Nothing to Laugh About: Ephraim Kishon’s Success in West Germany

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was hardly any West-German bestseller list without Ephraim Kishon’s (1924-2005) famous Satire collections. What was the reason behind the Israeli author’s extraordinary success? His popularity among the German-speaking readership has been mostly explained by a kind of Irony of History, and not least by the author himself. However, by locating Kishon’s success within the framework of the West-German and Austrian

book market, its structures, and agents, we aim to define more precisely Kishon’s reception, especially against the background of the politics of reconciliation on the one hand, and of the debate over Jewish Humour on the other hand. Can the author’s success be read as a will of atonement by the German public? What role does his translator Friedrich Torberg play in this literary success story? And how can we locate Kishon’s German success within the history of Jewish humour and satire in Germany?

Furthermore, we will highlight the politically ambivalent role of leading publishing houses such as Langen Mueller and Ullstein, as well as of Kishon’s relation to his publishers Herbert Fleissner and Axel Cäsar Springer. While they were interested in keeping Kishon’s image as a popular writer of low-brow literature, the author himself didn’t hesitate to intervene publicly on questions of Middle-Eastern politics in German media. How did the translation from English/Hebrew to German contributed to shape the image of Kishon as an apolitical author? How did his political statements affect his reception in Germany, especially after the Six-Day-War in 1967? How did Kishon himself locate himself with regard to other internationally successful Israeli writers like Amos Oz, for instance? By exploring the various facets of Kishon’s reception in German-speaking countries, we will show how he contributed to a politicisation that continues to shape the Israeli literature’s reception in Germany until today.