Karl Valentin

Vocation

Traits

Bavarian comedian, cabaret performer, clown, author and film producer. He had significant influence on German Weimar culture. Valentin starred in many silent films in the 1920s, and was sometimes called the "Charlie Chaplin of Germany". Karl Valentin began his comic career in 1902, enrolling for three months at a variety school in Munich, under the guidance of Hermann Strebel.. In the wake of his father's death Valentin took three-year break from performing, during which he constructed his own twenty-piece one-man band. Soon Valentin was performing regularly in the cabarets and beerhalls of Munich. He developed a reputation for writing and performing short comic routines, which he performed in a strong Bavarian dialect, usually with his female partner, Liesl Karlstadt. Valentin also made numerous films, both silent and with audio; but it was as a stage performer in cabarets that Valentin built a reputation as one of the leading comic performers in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Valentin's naïve sense of humour produced sketches that in spirit were loosely connected to dadaism, social expressionism and the Neue Sachlichkeit. Along with Karl Kraus, he is considered a master of gallows humor. His art centered mostly around linguistic dexterity and wordplay—Valentin was a linguistic anarchist. He died 9 February 1948, Planegg, Germany. Link to Wikipedia biography