Soldat ärgere Dich nicht
It all began with a war game: in 1914, the success story of “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” started. In a short time, the board game became a symbol of German cosiness. Yet its popularity is thanks to a clever advertising campaign during the First World War.
Note: This article first appeared in a modified form in 2014 on Spiegel Online and then on zuspieler.de.
Europe, 1914 to 1918: grenades explode, bullets whistle through the air, soldiers crouch in trenches. Millions die. The First World War rages across the continent. Field hospitals are overflowing. “There’s plenty to do on the wards. The patients who are still with us now are all seriously wounded […]. There’s one poor chap whose intestines are torn open on the side,” writes assistant doctor Dr. Rudolf Theis Eden to his wife in 1915. Yet there are also moments when people briefly forget the war.
In some field hospitals, a new board game has arrived with the field post. It’s called “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” and it fascinates the patients. Enthusiastically, they roll dice, move colourful wooden figures across the board and passionately knock out their opponents’ pieces. The game conveys a comforting message to the demoralised soldiers: “It confirms the insight that victory and defeat are decided by fate alone, while strategic skills or fighting spirit play no part,” writes art historian Andreas Tönnesmann in his book “Monopoly. Das Spiel, die Stadt und das Glück.”
Hatbox as the game board
The game was developed in 1907 by a certain Josef Friedrich Schmidt, the later founder of the “Schmidt Spiele” publishing house. The merchant lived in Munich, in the then working-class district of Giesing, on the right bank of the Isar. Schmidt knew the old Indian race game “Pachisi” and probably also its English development “Ludo”. These inspired him. Schmidt made the first game board in his living kitchen from a dented hatbox. He carved the figures from small wooden blocks. His wife and three sons were as enthusiastic about “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” as the soldiers in the field hospitals would later be.
Yet the handmade games never convinced the masses. Schmidt was not discouraged. He was convinced of his game and, in 1914, first started mass production and then an unusual marketing campaign. He sent the first 3,000 copies as donations in kind to field hospitals. This is how soldiers got to know and love the game. When they unpacked their rucksacks after the war, “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” was inside. The game spread quickly across Germany. It cost just 35 pfennigs, less than a pound of sugar. By 1920, more than a million boxes were already in German living rooms.
“Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” at the front
The game accompanied Germans not only through the First but also through the Second World War. In 1942, soldier Johannes Hamm wrote to his wife: “I’m sitting by the stove in a newly whitewashed, good room of a fisherman’s house. […] The fisherman has deserted from the Reds and was taken away by German soldiers. The fisherman’s young wife […] is grateful, but we can’t talk to each other because she doesn’t understand my Russian gibberish. […] My sergeant, who lives next door, is probably making advances on her. He’s playing ‘Mensch ärgere Dich nicht’ with her.” German Xaver Fuchs also attended a war officer candidate course in 1942. In his diary, he noted: “It’s gloomy outside. We’re having a good time in our hut, get up at half past nine, then write and listen to the radio at the same time. That’s the life. In the evenings, we play ‘Mensch ärgere Dich nicht’.” A year later, Fuchs marched towards the front. “Slept in foxholes. Supposed to attack tomorrow. Last rest.” It was his final entry. Fuchs died on 4 August 1943.
Red against green, Russians against Germans
It wasn’t just soldiers who knew the game, but also children back home. “In mid-January 1945, the Soviet Army’s major offensive in the Vistula Bend towards Germany had begun, as reported in the ‘Breslauer Nachrichten’. […] I myself […] read the latest newspaper reports every day about the war events in Silesia and elsewhere and played ‘Mensch ärgere Dich nicht’ alone with two colours: green and red. These were the Germans and the Russians. Whoever won would win this war. With such simple thoughts, I tried to explore our fate,” recalls Wolfgang Gottschlich. And Margot Weinand from Neukirchen writes about her childhood during the Second World War: “Grandpa was waiting for us in the flat. He had laid out the games ‘Mensch ärgere Dich nicht’, ‘Mühle’, ‘Dame’ and ‘Schwarzer Peter’ on a small table. The table was set with stollen and tea. […] After eating, we played. Grandma comforted the loser and said, ‘You have to learn this too, because it’s part of life. This is how you learn to win as well.’ I never understood why that should be so.”
Josef Friedrich Schmidt lived to see the end of the war but died in 1948. His game has survived to this day. “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” has become a classic. The “Today Art Museum” in Peking even features it as part of a special exhibition as an example of a typically German everyday object – one that accompanied Germans through two world wars and, hopefully, will never be used in war again.