1,500 take-home pay for a single person may be a
lot of money in some small rural town or village, it is almost a starvation income in Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital, where rent for even a one- room efficiency apartment is likely to be DM 1,000 ($660)
a month, leaving a mere DM 500 for food, clothing, and the incidentals of life.
As Werner Hübinger points out, families of four with net monthly incomes of DM 2,150 to DM 3,200 ($1,430 to $2,130)--those he puts in the near poverty group--are not safe. Fixed costs,
such as rents, heating, utilities, public transit, and taxes, insurance, and gasoline for a car if they own one, have risen steadily at anywhere from 3 to 9 percent annually for the past few years, whereas real
incomes, after tax and the social security deductions, have decreased by an average 1.3 percent since 1994. "Any extraordinary event--a broken refrigerator, washing machine, or a car that no longer passes
safety inspection--will be a catastrophe for such a family," says Hübinger.
"Naturally poverty is relative," say Diether Döring, Walter Hanesch, and Ernst Huster in their book Armut im Wohlstand (Poverty in Affluence). "As living standards have
risen, poverty has lost its significance as a sheer survival problem, but in relationship to the average standard of living in our society it keeps on reproducing itself, each time on a higher level."
That reproduction of poverty at higher levels has gained alarming momentum during the past decade or so, caused in part by reunification but primarily by spiraling unemployment.
Union with East Germany, where the economy nose-dived in 1990 and 1991 and has still not bottomed out, had a major impact on the overall poverty profile and figures. Whereas the
nationwide rate of those below the poverty line and in the near-poverty group is 37.7 percent, in East German states such as Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania almost half the people live
at or below the official poverty line.
But the main cause is unemployment, which has risen from 2.8 million in 1992 (the first year that East and Germany were counted together) to more than 4 million jobless in 1996, with no
prospects of improvement in sight. To be sure, by comparison with some other European Union countries, Germany is still fortunate. The current rate of 10.5 percent is lower than that of France and Italy, for
example, but that figure tells only half the story, for the rate in the five East German states ranges from 14 to more than 17 percent, and up to 35 percent in especially depressed areas. It hovers between 14
and 17 percent in rustbelt regions of West Germany, such as the Ruhr Basin and Bremen, where the shipyards have shut down. Moreover, one-third of the jobless have been out of work longer than a year.
Although unemployment benefits ranging from 53 to 67 percent of the last take-home pay may sound generous, especially when compared to the United States, for people in the lower income
brackets they are usually not enough to stop the slide into poverty and dependency on Sozialhilfe, or welfare, which is the responsibility of city, town, and county governments (in contrast to all the other
emoluments of Germany's complex social safety net, which are paid out of federal funds). Regardless of who actually pays, Sozialhilfe is an entitlement under a 1961 federal law.
Not only have the number of people and the amounts paid out (nearly DM 60 billion or $40 billion in 1996) more than tripled since 1985, but there has been a dramatic change in the kinds
of recipients. A decade or so ago the majority receiving welfare payments were the elderly with low pensions, such as women who had not worked outside the home, and the mentally and physically disabled. But
today most recipients are single parents, primarily divorced or abandoned women with small children, who account for 16 percent of the total; long- term jobless who have lost their unemployment benefits or
cannot subsist on what they get, especially men over 45 who are not rehired, regardless of qualifications because of their age; and young people who either cannot find vocational training places or jobs after
completing their apprenticeships.
The majority of those Germans who go to the Sozialamt for the first time and apply for welfare these days are between 18 and 30 years old. Munich's social welfare office maintains that
40 percent of all its recipients are under 24.
"Today we have mass poverty," says Dieter Sengling of the German Nondenominational Welfare Association, "but the federal social welfare law has not changed since its
enactment 35 years ago. It was intended as a transitional form of assistance for the indigent and destitute until the benefits of the Wirtschaftswunder, the "economic miracle" extended to everyone. For
a while they did. But nowadays a law that was written to help several hundreds of thousands of needy people has to secure the very existence of millions."
Moreover, once people go on welfare, they stay because of the nature of the system which becomes a vicious circle of entrapment in permanent poverty. "In 1983," says Stephan
Leibfried, a sociologist at Bremen University, "five out of ten recipients were off welfare again after four months. Now it takes years, if they can get out of the vortex at all."
Those who apply for Sozialhilfe, although it is their legal right, feel--and are made to feel--like supplicants. The bureaucrats who administer the system--that is, decide on and make
the payments--tend to treat the applicants as loafers, cheats, and abusers, which is one of the reasons why about one-third of Germany's poor who would be entitled to welfare support, don't even apply for it.
Worst of all, Sozialhilfe has built-in disincentives to get out of the system, because whatever amounts of money a recipient may earn with odd jobs, or receive from some other source,
such as Kindergeld, the monthly state subsidies for children, old-age pensions, or gifts from relatives, are deducted again from the welfare payments. Though the intent is to help the poor, in effect it keeps
them poor.
