Children's songs by Heinz Strunk: Multiplication of bacilli and ducats

Award-winning author, actor, humorist… the artist Heinz Strunk reveals his artistic work in a diverse and increasingly successful manner. So far it has been aimed at adults who can recognize humor in his often unsparing portrayal of the unfathomable. The 64-year-old from Hamburg recently released an album with songs for children. Is Strunk’s “Lernlieder” a work with educational requirements? And what useful things can children take away from it?

It starts almost harmlessly with the proliferation of “bacilli” to cheerful synthesizer sounds, followed by the song “Zebra crossing”, in which grandma is run over at the end, sung by a child’s voice to a lovely piano melody. Over the course of the 22 pieces, no taboos are left out: farting, vomit, poop, Mettwurst, Stalin, Hitler, Palestinians and death.

Each song is introduced by a small dialogue in which a child asks “Heinzer” something. His voice always has an answer ready in the form of a song lyric and the child reading praises “brrraaww”. In reality, however, it rarely works for a boomer like Strunk, who remembers his own painful childhood, to be able to convey subtle images of student life from 1978 to the present. It is said that Strunk himself has no children at all.

Heinz Strunk: “Learning Songs” (Misitunes/Broken Silence)

It is questionable to what extent he has knowledge of what is currently going on in schools. The sponges and tablets he sang about no longer appear, so gags about them are no longer understood, even by young teachers. But that's not the point. The child also sings “Old people are messengers of death…” Fortunately, nothing is known about the trauma that children suffer when they hear macabre lyrics written by adults.

Strunk finds left-wing children's songs humorless. Does he even know the evergreens from Gripstheater? In addition, the situation is completely different in the Internet age. Asking if this is funny, especially for children, disqualifies all doubters as moral nuisances with a stick up their ass. On the other hand, children today laugh particularly hard at Internet phenomena; for months, “SixSeven” caused general amusement and guaranteed frowns from adults.

So what does Strunk want with his old-fashioned “learning songs”? Is it a provocative experiment? Is the entertainer overcoming childhood trauma with this? Desperate protest against the sweet commercial crap behind most other children's products? Perhaps only those who – like Strunk – already have shelves full of trophies and are finally fulfilling a childhood wish can afford “learning songs”.

It depends on the target group. Because it's actually the little label fraud that's causing the commotion here. In reality, “Lernlieder” is an upcycling of some older ideas, i.e. a collection of rarities for real fans. Or, as Heinz Strunk said in a radio interview, “humor for advanced people”. Caring parents are more likely to buy the album for themselves than for their children.