Foreign News: Purged Comedians

Until last week a favorite entertainer of Berlin’s cafe society was twinkly-eyed Werner Finck, one of the daring, politically sophisticated German comedians who get their laughs at the expense of the Nazis.

Comedian Finck would suddenly interrupt his patter, shoot his arm up in a burlesque Nazi salute—and then adjust a picture. Deftly, but unmistakably, he would caricature the well-known posturing of top-rank Nazis. Sometimes when he walked off the stage he mimicked gimpy Dr. Joseph Goebbels. For these offenses he has often been in the Nazi doghouse, once in a concentration camp. Last week the Nazi bigwigs finally caught on, and Propaganda Minister Goebbels expelled Actor Finck, a fellow vaudeville actor and a comedy team, “The Three Rulands,” from the Reich’s Culture Chamber as “desecrators of things that are holy” to the Nazis. Thus kaput was written to their German careers.

To prove he has a sense of humor, Minister Goebbels’ newssheet, Der Angriff, thereupon began a joke contest. First prize: $40.