South Park in German

Factual Questions
1

One of those little things I found interesting on my recent Germany vacation was watching South Park in German. While watching one episode, I wondered aloud how they dealt with Cartman and his rather loud anti-semitism. I can imagine this is a sensitive subject in Germany.

However, “The Passion of the Jew” did not appear and I wonder if anyone knows whether an episode like this would be able to air in Germany. I would guess this could be a mild problem with Cartman screaming “We must exterminate the Jews!” in German.

2

Cartman dresses as Hitler for Halloween, in German.

My WAG is that they just go ahead with it, and let the chips fall where they may. At least, that’s what is suggested to me by the fact that this clip is available in German.

3

Awesome, thanks. I would guess so. A quick search on google gives the rough translation of “Wie geil” as “so horny”? Is that right?

I guess Sieg Heil! was a bit too much for the German sensibilities?

4

The literal translation of geil is horny, but it’s used colloquially as cool.

There are laws in Germany forbidding Nazi-related materials and speech. I imagine that extends to “Sieg Heil.”

5

Yes, but they do not extend to every usage of Nazi-related materials. It’s perfectly OK (because the law explicitly exempts this usage from the prohibition) to use the stuff in an artistic, academic or informational context - if it were not, it would be impossible to, say, broadcast a documentary on the Nazi era on TV, which is of course done.

There is currently a pretty successful German comedy series which parodies TV shows. One of the shows they spoof is Stromberg, a German comedy series which is based on the UK/US show The Office and is set ina fictitious insurance company. The parody turned this into Obersalzberg (in reality the place of Hitler’s estate in the alps), which is set in an office where Hitler is boss and lords it over the other employees. The parody makes heavy use of Nazi uniforms and flags, but it doesn’t conflict with the ban on Nazi propaganda. Having a cartoon character shout “Sieg Heil” on screen would be regarded as distasteful, but not illegal.

6

Was the Star Trek episode “Patterns of Force” really considered exploitation of Nazism for entertainment?

7

I’m not a Star Trek fan (in fact, I rarely watch TV and prefer DVDs instead), and I wasn’t around in the 1970s when Star Trek was aired in Germany for the first time, but according to German Wikipedia , “Patterns of Force” was never aired on German free TV; it ran on subscription-based pay TV, but this isn’t very widespread here. It wasn’t dubbed into German until 1995, for a video release of the series. Austrian TV; however, aired the episode in its English original version with German subtitles.

I have never heard of any public outrage about this series. I guess the decision not to air the episode was made by a handful of TV bigwigs with hardly anybody noticing that there was a missing episode at the time.