Zwanze in Wartime Brussels August 20, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Regular readers will remember previous posts in the jokes and practical jokes series: world war jokes, treasure hunting jokes, Derren Brown and spiders, the poor wife hunter and the classic of all classics, Brunelleschi’s cruelest scherzo, which sent a Florentine scurrying to the backwoods of Hungary. Today, we offer up a modest WW1 story from occupied Belgium. Beach likes it because it is so Belgian, there is a peculiar combination of pacific insolence and sophisticated humour that the lowlanders have got down to a fine art. There are similar sentiments found in that great old Powell and Pressburger film One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) where a British crew bail out in neigbouring Holland and witness the Dutch riling the occupier beyond all reason.
Despite Prussian tyranny, the inhabitants of Brussels are indefatigable in playing ‘Zwanzes’ or practical jokes on the German authorities. The latest greatly displeased the Boches. The latter had installed machine guns on the summit of the Palais de Justice, which commanded the Minimes and Marolles districts, where the rougher elements of the population reside. The inhabitants promptly retaliated by placing old metal stove pipes on every available roof, so that at a little distance the neighbourhood seemed to be bristling with artillery.
Enter the spoil-sport:
This joke did not appeal to the humour of the Governor-General, who fined each exhibitor of a stove-pipe 15 marks. The fine was levied, to quote the unconscious irony of the official announcement, because the jokers had ‘distinguished themselves so grievously by a method of raillery which could only be disastrous to the excellent relations subsisting between the civil population and the authorities.’
Beach would love to hear more ‘Zwanzes’ or other examples of practical jokes played on occupying forces. The Zwanze incidentally is thus defined on the linked website:
The word “zwanze” is unique to Flemish, has its origins in Yiddish, and essentially means a self-deprecating type of humor that’s typified by sharp-edged, playful jokes, usually good-natured. It’s said that this type of humor has become “a characteristic, defining trait” of the Flemish themselves, and for some a way of life. A “zwanze” is a joke, a “zwanzer” a joker.
There might be some gold to mine here. Any Flemish volunteers out there willing to send in some more zwanze from WW1 or WW2 or beyond? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Might there even be a picture out there somewhere of the Brussels skyline after the stove pipes had gone up?
