Helge Schneider (born August 30, 1955 in Mülheim an der Ruhr) is a German comedian, jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist, author, film and theatre director, and actor.
After dropping out of high school, he started an apprenticeship as a construction draftsman. He soon changed plans and was admitted to the Duisburg conservatoire to study piano, after passing an entrance exam for particularly gifted applicants (it later turned out that his diploma was invalid since he dropped out of high school too early). He then toured as a little-known jazz musician and as an entertainer, basically a stand-up comedian, in local clubs. Schneider is a multi-instrumentalist, playing various instruments such as the Hammond organ, acoustic and electric guitar, ukulele, drums, piano, accordion, trumpet, and others.
He became a popular comedian in the 1990s and is still one of the best known German comedians. He toured and still tours (alone and with his bands "Hardcore", "The Firefuckers" and others) through major concert halls with a mixture of music and comedy. He frequently appears on German TV, and is probably best known for his song Katzeklolied (Kitty Litter Box Song): "Katzeklo, Katzeklo, ja das macht die Katze froh" ("Kitty litter tray, kitty litter tray, that's what makes the kitty gay [happy]."), which was a number one hit in Germany in 1994. He has written, directed and starred in four movies. In 2007 he appeared as Adolf Hitler in a satirical film: Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler. He has also composed and performed music for numerous films, including some of his own films like Texas – Doc Snyder hält die Welt in Atem and Jazzclub – Der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm.
Schneider has written nine books, including an autobiography ("My whole life's in this book, up to right now. The second part will come in thirty or forty years") and a musical, "Mendy - das Wusical", which appeared at Bochum Theatre in 2004.
His comic techniques are often referred to as extremely anarchic (also by himself) and include parody, use of the Ruhr Valley local dialect Kohlenpott, the unexpected use of infantile language and other unexpected stylistic transitions, slapstick/physical humour, Dada-esque absurdity, sudden and unexpected use of crude/sexual humour, references to national and international highbrow and lowbrow culture, and phonetic and declamatory playfulness and exaggeration. Vast parts of his material are deeply rooted in German language and sadly do not translate well into other languages.
The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helge_Schneider. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
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