Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus (Monty Python's Flying Circus) are a pair of 45-minute Monty Python German television comedy specials produced by WDR for West German television. The two episodes were respectively first broadcast in January and December 1972 and were shot entirely on film and mostly on location in Bavaria, with the first episode recorded in German and the second recorded in English and then dubbed into German.
The expression "Fliegender Zirkus"/"Flying Circus" is Originally German - it refers to the Air Squadron of German Ace Manfred von Richthofen, which always had to move back and forth like a circus with trucks to compensate for the numerically superior Allied squadrons due to insufficient numbers of own aircraft.
Production
While visiting the UK in the early 1970s, German entertainer and TV producer Alfred Biolek became aware of the Pythons and, excited by their innovative and absurd sketches, invited them to Germany in 1971 to write a special German episode of their Flying Circus show and to act in them. Despite mixed audience reception, a second episode was produced in 1972.
According to producer Biolek, the Pythons were initially somewhat reluctant to the idea of going to Germany to produce comedy for a German audience. Biolek had only seen a few shows, but he was impressed with the concept of the Flying Circus. Specifically, it stood out to him that they were both good comedians and good actors—a combination that Biolek rarely saw in the German comedy scene at the time. Biolek arranged to meet with the Pythons in the BBC's bar in London to convince them "with many arguments and even more gin tonics" to come to Germany for a brief visit. Eric Idle has described the conception of the specials as "The Germans came to us and said 'Look, we haven't got a sense of humour, but we understand you do. Can we use yours? Terry Jones recalled Biolek's inquiry as an opportunity "to do silly things in Germany".
The Pythons agreed to visit Biolek in Munich in order to explore options for possible material, but did not want to commit at this point. During their visit, the troupe wanted to get a better understanding of German culture and humour. In fact, the visit, and the resulting two shows "can be viewed as a considered attempt to broaden the stereotypical picture of Germans" by the Pythons. Michael Palin also noted, "All I know is that it reversed all one's prejudices. Python has done very, very well in Germany, and the movies do extremely well. ... Whenever anyone says, you know, the Germans have no sense of humour, say no, hang on, hang on, they got Monty Python before a lot of other countries." During their visit to Germany, the Pythons attended the Oktoberfest and Olympiastadion in Munich, and also visited nearby Dachau concentration camp. The Pythons' visit to Germany in 1971 coincided with the widely celebrated 500th birthday of painter Albrecht Dürer, and the group's second visit with the highly anticipated 1972 Summer Olympics. Both events had an obvious impact on the material created by the Pythons for their first episode, including the Silly Olympics skit, and the Anita Ekberg Sings Albrecht Dürer skit, thus situating their style of humour in a local cultural context.
Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus was produced by Biolek and translator Thomas Woitkewitsch in co-production with Westdeutscher Rundfunk. The first episode was written in English, and then translated by Woitkewitsch. However, translating humour within this transnational production—especially when based on idioms—was a general challenge, as Palin recalls.
Since none of the Pythons spoke German sufficiently, Woitkewitsch needed to provide them with phonetic transcriptions of the skits, which they then needed to learn by heart. Jones recalled that this posed a considerable challenge to the troupe; he also mentions that because of the rigorous repetition required in production, he was still able to recite the German version of "The Lumberjack Song" over 40 years later. Despite the coaching and re-iterative translation efforts, the Pythons' accents remained rather strong, and according to Woitkewitsch the overall pacing was off. While these language issues may have contributed to the first show's weak critical reception, Woitkewitsch suggests that they also lent it a "secret charm".