Bernd das Brot
Encyclopedia
Bernd das Brot is a puppet
character, star mascot
and cult figure
of the German
children's television channel KI.KA
, currently featured in the programs Bernd das Brot, Bravo Bernd and the KI.KA late night loop program.
, grumpy, curmudgeonly, constantly bad-tempered, surly, fatalistic
, melancholic
loaf of pullman bread speaking in a deep, gloomy baritone
. He is small, square-shaped and golden brown with hands directly attached to his body, eyes circles and a thin-lipped mouth. According to himself, he belongs to the species "Homo Brotus Depressivus".
According to the official version, the short-armed bread character made its first appearance as part of an advertising campaign for a bakery chain. When the campaign turned out unsuccessful, Bernd was forced to apply for job at the KI.KA, which is also the reason for his permanent scowl.
Bernd sympathizes firstly with himself. Bernd actually does not want to appear on television and thinks it is a "dirty business".
His favourite activities include staring at his south wall at home, learning the pattern of his woodchip wallpaper by heart, reading his favourite magazine The Desert and You, and enlarging his collection of the most boring railway tracks on video.
His favorite expression is Mist!, used in much the same way as the English "crap" or "Damn it!". His other favorite sentences are: "I would like to be left alone," "I would like to leave this show," and "My life is hell."
Bernd interacts with two co-main characters. One is the chatty Chili das Schaf (Chili the Sheep), a female, yellow sheep with flaming red hair. Chili, the show's Gastgeberin (hostess), is a Stuntschaf (stuntsheep) who finds it exciting to have close calls with accidents. The other main character is the show's technical expert, the always pleasant Briegel der Busch (Briegel the Bush), a green, bespectacled bush with flowers and leaves in lieu of hair. Briegel is an inventor who loves to build complicated devices that almost inevitably explode of their own accord - these devices are usually what is sold on the show. In contrast to Bernd, they enjoy adventures and the excitement of life.
Bernd doesn't hide that he doesn't think very highly of his colleagues, refusing to call them by name while they treat him as their best friend, even give him nicknames such as "Bernti".
The first show starring Bernd, Chili and Briegel was the 2001 pastiche
Tolle Sachen, die einzige Werbesendung auf KI.KA (English: Great things, the only advertising show on KI.KA) (KI.KA is actually a public, commercial-free channel). In this show Chili and Briegel would advertise an object that would be tested by a "randomly" chosen tester that would invariably turn out to be Bernd. Shows with Bernd, Chili and Briegel also include pastiches of Robin Hood
, Star Trek
, Western
and fairy tales.
, Bavaria. KI.KA had asked several entertainment companies to create a new sheep mascot, including The Jim Henson Company
. Krappweis was dining in a pizzeria one night and scribbled sketches on a napkin while watching a bread basket. He obtained a square-shaped loaf of bread to which he then gave the face of his colleague Norman Cöster, who also shares many personality traits with Bernd.
Similarly, Krappweis himself served as archetype for Chili the Sheep, who - just like Krappweis himself in his earlier years - gets on people's nerves with nonsensical stunts, while Briegel the Bush was modeled after a further producer of the series, Michael Briegel. He, too, is said to have a predisposition for wreaking havoc - according to an anecdote, he once set fire to an office computer.
The actual character designs of Bernd and Briegel are the work of cartoonist Georg Graf von Westphalen. Bernd is played and voiced by the puppeteer
Jörg Teichgraeber.
, but then KI.KA got the frequency for itself. Yet as a children's channel KI.KA did not air programs between 9pm and 6am, but instead of putting a simple test card, programers decided to air a late night loop program starring Bernd every night. In the 2005 version of the program, Bernd constantly stated that he had had enough of television and was going home and advised the viewers to do likewise. The night loop program continues to this day. This program allowed late-night adult viewers to discover Bernd; those viewers would then discuss the bread loaf on Internet forums, buy Bernd-das-Brot merchandising and CDs although none of them were advertised, and participate in Bernd-themed KI.KA competitions alongside children. How many adult viewers watch Bernd remains unknown, because KI.KA is a children's channel whose programs officially end at 9pm and thus no audience measurement is made for KI.KA during the night, at the time the Bernd night loop program airs. Furthermore, KI.KA's main audience being children, adults are not counted even in audience measurements performed during official airing times.
