German humour
humour considered typical for Germany

German humour is the conventions of comedy and its cultural meaning within German-speaking countries. German humour encompasses traditions such as Kabarett and other forms of satire as well as more recent trends such as TV shows and stand-up comedy.
Media
Feuerzangenbowle (1944) is aired every silvester and during Christmastime on TV alongside Dinner for One (1963).
There are German comedic adventure games, such as Edna & Harvey: The Breakout and the Deponia.
Foreign perception
Germans being stiff and humorless and German humor being dull and dry has become a popular German stereotype that is said to have originated from World War I atrocity propaganda and spread from Great Britain to other English-speaking countries. The stereotype is virtually unknown outside the Anglosphere and still most prevalent in Britain. British media continued perpetuating world war stereotypes of Germans in the 21st century. The BBC justifies "people thinking Germans aren't funny" and shifts the blame to the German language with questionable explanations like compound words not having spaces in German. The "humorless" stereotype is often retold in US-American media too. For example in the South Park episode Funnybot or by the comedian Robin Williams.
The public source identifies “German humour” as humour considered typical for Germany. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around German, humour and considered.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5551413. The Library of Congress control number is sh85054430. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “German humour” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.