The following examples show how it works. A single adult is entitled to a monthly dole of DM 531 ($354) for food, DM 95 ($63) for incidentals, plus DM 486 ($324) for rent and heat (but
no other utilities), making a total of DM 1,112 ($741), or less than half of the average net wage of an unskilled laborer. A single parent with one four-year-old child is entitled to DM 1,838 ($1,225), from
which the social welfare office has deducted the Kindergeld as well as any child support payments. A family of four, with two small children, gets a total of DM 2,684 ($1,789), after deduction of the Kindergeld.
When these child allotments were raised by DM 20 in January 1997, the welfare offices, not the parents, benefited from the increase. Health insurance premiums are paid directly by the welfare office to the
insurance agencies, but there are no contributions to social security, so that people on welfare lose credit for the months or years they are on the dole.
The law provides special allotments for larger purchases of clothing, household appliances and furniture, but recipients must apply for each of these and await a ruling by their case
officers. In practice this usually means one pair of shoes a year, an overcoat every three or four years, and maybe, if it's a generous case officer, some toys for the children at Christmas.
Welfare office case workers can inspect the homes of recipients at any time to check on abuses. Recipients are required to turn in their social security cards to the welfare office, so
that they cannot legally get a job on the side. But they can be forced to work on city or county projects at DM 2.50 ($1.66) per hour, though they are allowed to keep that paltry amount without suffering
deductions from their welfare payments. Moreover, if they refuse regular employment offered by the local labor office, welfare payments are reduced by 25 percent.
Rainer Roth, a Frankfurt sociologist, has estimated that, on average, Sozialhilfe is enough to sustain recipients for only 19.5 days of the month. He examined the eating habits of 200
welfare families and concluded that their diets were nutritionally unbalanced. "No wonder," he says "that about 75 percent of the recipients try to get additional money by panhandling, stealing,
or moonlighting."
Poverty in Germany may indeed sound like a contradiction in terms, and although it is relative, it feels real, and it's getting worse. Munich's social welfare office has estimated that,
unless there is a dramatic economic upswing and reduction in unemployment, which is unlikely, by 1998 there may be ten million Germans on welfare and another three million living at or below the official poverty
line. BISS magazine seems to have a future.
Contributing editor John Dornberg writes from Munich.
Willkommen in Waldsee: Where Learning German is Fun
By Mary Jean Jecklin
"It takes a whole village"--of parents, teachers, politicians, friends, and of course, the children themselves to raise a young person to become a responsible world citizen.
This was the motto of the Summer 1996 Language Villages near Bemidji, Minnesota, created by Concordia College. In the rustic northern Minnesota woods, Concordia has built several villages, including a German
town named Waldsee.
Reminiscent of a village in the Black Forest, Waldsee, or lake in the forest, is staffed by talented educators and dedicated counselors. They call the Waldsee experience a game. Using
total language immersion, their mission is to foster environmental and global awareness and make learning German fun. They have succeeded.
"It's so much fun to learn the German language and traditions," enthused 14-year-old Bryan Mechell from Winona, Minnesota, who spent his fourth year at Waldsee last summer
(1996). During his two weeks at Waldsee, Bryan continued improving his oral, written, and reading skills.
Bryan is one of more than 5,600 young people ranging in ages from seven to 18, from all 50 states and several countries, who attend the Language Villages each summer. He first went to
Waldsee almost by accident. Four years ago a (then) 10-year-old buddy who'd already been to Waldsee said, "It's great. Let's go together." Bryan's parents, Harry and Lauren, agreed. Since then, the
whole family has become enthusiastic supporters of the language camp. "Waldsee gives young people the sense of the world not being so big a place. The camp encourages them not to set limits on their
aspirations," said Harry, chair of the music department at Winona State University where Lauren instructs piano. Mature beyond his 14 years, Bryan looks to his future, believing that knowing German will
help him succeed. "Knowing German will offer me more job opportunities."
Over the years, Harry said, Bryan's younger brother, Christopher, 11, watched his brother have so much fun at Waldsee, he was also anxious to attend. This past summer Christopher went
for his first session, a one-week introduction to the language and culture for children ages seven to 11.
Can learning to ask "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" really be fun? From the moment they arrive, the children are so busy playing games and sports, singing, making crafts, and enjoying
other activities that they seldom think about the fact that they are doing some serious learning. When asked what he does at Waldsee, one young boy replied, "We play games all day."
Of course the "games" are all in German. This is part of the total immersion process. At the beginning of the summer, the staff hold a pep rally and jump over an imaginary
cultural border, leaving the English language and culture behind. Except for rare instances, they will seldom step out of their adopted German character, culture, and language.
