Cabaret Prize Eddi | Matthias Tretter: Not backwards

Photo: dpa/Daniel Karmann On Sunday, Mathias Tretter will receive the Berlin Cabaret Prize Eddi. He comes from Franconia, lives in Leipzig and can be seen, among other things, in Dieter Nuhr's television show. But he is not as clumsy and unfunny close to the government as Nuhr, for example when Tretter remarks in his program on rearmament that he too has always advocated a change in mentality - "but not backwards." He believed that "one should become more civilized, but not return to barbarism." When Carsten Breuer, the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, says, "We have to think about war again," then Tretter says, "No, I won't." For the jury, Tretter “consistently deals with the relevant topics of our increasingly complicated world,” and there is an Eddi for this, which is being awarded for the 26th time.

The first Eddi went to Edgar Külow, the namesake. That was in November 1981 on a Friday the 13th at 1 p.m. on the 15th floor of the Berliner Verlag in East Berlin. Two people were present: the popular author, actor and cabaret artist Edgar Külow and the graphic artist and cartoonist Heinz Behling, who came up with the prize over a “neighbourly evening beer,” as his wife Christel Behling remembered 45 years later. Because so many prizes and awards were given in the GDR, this should explicitly be a prize that was not awarded by the state. »The unusual thing about this Eddi is that it is not awarded unless there is a reason for it. In this respect, it differs in a certain sense from many other art prizes," said Behling in the "Eulenspiegel" at the time.

This approach is maintained to this day, except that the cabaret prize, which has been awarded since 2013 by the “Der Eddi” association in cooperation with the Berlin district of Lichtenberg, is presented in front of an audience - every year in the Kulturhaus Karlshorst. And no longer on a Friday the 13th, but always around October 3rd, when the annexation of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany is celebrated elsewhere. Edgar Külow, or one of his stage characters, has the saying: "Every day that you don't curse the government is a wasted day."

Nothing has changed in that regard either, even if Dieter Nuhr may see it differently. In 2016, Tretter told Bayerischer Rundfunk: »I am fundamentally people-friendly and am very, very often disappointed. That means I'm a bit of a pessimistic type. That's why humor, because for me that's the way to stand up to the world." At that time he also boasted of his "political incorrectness", which he propagated at his self-organized poetry slam events in the 90s in Würzburg and then on nationwide tours with the "First German Forced Ensemble" (in a trio with Claus von Wagner and Philipp Weber). It was quite brutal and funny, for example against Islamists, Buddhists and Peruvian pedestrian zone musicians.

Tretter no longer needs to praise “political incorrectness” today because “political correctness” no longer exists as a value; Trump and Putin have done away with it for the time being. Tretter also worked on Trump, as we authors and scientists would say. When Tretter looks on the Internet, he looks at the catastrophe with a smile on his face, as he once said, because the stupid thing is so close at hand. When a couple says, "We met on the Internet," they don't want to hear it. "You could also say we met while shopping at the World Market, then we went window shopping and now we're on Cloud 7." Then it would be better to have a “neighborly evening beer”.

With us, no one has to pay to be informed. Sounds like a bad business model? It is too. But independent journalism and participation for everyone are more important to us than profit. Journalism still costs money: research, printing and all the people who do it. That's why we depend on you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year.

Donate once or regularly, every amount counts. So that nd remains.