Bernd has thousands of child and adult fans in Germany and is greatly popular. Jeremy Wasser of Spiegel Online
wrote that "Bernd epitomized the fundamental pessimism felt by many, if not most, Germans about, well, almost everything. (...) That Germans would take to a character like Bernd and be willing to engage in this form of self-analysis and self-mockery should, in my view, be commended. That the people of the land of Goethe
and Schiller
would choose as their guide in this spiritual exploration a clinically depressed loaf of bread, is, perhaps, just another improbable element of the German Zeitgeist
". David Frogier de Ponlevoy, also of Spiegel Online, commented that Bernd shows were "a successful mix of slapstick
and irony that irresistibly brings families in good mood." The Süddeutsche Zeitung
wrote that the idea of making a depressive loaf of bread the star of a children's channel was crazily funny.
In 2004, Bernd das Brot won the Adolf Grimme Award for representing "the right to bad mood" and resisting "the reign of good mood that endlessly drones out of the television". The Deutsche Welle
commented that "most likely the jury realized just how subversive Bernd das Brot's attitude is when many human beings these days are willing to do almost anything to achieve fame and fortune on TV". The Adolf Grimme Award is the German equivalent of the Emmy Award
.
, Thuringia, where KI.KA is based, to celebrate the channel's tenth anniversary. The statue is 2 m (6.6 ft) high, weighs 125 kg (275.6 lb) and is made of plastic. It stands on the Fischmarkt (English: Fish market), the city's main square, next to the neo-gothic town hall and is a tourist attraction. On 21 January 2009, the figure disappeared. It was next seen in a video released on YouTube
, in which a group of activists calling themselves "Team 129 A" claimed responsibility for its kidnapping. Bernd expressed solidarity with the activists in the video, prompting several media to joke that he had developed Stockholm syndrome
.
The activists had a contention with the city of Erfurt over an abandoned factory in which they were squatting, and in which they had opened a literary cafe and were giving lecture events, while the city wanted to redevelop the blocks to apartments and office space. The negotiations broke down when the activists rejected an offer for alternative housing. The squatters themselves denied involvement in Bernd's kidnapping, claiming a group of sympathizers might be responsible for it.
The public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
, which owns the rights to Bernd das Brot, quickly forced YouTube to remove the video from the site by having their lawyers claim copyright infringements. Steffen Kottkamp, head of KI.KA, strongly criticized Bernd's kidnapping. Krappweis called for the figure's return, stating that "Kidnapping, even of bread loaves, is the wrong means of achieving political goals". Fans set up an online petition calling for the return of the statue in Erfurt.
The Bernd figure was eventually found intact by chance on 1 February 2009 in the basement vault of a disused barracks in Nohra
, between Erfurt and Weimar
. According to Spiegel Online, five children had been searching the area to collect period artifacts before it was demolished. They then discovered the Bernd statue and alerted KI.KA and the police. How the statue ended up there is unknown. After forensics experts confirmed that it was the genuine statue, it was carried out of the basement by six police officers and ultimately brought back to its original location on the Fischmarkt in front of Erfurt's town hall.
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
character, star mascot
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
and cult figure
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
of the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
children's television channel KI.KA
KI.KA
KI.KA is a public non-commercial free television channel based in Erfurt, Germany. It is a joint venture of national public television channels ARD, and ARD's constituent broadcasting institutions – BR, HR, MDR, NDR, Radio Bremen, RBB, Saarländischer Rundfunk, SWR, WDR and ZDF, and is targeted at...
, currently featured in the programs Bernd das Brot, Bravo Bernd and the KI.KA late night loop program.
Role on KI.KA
Bernd is a depressedDepression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
, grumpy, curmudgeonly, constantly bad-tempered, surly, fatalistic
Fatalism
Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...
