Limits of Humour? Satire and Societal Change in Germany and France by the Example of the Magazines Pardon/Titanic and Hara-Kiri/Charlie Hebdo (1960/62-2017)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jörg Requate
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418438662

The terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 has shown dramatically, to what extent satire might be perceived as provocation. The broad solidarity with the magazine emphasized, how the fundamental rights of speech and the freedom of ex-pression belong to the most important Western values. Similar to the French satirical magazines Hara-Kiri/Charlie Hebdo their German equivalents Pardon/Titanic explored the limits of humor by crossing them intentionally. Therefore, they put the focus on actually provocative subjects and social taboos. The project aims to analyze these French and German satirical magazines in a comparative historical perspective between 1960/62 and 2017. By means of the question of how the magazines responded to processes of social transformation, conclusions may be drawn about the way social taboos could be redefined. Again, these transformations were closely related to the change of values and attitudes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants