Mainzelmännchen
- Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
- Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,156 articles in the main category, and specifying
|topic=
will aid in categorization. - Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
- You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is
Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Mainzelmännchen]]; see its history for attribution.
- You may also add the template
{{Translated|de|Mainzelmännchen}}
to the talk page. - For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
The Mainzelmännchen are six comedic cartoon characters used as mascots for German public service television broadcaster ZDF. They first aired on television in 1963 as a way to accommodate a government regulation disallowing confusion between advertising and content. The cartoon characters served as a transition between the two.[1]
They appear in between ads during broadcast, in roughly three to five second clips, and often during the satirical news program Heute-show. The name is a combination Mainz, headquarters for ZDF, and Heinzelmännchen, a type of gnome common in folklore surrounding the city of Cologne. Wolf Gerlach created the characters.[2][3]
The Mainzelmännchen have become quite popular across Germany. Radio dramas have been created surrounding them, as well as children's books, and numerous other kinds of merchandise.
Appearance and Actions
The Mainzelmännchen are either wights or dwarves, and express similarities to Heinzelmännchen. They often wear a Phrygian cap, similar to garden gnomes, however they lack a beard. Their appearances often last three to five seconds, during which they perform a single short gag. They usually speak in only a few short words, in a grumbly tone. Many of the gags are presented only visually and pantomimically. Their most famous saying is the traditional greeting „Gud’n Aamd“, a dialect coloured "Guten Abend" ("good evening"). Their given names are Anton, Berti, Conni, Det, Edi and Fritzchen.