The Role Reversal

In February 2026, the German newspaper Die Welt published an opinion piece by Franziska Zimmerer titled "When Democracy Drowns in Permanent Jest." Her thesis: comedians are turning into politicians, politicians are turning into comedians, and Berlin's municipal sanitation department prints puns on its trash cans instead of emptying them. Irony, she argues, has replaced accountability. Hannah Arendt is invoked. The piece concludes with the wish that everyone would please just do their job again.

The article is well observed and politely argued. Zimmerer describes the symptoms correctly, but she asks the wrong question. She asks: Why is everyone doing the wrong job? The right question would be: Why is nobody doing the right one anymore?

The Honest One

Georg Schramm, born in 1949. Clinical psychologist by training. A working-class kid — the only one in his grammar school class. Top of his year in the Bundeswehr's elite commando course. Failed at officer school for "character unsuitability" — a verdict that, in hindsight, reads like a recommendation. He spent twelve years as a clinical psychologist before giving up his secure career in 1988 to become a political cabaret artist.

What followed were twenty-five years on stage that stand without equal in the history of German political cabaret. Schramm created characters — the embittered pensioner Lothar Dombrowski, the lifelong Social Democrat August, the stiff-lipped Lieutenant Colonel Sanftleben — that were not comedy routines but compressed human archetypes. His final program, "Master Yoda's End," was no longer cabaret. It was theater. The laudation for his Göttinger Elch prize called him "a radical exception — a moralist and intellect of a kind that perhaps only appears once in a generation."

And then he stopped.

At the end of 2013, right on his 65th birthday. He put it this way: "Everything has been said." And: "The wit had somehow gotten lost on me — the humor." And, more honestly still: "I have largely fulfilled my obligation, and I long for a piece of irresponsibility."

His longtime director Hilde Schneider articulated the insight behind his retirement with clinical clarity: "At best, you manage to unsettle the audience or get them to see things from a different angle. But actually change things, so that it's reflected in politics — that you can never achieve. If that's your ambition, it becomes frustrating over time."

That is the sentence Franziska Zimmerer should have quoted.

Schramm was the only one who drew the logical conclusion from the situation. Not out of resignation, as he emphasized, but out of insight. The court jester had understood that the king was no longer listening — not because he was deaf, but because there was no king anymore. Only functionaries pretending to govern.

He retreated to Badenweiler in the Black Forest foothills, buried his trophies in the garden, invested his money in organic farms and cooperative banks, and let the grass grow over his awards. This is not a punchline. It is a balance sheet.

The Ones Who Kept Going

What happens when you don't draw that conclusion?

You become Dieter Nuhr. Or Monika Gruber. Or one of the many who still stand on stages but no longer tell jokes.

Zimmerer's article describes it accurately: Nuhr frowns his way through current affairs; you wait minutes for something you could call a joke. What he delivers are commentaries in the "things used to be better" register. His punchlines sound like parliamentary speeches from backbenchers. The applause comes not because something was funny, but because the audience feels validated in its political worldview.

Gruber went a step further. In the summer of 2023, she stood on a stage in Erding alongside Bavaria's deputy minister-president Hubert Aiwanger, demonstrating against the federal heating law. No jokes, no exaggeration, no distance. The court jester had become a keynote speaker. Aiwanger gushed that she would become "the heroine of all Germany."

One can grant Gruber that she acted out of genuine frustration. When politics fails to do its job, someone wants to fill the gap. The problem is: a cabaret artist who does politics is no longer a cabaret artist. And a cabaret artist who does politics is not a politician either. She is a citizen with a microphone and stage experience. That is not nothing, but it is not the role she is supposed to fill.

Schramm had understood this earlier than the others. He could feel the line between illumination and lecturing shifting, could feel the growing danger that his performances would devolve into what he himself called "adult education classes with a wagging finger." He drew the conclusion. The others did not.

Why not? The answers are as banal as they are honest. Financial dependency. Habit. The fact that after thirty years on stage, you don't know what else to do. The audience still comes. The halls are still full. The fees are still good. So you keep going. Not because you still have something to say, but because stopping is harder than continuing.

That is no disgrace. But it is not cabaret either.

The Fools on Their Thrones

Let us reverse the perspective. If cabaret artists stop being funny and start doing politics instead — what are the politicians doing at the same time?

