Church welcomes attacks on the Church by a cabaret artist

 "Women are simply closer to life" from 2018

Programme item at Katholikentag - Catholic Day: Ulrike Böhmer takes to the stage as Erna Schabiewsky on 12 May

Narrow-minded, backward-looking and intolerant? Cabaret artist Ulrike Böhmer explains in an interview why men harm the Catholic Church - and why no one wants a bishop at home.

A semi-detached house in the middle of Iserlohn: this is where Ulrike Böhmer, 55, lives. After working for a long time in Dortmund as a parish worker for the Catholic Church, she moved back to her parents' house in Iserlohn ten years ago. It is nice and quiet here: Whether from the kitchen window or from her desk - the view is of the forest. Ulrike Böhmer is a church cabaret artist. The character with whom she will be on stage at the Katholikentag on Saturday, 12 May, is called Erna Schabiewsky. She wears a black and white pepit hat, a red jacket over a white blouse, a red skirt and black support stockings. What also characterises Erna is her weakness for eggnog.

WELT: Good day, Mrs Böhmer. Is that the correct greeting when talking to a church cabaret artist?

Ulrike Böhmer: Of course, we don't say that here in the Sauerland. For the rest, Grüß Göttin (Greetings Goddess- the normal greeting in Austria and Bavaria is Grüß Gott) would be more appropriate.

WELT: The Catholic Church and women - here we are already in the middle of the topic. I had actually planned to talk about that later.

Böhmer: Yes, with this topic I immediately get into a flush, as Erna would say. Maybe we'd better start piano?

WELT: I'd love to. Have you already drunk eggnog today?

Böhmer: (She laughs) I really like eggnog. But only in extreme emergencies before 6 pm. The other day I had a gig near Würzburg. They actually served me homemade eggnog as a thank you.

WELT: You get around a lot, you have 80 performances a year. You just performed in Wesseling, tomorrow it's Dortmund. Have you always been on the road so much as a cabaret artist?

Böhmer: You could say that. I've been doing it for 17 years - and it's been going on from the very beginning. Basically, it started during my studies. Religious education in Paderborn. 80s. We were annoyed about so many things back then. For example, it was compulsory for us students to live together in a hall of residence. Even your own children were not allowed to stay overnight with you, not to mention men. Anyone who attended an event by the church critic Eugen Drewermann was almost stoned to death.

WELT: It's a wonder you haven't lost your sense of humour.

Böhmer: I have lost it. Then we said to ourselves: We have to learn to deal with the upsets, of which there were countless at the time. We discovered cabaret as an outlet. Humour is the best outlet of all. For our very first performance we got so much trouble that we said to ourselves: Now more than ever!

WELT: In your programmes you deal with the vain vicar who orders the ladies of the Catholic women's community to sew pom-poms on his chasuble. But you also deal with the big church issues, such as ecumenism, which Erna Schabiewsky calls Ökenemene. How do you explain that there has been such a great demand for your stage shows for such a long time?

Böhmer: I have felt for a long time that there is a ferment in the communities. At the moment it is extreme. People are upset about the priestly behaviour. About young chaplains who are so conservative and love themselves. Then there's the issue of women and the Catholic Church, which I'm now going to introduce quite discreetly. Family - something that never happens in Sunday Masses! I then take this up in my programmes and people find themselves again. I explore boundaries. I don't present people, but at most groups, such as priests - you can do many beautiful things about them. The question is always: where is the limit of humour? Once I played a goddess who hands out presents at Christmas. That earned me fierce criticism from the audience.

WELT: Now that you have introduced the subject of women and the Catholic Church - do you have the impression that there is movement on the subject

Böhmer: I am cautiously pessimistic in that respect. I cannot imagine that I will experience women deacons in my life. If there were, there would also have to be women priests, and I think that is utopian. You know, the really bad thing is how God is talked about in the Church. How they proclaim. We have good news to proclaim. But the sermons are so boring. My concern is to ask: How can we manage to speak of God today in such a way that people can relate to it? The language of the church is a theologian's language that has nothing to do with the reality of people's lives. If people would listen to women, this would change.

WELT: How so?

Böhmer: I don't like to generalise. There are also great men in the Church, for example Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of the Osnabrück diocese. Or Cardinal Marx, who has now held out the prospect of blessing homosexual couples. When I was a parish worker in Dortmund, I would never have thought it possible for a Cardinal to speak out on this issue. At the same time, women simply have a different language, a different approach to the world. We are much closer to life. Priests, for example, don't have families. But that is exactly what people are interested in!

WELT: Have you ever dealt with this topic in a stage narrative?

Böhmer: The problem is this: Take the bishops. They are flown in for events, but they are never really there in the parishes. Basically, I can only call out to these gentlemen: Go out! Go into the families! Go to the allotments on Sundays, eat a bratwurst with the people. Pick up a hoe and help with the gardening. A foolhardy idea. Whether that's funny or not, I don't know. But in one of my programmes, Erna had the idea of having a bishop stay with a family for three weeks. People laughed. But nobody wanted him to stay with them. There is still this terrible reverence for office. Erna then came up with the idea of raffling off the three weeks with the bishop. Surprise: No one wanted to take part in the raffle.

WELT: Could it be that you are not a cabaret artist at all, but preach sermons on stage? And that the places where you perform briefly become a kind of counter-church?

Böhmer: I suppose that's a bit like that, yes. We have to stop being afraid. Whether of offices, of refugees or of change in general. Yes, on stage the preacher in me comes through. One day, I hope, I might manage to just preach. I know I have the ability to do that. I was a full-time employee of the Catholic Church for many years, but I have closed that chapter. Today I stand on the stage as a woman - and empower myself. And to all the others who cannot or do not like to come to terms with the given circumstances, I would like to appeal: Empower yourselves too!

WELT: Do you still attend church services?

Böhmer: Very, very, very rarely. Except for the feminist service at St. Petri's Church in Dortmund, on the last Sunday of every month. I go there. The sermons there are always given by women who have something to say. Last time, a psychotherapist spoke on the subject of forgiveness.

WELT: All this time you have been speaking pure High German, although your Erna always speaks rich Ruhrpot slang on stage. Did you pull yourself together for this conversation?

Böhmer: (She laughs) I only speak like Erna when I'm wearing the Pepita hat - an heirloom from my grandmother, whose name was Erna and who has been a major inspiration for my work as a cabaret artist. At the moment I'm working on my second book, which will be called "Erna, Take Over". Even when I'm writing, I'm immediately in the tone of Erna. Although I don't put on my hat when I write.

Ulrike Böhmer, born in 1962, is a cabaret artist and theologian. During her studies she did women's cabaret with the "Lila Schnecken". She has been touring as a soloist since 2001. She has twice received the "Honnefer Zündkerze" cabaret award. Ulrike Böhmer's current programme is entitled "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise!"- quoting Luther.

Cathcon:  A former parish worker, who rarely visits church makes her living out of criticising the Church every at the national Church Days....She attacks self-loving clerics but she clearly loves herself.

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