, melancholic
Melancholia
Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...
loaf of pullman bread speaking in a deep, gloomy baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
. He is small, square-shaped and golden brown with hands directly attached to his body, eyes circles and a thin-lipped mouth. According to himself, he belongs to the species "Homo Brotus Depressivus".
According to the official version, the short-armed bread character made its first appearance as part of an advertising campaign for a bakery chain. When the campaign turned out unsuccessful, Bernd was forced to apply for job at the KI.KA, which is also the reason for his permanent scowl.
Bernd sympathizes firstly with himself. Bernd actually does not want to appear on television and thinks it is a "dirty business".
His favourite activities include staring at his south wall at home, learning the pattern of his woodchip wallpaper by heart, reading his favourite magazine The Desert and You, and enlarging his collection of the most boring railway tracks on video.
His favorite expression is Mist!, used in much the same way as the English "crap" or "Damn it!". His other favorite sentences are: "I would like to be left alone," "I would like to leave this show," and "My life is hell."
Bernd interacts with two co-main characters. One is the chatty Chili das Schaf (Chili the Sheep), a female, yellow sheep with flaming red hair. Chili, the show's Gastgeberin (hostess), is a Stuntschaf (stuntsheep) who finds it exciting to have close calls with accidents. The other main character is the show's technical expert, the always pleasant Briegel der Busch (Briegel the Bush), a green, bespectacled bush with flowers and leaves in lieu of hair. Briegel is an inventor who loves to build complicated devices that almost inevitably explode of their own accord - these devices are usually what is sold on the show. In contrast to Bernd, they enjoy adventures and the excitement of life.
Bernd doesn't hide that he doesn't think very highly of his colleagues, refusing to call them by name while they treat him as their best friend, even give him nicknames such as "Bernti".
The first show starring Bernd, Chili and Briegel was the 2001 pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
Tolle Sachen, die einzige Werbesendung auf KI.KA (English: Great things, the only advertising show on KI.KA) (KI.KA is actually a public, commercial-free channel). In this show Chili and Briegel would advertise an object that would be tested by a "randomly" chosen tester that would invariably turn out to be Bernd. Shows with Bernd, Chili and Briegel also include pastiches of Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
, Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
, Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
and fairy tales.
Production
Bernd was created in 2000 by Thomas Krappweis, of the production company Bumm Film in MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Bavaria. KI.KA had asked several entertainment companies to create a new sheep mascot, including The Jim Henson Company
The Jim Henson Company
The Jim Henson Company, an American entertainment organization, traces its origins to the founding of Muppets, Inc. in 1958 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets. The Muppets helped the company gain worldwide acclaim in family entertainment for more than four decades...
. Krappweis was dining in a pizzeria one night and scribbled sketches on a napkin while watching a bread basket. He obtained a square-shaped loaf of bread to which he then gave the face of his colleague Norman Cöster, who also shares many personality traits with Bernd.
Similarly, Krappweis himself served as archetype for Chili the Sheep, who - just like Krappweis himself in his earlier years - gets on people's nerves with nonsensical stunts, while Briegel the Bush was modeled after a further producer of the series, Michael Briegel. He, too, is said to have a predisposition for wreaking havoc - according to an anecdote, he once set fire to an office computer.
The actual character designs of Bernd and Briegel are the work of cartoonist Georg Graf von Westphalen. Bernd is played and voiced by the puppeteer
Puppeteer
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, such as a puppet, in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or...
Jörg Teichgraeber.
Reception
Although Bernd has been created in 2000, and on television since 2001, he really achieved fame in 2003. Until this date KI.KA was sharing its satellite channel frequency with the Franco-German channel ArteArte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, but then KI.KA got the frequency for itself. Yet as a children's channel KI.KA did not air programs between 9pm and 6am, but instead of putting a simple test card, programers decided to air a late night loop program starring Bernd every night. In the 2005 version of the program, Bernd constantly stated that he had had enough of television and was going home and advised the viewers to do likewise. The night loop program continues to this day. This program allowed late-night adult viewers to discover Bernd; those viewers would then discuss the bread loaf on Internet forums, buy Bernd-das-Brot merchandising and CDs although none of them were advertised, and participate in Bernd-themed KI.KA competitions alongside children. How many adult viewers watch Bernd remains unknown, because KI.KA is a children's channel whose programs officially end at 9pm and thus no audience measurement is made for KI.KA during the night, at the time the Bernd night loop program airs. Furthermore, KI.KA's main audience being children, adults are not counted even in audience measurements performed during official airing times.
