Sunday, October 18, 2009

Humor under Communism

"Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year."

"What would happen if the desert became communist? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage."

"Christmas has been canceled, goes another joke. Mary didn't find any diapers for the baby Jesus, Joseph was called up to the army and the three kings didn't get a travel permit."

-Jokes from East Germans under Communism. Spiegel has an interesting article about the West German spies who collected the sardonic jokes of East Germans before the wall fell.

2 comments:

Holly said...

I recently watched the film The Lives of Others, which had a very silly joke about how even the sun itself could fall under the sway of the East German politics.

... good movie, though.

Rufus said...

Oh yeah, The Lives of Others is a fantastic film- I often recommend that to World Civ students when we're covering that part of the twentieth century.