Using novelty to generate student interest transcript

James Skidmore - ProfMoment Guy

[undecipherable German] Greetings. This module is about Tempo. Tempo Taschentuch. Here, you see the other side - Tempo. You're asking yourselves, "Why do I spend thousands of dollars to go to university to be told about tissues... To be told about, basically, the German equivalent of Kleenex?" I'm going to explain that to you. Let's open up a package - I'll open it for you - this is the patented red tag opening of the tissue package: you open it up like this. Bringing out the tissue - look at the quality of that tissue! I can't even rip it, it's so thick and well made - I can't possibly rip it, its too good.

This tissue was introduced in 1929, and when the company manufacturing it introduced it, they wanted to come up with a name that would resonate with the times. So they came up with the name 'Tempo'. 'Tempo' in German is equivalent roughly to the English word 'speed'. It communicates speed, it communicates fast, it communicates, you know, this quick and rapid kind of, I don't want to say environment, but quick and rapid lifestyle, quick and rapid ideas... just quick and rapid, if you will. And in Weimar, at this time, in the German republic that existed between... from the end of the First World War and the onset of the Third Reich (the Nazi regime). This period in German cultural history was one of an incredible flowering and explosion of things going on. Lots and lots and lots of change, not just in cultural life, in socio-political life, the economy - everything seemed to be changing. It was such a... it was an earth shattering event, the end of the First World War. Germany's loss at the end of the First World War was a lot to take for the country. But just the end of the First World War in the western world signaled the onset of great change: women got the vote, the increasing speed of communications through the telephone and what have you, and the onset of film. Film had been invented, of course, before the First World War, but really started to come into its own in the twenties. All of these kinds of things were taking place, so there was this sense of rapid change.

And so the fellow who created the Tempo Taschentuch, the Tempo tissues, wanted to communicate that. It's interesting that he chose that name, if you will, because it then became... this was a novelty in German society to have a throwaway tissue, a 'one-use tissue', as it would be called. Up until that time, people would use cloth handkerchiefs that you would then wash and what have you. The idea behind this was, this was more modern because you used it, and then you threw it away. This modern idea that you, what you might call a throwaway society or throwaway consumerism. But the idea that life could be easier, and more convenient... the Tempo Taschentuch was then part of that.

They're incredibly - if you've never used one of these tissues... [laughs] Go to Germany and use it, because I can't... I go to Germany a couple times a year usually, and if I don't send a box of these to each of my sisters, I hear about it [laughs], let's put it that way, because they insist, once they've tried these tissues, they don't want to go back to Kleenex or anything because they're so thick, and soft, and they're 4-ply or something like this. So they don't even want to look at the other kinds of Kleenex.

The other thing thats funny about them is that they use this word sometimes in the advertising, not very often anymore but, these tissues are called "Durshschnupfsicher", which in English you can't translate this word, but basically its "un-blow-through-able", meaning these tissues are so strong and sturdy that, you know, nothing can defeat them [laughs] sort of thing - you can't blow through them, they're so good.

Anyway, so for this module, we're just using this Tempo just to communicate this idea of change, of rapid change, of a society that's going through all sorts of turmoil and tumult and trying to understand some of those from a few different aspects. We'll be looking at some architecture, some film, and some other little things - snippets of this and that, just to give you a sense of the variety of cultural activity that was taking place at this time and how much of it resonates today as well. Ok, so I hope you enjoy the module, thanks very much.