Bernd has thousands of child and adult fans in Germany and is greatly popular. Jeremy Wasser of Spiegel Online
Spiegel Online
Spiegel Online , the online version of German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, is one the most visited news websites written in the German language.- Company :...
wrote that "Bernd epitomized the fundamental pessimism felt by many, if not most, Germans about, well, almost everything. (...) That Germans would take to a character like Bernd and be willing to engage in this form of self-analysis and self-mockery should, in my view, be commended. That the people of the land of Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
and Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
would choose as their guide in this spiritual exploration a clinically depressed loaf of bread, is, perhaps, just another improbable element of the German Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
". David Frogier de Ponlevoy, also of Spiegel Online, commented that Bernd shows were "a successful mix of slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
and irony that irresistibly brings families in good mood." The Süddeutsche Zeitung
Süddeutsche Zeitung
The Süddeutsche Zeitung , published in Munich, is the largest German national subscription daily newspaper.-Profile:The title literally translates as "South German Newspaper". It is read throughout Germany by 1.1 million readers daily and boasts a relatively high circulation abroad...
wrote that the idea of making a depressive loaf of bread the star of a children's channel was crazily funny.
In 2004, Bernd das Brot won the Adolf Grimme Award for representing "the right to bad mood" and resisting "the reign of good mood that endlessly drones out of the television". The Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
commented that "most likely the jury realized just how subversive Bernd das Brot's attitude is when many human beings these days are willing to do almost anything to achieve fame and fortune on TV". The Adolf Grimme Award is the German equivalent of the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
.
Kidnapping
In fall 2007, KI.KA donated a statue of Bernd to the German city of ErfurtErfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
, Thuringia, where KI.KA is based, to celebrate the channel's tenth anniversary. The statue is 2 m (6.6 ft) high, weighs 125 kg (275.6 lb) and is made of plastic. It stands on the Fischmarkt (English: Fish market), the city's main square, next to the neo-gothic town hall and is a tourist attraction. On 21 January 2009, the figure disappeared. It was next seen in a video released on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, in which a group of activists calling themselves "Team 129 A" claimed responsibility for its kidnapping. Bernd expressed solidarity with the activists in the video, prompting several media to joke that he had developed Stockholm syndrome
Stockholm syndrome
In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them...
.
The activists had a contention with the city of Erfurt over an abandoned factory in which they were squatting, and in which they had opened a literary cafe and were giving lecture events, while the city wanted to redevelop the blocks to apartments and office space. The negotiations broke down when the activists rejected an offer for alternative housing. The squatters themselves denied involvement in Bernd's kidnapping, claiming a group of sympathizers might be responsible for it.
The public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk is the public broadcaster for the federal states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt...
, which owns the rights to Bernd das Brot, quickly forced YouTube to remove the video from the site by having their lawyers claim copyright infringements. Steffen Kottkamp, head of KI.KA, strongly criticized Bernd's kidnapping. Krappweis called for the figure's return, stating that "Kidnapping, even of bread loaves, is the wrong means of achieving political goals". Fans set up an online petition calling for the return of the statue in Erfurt.
The Bernd figure was eventually found intact by chance on 1 February 2009 in the basement vault of a disused barracks in Nohra
Nohra
Nohra is a municipality in the Weimarer Land district of Thuringia, Germany. On 1 December 2007, the former municipality Utzberg was incorporated by Nohra....
, between Erfurt and Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
. According to Spiegel Online, five children had been searching the area to collect period artifacts before it was demolished. They then discovered the Bernd statue and alerted KI.KA and the police. How the statue ended up there is unknown. After forensics experts confirmed that it was the genuine statue, it was carried out of the basement by six police officers and ultimately brought back to its original location on the Fischmarkt in front of Erfurt's town hall.