From the Montreal Star, February 4, 1939:
𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗲𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝘆 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝗡𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗪𝗶𝘁
Comedians Banned For Humorous Remarks on Leaders
BERLIN, Feb. 4 (U.P.) When Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels yesterday blasted Germany's cafe society, he called it "society rabble and intellectual snobs," for laughing at comedians who make Nazi leaders the butts of their jokes.
Goebbels turned his anger upon the "society rabble" after announcing that five German actors had been banned from the stage for publicly ridiculing Nazi party and state functionaries.
He denied that there was any lack of humor in Nazi Germany, but said that it must be kept "good-natured, decent and clean."
"There is plenty of humor in Germany, more than enough," he said in a three and one-half column editorial in the Nazi party's newspaper Voelkischer Beobachter. "But we do not permit ourselves to be ridiculed."
The five actors were Werner Finck, actor-author: Pete Sachse, vaudeville comedian, and Helmut Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi, the latter three members of a vaudeville combination known as "The Three Rulands."
The five were said to have been warned repeatedly to stop making jokes about the Nazis.
Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES
BERLIN, Feb. 3.-Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five "Aryan" actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich's Chamber of Culture on the grounds that "in their public appearences they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades."
The five include perhaps the best known German stage comedians who survived previous Chamber of Culture purges and still dared to indulge in political witticisms-namely, Werner Finck, Peter Sachse and "The Three Rulands," represented by Helmuth Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi. Their expulsion means that they are henceforth forbidden to appear before the public in Germany.
Besides motivating this action in an official communiqué, Dr. Goebbels also publishes a long article in the Voelkischer Beobachter in which he denounces them as "brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless"and generally imitators and successors to Jews. Simultaneously he denounces the "society rabble that followed them with thundering applause-parasitic scum, inhabiting our luxury streets, that seems to have only the task of proving can get along and even acquire money and prominence."
As regards the details of the "crimes" of which the five are accused, Dr. Goebbels mentions that they made political witticisms about the colonial problem, the Four-Year Plan and Chancellor Hitler's monumental building program and one of them even raised the question whether there was any humor left in Germany today.
What amused the public of most, however, and presumably roiled the National Socialist authorities most -although Dr. Goebbels does not mention it- is that they deftly, but unmistakeably, caricatured some gestures, poses, and physical characteristics of National Socialist leaders -sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country.
Dr. Goebbels says that the National Socialists proved during their struggle for power that they had a keen sense of humor that could kill opponents with ridicule. But as National Socialism proposes to remain in power 2,000 years it has neither the time nor the patience to apply that method to the "miserable literati".
If the anti-German press of Paris, London and New York, Dr. Goebbels says, or the democratic governments in Western Europe, should now again complain about the lack of freedom of opinion in Germany it does not matter, "for after all during the last year the Fuehrer reconquered 10,000,000 Germans for the Reich.
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