Nor do the villagers. Bryan explains that when a family arrives on Monday afternoon for registration, a German "border patrol" checks the car for "contraband" and
backpacks and bags for English books, cassette tapes, CDs, and anything else that might interfere with learning. At the Bahnhof, or train station, an attractive, four- season building designed in Bavarian style,
a passport is issued. New names are adopted: Bryan becomes Johannes, Christopher becomes Wolfgang. Then the family heads for the child's Haus, or dorm, a handsome, comfortable structure also resembling a
Bavarian building.
The youths immediately start exploring. They check out the bank, and store (requests for Toblerone chocolate must be made in German and paid for with Deutsch Marks), and the Gasthof
(dining hall). Superb German cuisine is wolfed down three times daily by kids who quickly learn that if they want to eat they have to learn to say bitte, danke, and "reich mir die Milch, den Salat, und die
Suppe," pass the milk, salad, and soup.
The time soon after the family leaves is a delicate one. Youngsters with strong family ties are vulnerable to pangs of homesickness. The solution: Keep the kids busy and help them make
new friends. Dormmates, adorable, laughing, seven-year-old girls quickly bond with each other and their counselor, 18-year-old Karina. She is from Berlin; other counselors may be Austrian or Swiss-German. They
help villagers realize that learning German is more than an academic exercise. A senior high school student, Karina could herself easily be susceptible to homesickness. But this usually isn't a problem, because
there's plenty to do and affection is easily given: By the end of the first day the little girls are spontaneously hugging each other and Karina. For Christopher and his peer group of 11-year-old boys, bonding
with the counselors is slightly, but not much, more reserved.
The counselors and teachers are one of the camp's greatest assets. Typically they are college or graduate level students or German teachers. Before camp starts they come together for
some special training in educational methods and child management. What draws most of the staff here is a love of Waldsee. Former villager Amy Wells, "Käthe," 23, now teaches German in a Minnesota
middle school.
"It's intensely creative working with the kids. We can put into practice what we only study in theory in college," says Jon Olsen, "Berndt," 27, also a former
villager and current graduate student at Georgetown University.
Like Amy and Jon, many of the original learners have returned to work in the village since the first German language camp was held 25 years ago in 1961. One dean of the village, Dan
Hamilton, a Waldsee camper in 1968-71, takes six weeks out of his work schedule each summer as associate director of the U.S. Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff in Washington to work here. Another
Waldsee dean, Erin Jennings, "Ilse," was a camper for six years and has been on staff for 16 years. A third dean, Carl-Martin Nelson, has been on staff eight years. Ties to Waldsee run strong and deep.
For many on staff, being a Waldsee villager influenced academic majors and career choices. After three years as a camper and two as a counselor, "Julia" Gretchen Eickenberg,
20, is majoring in languages at Iowa's Grinnell College.
Gretchen's enthusiasm while teaching is delightful to watch. On the first day of camp she assembles her charges for an energetic nature walk to nearby Turtle River Lake. On the way the
children learn a half dozen vocabulary words--umbrella, forward, sideways, backward-- all acted out by Julia. They slowly march along practicing their words while flapping their imaginary umbrellas up and down
and moving backward, forward, and sideways until they reach the lake shore. At the edge of the lake she translates into German the popular song with the common refrain, "head, shoulders, knees, and toes,
knees and toes." The kids are soon happily singing along.
In another part of Waldsee, Christopher and his group are learning words to help them work as a team while playing a ball game. Strong emphasis is placed on making everyone a winner.
Since there are no losers, everyone enjoys it.
Among these beginners, speaking and understanding the language is the primary focus of their week of learning. How do you learn to say, "Wie heisst du?" By watching a silly
retelling of the German fairy tale 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' Villagers join staff in asking each dwarf, three times, "What's your name?" After 21 repetitions most kids can shout "What's
your name?" with great gusto.
Because a few youngsters come to camp with some German language skills, an assessment of ability is conducted, and the kids are divided into similarly skilled "families."
Three times daily these families meet for learning that is, of course, fun.
In a family of similarly skilled 11-year-old girls, all wearing swim suits, teamwork and cooperation are stressed while learning the words for different colors by grabbing foam balls
floating in a plastic wading pool. As Dean Ilse calls out a color, the girls help each other by excitedly directing blindfolded friends to grab the correctly colored balls. Part of the fun is being splashed with
cold water on a hot summer day.
Even everyday necessities like serving meals, making beds, dusting, and cleaning the bathrooms involve German.
Will these youth really learn something? Absolutely. By the end of the week most of the children will, indeed, have acquired some language skills. The fortunate ones will be able to
return to their schools in the fall and continue their studies. If their schools don't have German classes, Ilse says, some motivated children take the initiative and study on their own using tapes and workbooks.