They are trying to be funny.

Bavaria's minister-president Markus Söder posts sausage photos on Instagram. Former foreign minister Annalena Baerbock films herself to "Sex and the City" music in New York. Cabinet ministers dance on TikTok. Germany's national railway spends seven million euros to have comedian Anke Engelke dress up in a conductor's uniform and joke about delays — the same delays that have paralyzed the country for decades and for whose elimination the money is supposedly lacking.

Zimmerer sees this as a loss of accountability. That is correct, but it does not go far enough. The point is not that politicians have become ironic. The point is why they have become ironic.

The answer is uncomfortable: they have nothing to show for themselves. Those who cannot deliver results deliver entertainment. Those who cannot repair a highway make a joke about it. Those who cannot present a functioning healthcare system dance on TikTok. Irony is not a question of style. It is an evasive maneuver.

Berlin's municipal sanitation department prints puns on its trash cans — "Putsdamer Platz" (a play on the city's Potsdamer Platz and the German word for cleaning) and "Play Me the Song of Dirt." Its street-cleaning vehicles are named "Space Sweeper" and "Veganizer." Agencies are paid for these campaigns, slogans are tested, budgets are approved. And the bins still overflow. The sidewalks are still filthy. But the agency has delivered.

This is the real diagnosis: the institution has stopped fulfilling its function and compensates for its failure with performance. It is the same pattern described in these essays as Ankündigungskultur — announcement culture — the ability of institutions to celebrate themselves while forgetting the task they were created to perform.

The Symmetry of Failure

What Zimmerer describes as a role reversal is, in truth, a symmetrical failure. Both sides — the political and the satirical — have lost their function, and both compensate for the loss in the same way: by assuming the other's role.

Politicians become comedic because they can no longer be political. Cabaret artists become political because they can no longer be comedic. And the institutions in between — the railways, the sanitation departments, the public broadcasters — joke about their own failure because that is cheaper than fixing it.

In a functioning society, there is a division of labor. Politicians govern. Institutions function. Cabaret artists hold a mirror up to both. This presupposes that there is something to reflect — decisions, actions, results. When politics no longer makes decisions, when institutions no longer deliver results, and when cabaret artists have nothing left to reflect, the division of labor collapses.

What remains is a cycle of compensation. Politicians imitate cabaret artists because entertainment is easier than governing. Cabaret artists imitate politicians because outrage is easier than comedy. And the audience applauds both — not because it is convinced, but because it no longer knows anything else.

Dieter Hildebrandt Already Knew

The great Dieter Hildebrandt, who stood on stage until his death in 2013 — still doing a hundred and eighty readings a year at the age of eighty — anticipated the condition in a single sentence: "What upsets me is the fact that nobody gets upset."

That was in the 1990s. Today he would have to say: What upsets me is the fact that everyone gets upset — but nobody does anything.

Hildebrandt belonged to a generation in which the roles were still clear. He was a cabaret artist. Franz Josef Strauß was a politician. They could grind against each other because both took their roles seriously. Strauß governed — rightly or wrongly, but he governed. Hildebrandt commented — sharply, precisely, incorruptibly. The friction produced sparks. The sparks produced light.

Today there is no more friction. There is only smoothness. Politicians who mean everything ironically. Cabaret artists who mean everything seriously. Institutions that find everything amusing. And an audience that can no longer tell who is who.

Schramm's Garden

Georg Schramm lives today in Badenweiler in the Black Forest foothills. He reads the newspaper in the morning, walks the dog, tends his garden. His trophies are scattered among the flower beds. The bronze statuette from the Bavarian Cabaret Prize stands somewhere in the greenery. He half-buried the horse from Lower Saxony's prize. The Swiss Cornichon is slowly being overgrown.

This is not a retreat. It is a statement.

Schramm understood what the others refuse to understand: when the institutions no longer function, the corrective no longer functions either. The court jester can only correct the king if the king governs. When the king posts sausage photos instead, the jester has no function left.

What is left for him? He can keep going and lie to himself. He can switch sides and become a politician. Or he can stop.

Schramm stopped. He buried his prizes in the garden and let the grass grow over them. It is the most honest review ever written about the state of German democracy.