Einige Erdnüsse…

Here are a few Peanuts strips to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the “Tag der Deutschen Einheit“. Even before Schulz invented the incessant running gag about Snoopy being a WWI flying ace, he used German surprisingly often (much more than any other foreign language, Spanish included). The strip shown above was published in 1953; the title mentioned in the second panel is a piece by Bach, called “Sheep May Safely Graze“. The other four strips below are all from a story arc that appeared in March 1979.



Although the word “Fräulein” is technically correct “textbook” German for “miss”, it has now become severely outdated, and is no longer used in normal German conversation, except occasionally for sarcastic emphasis. The standard German form of address for a woman (spoken or written) is now “Frau“, regardless of marital status; girls (and teenagers) are referred to as “Mädchen“.



Snoopy should not have addressed Lucy as “Deutscher“, because that is the masculine declination. The correct form would have been: “Sind Sie Deutsche?” Nevertheless, Lucy responding with “…all your arms” seems a little excessive: Snoopy has only two of them, so that “both” would have been sufficient.



The pronouns in the second frame are “I, You, He, She“, each listed in each of the four German grammatical cases: Nominative, Genitive (possessive), Dative, and Accusative. This is the standard order used in all German grammar textbooks, in which the cases are usually numbered, and thus referred to as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th “Fall” (“case”). Yes, Germans are notorious for excessive orderliness.

The 15 prepositions in the third frame can be translated into English as: from/out, except/outside(), at/by, with, after, since, from, to, at/on, on(top), after/behind, in, next to, over, under. German prepositions are normally followed by the term declined in a particular “case”, but some prepositions can take either of two cases, depending on the situation, or possibly even a choice of three different cases (but only in very rare circumstances).

P.S. () The second word in the third panel is an error, it should have read “außer” (optionally capitalized as “AUSSER“). Schulz was famous for doing all of his own lettering, and in any case this strip predates the availability of handwritten computer fonts, so the most likely explanation for the missing letter is simply a slip of the pen, or possibly a transmission error from wherever he obtained the text.

P.P.S. I think it would have been funnier if Snoopy’s exclamation in the final panel had been “Ich ergebe mich!!“, but I admit that nobody reading an American newspaper would have understood the joke.


Labor Day: Do Cartoonists Work?

Some examples of cartoonists taking it easy on Labor Day. That’s not accurate, of course, because these comics would have been drawn some days ago.

Nancy steals from the future.

Arlo and Janis hearken back to an older Nancy comic:

Tank McNamara could just put new dialogue into the radio show form he often uses.

Gasoline Alley often just closes down.


Independence Day

It’s interesting that the white character in this comic from 1976 is named Nate. Much later, Nate Bargatze will have a similar theme in this now well-known SNL skit:







On a serious note, it is always worth pondering the end of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”


CIDU’s Swimsuit Issue

It’s May 2, the average day of the last frost here in lovely northern Illinois.

Pools and beaches aren’t open yet, but JMcAndrew sends in some Hi and Lois swimsuit comics to get us in the mood: “Here are several Hi and Lois comics about swimsuits, some of which are just very bizarre. It’s apparently been a theme since the very early days of the comic.”

The New Yorker Looks at the Environment

A few New Yorker cartoons from just after the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.






Remember, you can use the link at the left (or here) to submit a CIDU to our kind, generous and handsome editorial staff.

Want to hug more trees? Mark Parisi has several recent Off-the-Mark Arbor Day comics here: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1275651730585573&set=pcb.1275610267256386

Happy Valentine’s Day

Danny Boy sends this in.






JMcAndrew sends these two in. “Not only does this comic end with a rabbit about to hook up with a shoe but it also manages to slip in a joke about the title character from the movie “Babe”in a relationship with “Oscar Mayer””

“There’s also this one suggesting a relationship between Madonna and Sandra Bernhard and OJ Simpson with Lorena Bobbitt”