Will all the children like language camp? In every camp situation there are always some kids who would rather be someplace else doing something different, or nothing. The Waldsee
parents' handbook states that disruptive behavior may be grounds for dismissal. However, with two or three mature, skilled counselors per small group at Waldsee, it's relatively easy to keep most kids happy,
involved, and out of mischief. Instructors say that by the end of the week many of the initially disinterested kids want to return. In fact, the return rate is high, between 50-60 percent. This percent would be
even higher, 65-70 percent, according to Paul Magnuson, until this past summer the Language Villages' assistant director for public relations, except it excludes youths who become too old for the summer programs.
Older children, who have some German and may have been at camp before, return to Waldsee to work on improving their skills. For these youths, reading and writing receive extra
attention. Their sessions can last one, two, or four weeks. In the "High School Credit Programs," youths in grades nine to 12, who participate in four-week- sessions and receive 180 hours of
instruction, can earn one year of high school language credit. The goal of this program is an immersion experience in language, culture, and learning. "It's fun to be totally immersed in the language. I
really like it when I can talk with my counselors," says language-proficient Bryan.
Another four-week program, "Odyssey," resulting in one year of high school credit, is available for youths with a minimum of two years of high school language study or the
equivalent. Youths in this program explore contemporary sociopolitical themes, historical roots, and global implications using content-based instruction.
Another summer offering for language-proficient high school students, "Germany After the Wall:" Modern Germany, Culture and Civilization," is a college-level immersion
course. These advanced speakers take an in-depth look at modern Germany's political, economic, social, and cultural trends against the backdrop of the recent German past. For their efforts, they receive a
one-semester credit from Concordia College.
As with the younger children, the older villagers enjoy plenty of fun activities: Fussball, or soccer, fencing, dancing, swimming, band, drama, baking, chess, and learning ethnic arts
like Bavarian folk painting, Swiss paper cutting, and even cheese making. They also have families that meet regularly. Thinking globally occurs naturally after spending a make-believe day in the Middle Ages,
acting out the Wilhelm Tell story, or taking an imaginary train from Berlin to Munich, Vienna, or Bern. In a special Grüne Welle (green wave) program, for youths ages 14-18, participants improve their German
while learning to appreciate the natural world through camping, canoeing, cooking outdoors, and other activities.
For many villagers the summer highlight is "International Day," held twice each season. On this day, in addition to German, a babel of other languages is heard as the
villagers come together at the German camp. Languages spoken represent nine other camps and countries: Spain, France, China, Denmark, Japan, Russia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The spirit and importance of
cross-cultural communication and understanding shines as youths from the various villages celebrate their friendship with ethnic demonstrations of dancing, music, fun, food, and some serious discussions of how
to solve world problems.
Adults can also learn at Waldsee. Those with two or more years of teaching experience can participate in and earn graduate credit from two-week summer Teacher Seminars. Seminars are in
English and include workshops with Language Village staff and the opportunity to observe youth at the language camps.
Other educators enjoy returning for the summer four-day Enrichment Workshop. As part of this experience, they help celebrate International Day.
People age 55 or older will enjoy studying German through Elderhostel. Only a love of lifelong learning is required--not a degree. "Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in Minnesota:
The Next Best Thing to Being There!" is a one-week German-language and - culture experience at Waldsee.
For Waldsee's regular 1997 summer sessions, which included tuition, food, lodging, and instructional materials for one week, the cost is $385, two weeks are $825, four weeks are $1,850.
Special programs cost more.
Children traveling to Minnesota from afar fly into the Twin Cities International Airport, where they are met by a staff person and driven to Waldsee. Families like the Mechells, who
live within driving distance, often spend a few days in this popular resort area before or after dropping their child off at Waldsee. The town of Bemidji is about 15 minutes away. Itasca State Park, about an
hour away, has excellent accommodations, including a historic lodge and cabins.
GL readers may recognize the 1996 motto "It takes a whole village" as similar to the title of Hillary Clinton's recent book It Takes a Village. The proverb is actually of
African origin. But certainly the Clintons would approve of Concordia's use of this saying, especially since Chelsea spent several summers studying German here--proof that the Language Villages do indeed reach
out to embrace, educate, and help raise the children of the world.
Proud of her Swiss-German and Alsatian heritage, Minneapolis freelance writer Mary Jean Jecklin is a former teacher.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Concordia Language Villages
Concordia College
901 8th Street
Moorhead, MN 56562
Tel.: (218) 299-4544;
in MN (800) 247-1044,
outside MN (800) 222- 4750
Fax: (218) 299-3807
In Bemidji at the camp (218) 586-2214
Internet: clvoffice@village.cord.edu
Web: <http://www.cord.edu>
Bemidji Chamber of Commerce and CVB
300 Bemidji Avenue
Bemidji, MN 56601
Tel.: (800) 458-2223
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