Recommendations of the Editorial team
Poets appear more often in ROLLING STONE. Now it shouldn’t be about Bob Dylan or Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen or Michael Stipe. The first poet who had a lasting influence on me was a completely different one: Pumuckl. When the goblin, who haunted a Munich workshop for years, recited his wry poems, to my ears it was the most beautiful music: the pure joy of rhyming and singing, and yes, basically of being alive. Isn’t that the meaning of art? The radio plays were the best way to fall asleep long before the series came to television in 1982. But by then, Pumuckl’s voice could never be gotten out of his brain – how many singers can you say that about? (One or two dozen maybe.) “Hurray, hurray, the goblin with the red hair! Hurray, hurray, the Pumuckl is here!” He was something from there, and if there is a synonym for cheerfulness, then it would be him. Compared to him, even Pippi Longstocking was a melancholic.
Hurray, hurrah, the Pumuckl is back!
A while ago the Pumuckl was resurrected, only in an RTL+ series, also in the cinema from October 30th: In “Pumuckl and the Big Misunderstanding” the little guy seals himself around his head and collar again, he plays a lot of practical jokes and in the end wraps his master around his finger again. Maximilian Schafroth croaks the Pumuckl, but you can still hear Hans Clarin, the AI makes it possible – finally a useful application. And Florian Brückner is likeable and cranky enough as Gustl Bayrhammer’s nephew, who is also a carpenter, as the new master Eder.
Director Marcus H. Rosenmüller understood Pumuckl’s poetry and captured his anarchic spirit as well as his penchant for sentimentality. Pumuckl is actually a perfect pop figure, because behind the flamboyant exterior there is a big heart, and that’s the only reason he can allow himself so much. It can’t be a coincidence that Ed Sheeran looks so much like him. Like many musicians, Pumuckl never grew up – with all the advantages and disadvantages. His egocentrism can be annoying, his guilelessness captivating – he can never do anything for nothing, so he gets away with anything.
“I’m home alone now/The moon looks like a dumpling…”
This mixture of adventurousness and loveliness was implemented most beautifully in the old episode with the suckling pig meal. At some point the goblin trots home because he doesn’t want to anger his master Eder any further. After all, he doesn’t want to fly out; he’s too comfortable for that. He sits in his ship’s swing and writes: “Now I’m alone at home/ The moon looks like a dumpling/ And if it weren’t in the sky above/ I nudge it, it would be lying on the ground/ I nudge everything, big and small/ The stars and the shaving pig/ The bowls, plates and the clouds/ And then everything would have to follow me/ But so now I follow here in silence/ The Eder for the sake of friendship/ Definitely see “Now I’m in a dream/ A huge dumpling tree.”
The dumpling poem will remain
Apart from Hermann Hesse’s “In the Fog” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”, to this day it is the only poem I have ever memorized. (I always stumble in the third verse of “The Road Not Taken.”) You can sing along to the Pumuckl poems, which is why they are as easy to remember as song lyrics.
How many song lyrics do all of us who love music have stored in our brains? No wonder that there is often not as much capacity left for everyday things. If everything gets too much for you – just take a look at the Pumuckl. The children willingly gave me space in the cinema. Dumpling poetry connoisseurs understand each other.