German Memes: 6 Best Places to Find Them Online

Learning and understanding humor is one of the hardest parts of learning a new language and culture.

German memes are a great way to find your German funny bone.

Trouble is, they can be a little hard to find. 

Hab keine Angst! I’ve tracked down some great resources to get your meme fix… in Deutsch!

 

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Where to Find German Memes

1. Deutsche Memes (German Memes)

This Facebook page and Instagram account is seemingly no longer updated, but they are treasure troves of German memes. Run by the user Unhöflich (rude), these memes take images from pop culture and beyond and relate them to everyday experiences. The results are hilarious!

Example meme from this resource:

Taken from Deutsche Memes’ Instagram account, the above meme depicts Lindsay Lohan distraught on the phone. In the late 2010s, Lindsay Lohan was known for her public breakdowns that effectively destroyed her once successful acting and singing career.

The German writing overhead says, “Wenn deine Eltern dich zwingen, deine eigenen Arzttermine und ‘Erwachsenen-Anrufe’ zu machen” (When your parents force you to make your own doctor’s appointments and “adult calls”).

Pure gold!

2. German Memes on Pinterest

I would argue Pinterest is your best bet for finding German memes, since it’s a huge collection of categorized memes that you can search for by keyword. I searched for “German memes” and dozens of options came up, including the linked example below.

Example meme from this resource:

One funny example includes a frog lying on its back looking cozy, using lily pads and surrounding foliage like a lounge chair. The meme says, “Mir reicht, wenn ich weiß, dass ich könnte, wenn ich wollte,” which translates to “It’s enough for me when I know that I could if I wanted to.”

Another translation for Mir reicht (es) is “I’ve had enough,” which still works well in the statement, but it’s important to hone in on the context to not only make the statement funnier, but to understand it better. This is a wonderful example of the German subjunctive mood, focusing on the past tense.

3. r/ich_iel on Reddit

r/ich_iel is a subreddit that posts many memes in German. In fact, it’s the German version of the r/me_irl subreddit. As with all subreddits on Reddit, you can sort the posts by “Hot” (posts that are getting lots of interactions), “New” (the newest posts) or “Top” (posts that have the most upvotes).

The memes are posted by the subreddit’s moderators and also by other subreddit members. That means that there is a constant stream of memes being added pretty much daily. It also means that you can create and post your own memes if you’d like.

Example meme from this resource:

The above meme is meant to be read from the top down. In the first section, there is a traffic sign and a sentence describing what this sign is supposed to mean: “Immer diese komischen Schilder am Straßenrand ‘Vorsicht Kinder!'” (Always these funny signs on the roadside saying “Caution, children!”)

The next image shows a vespa and says, “Als ob ich vor denen Angst habe!” (As if I’m afraid of them!) This meme is presumably a commentary on vespa riders and how they supposedly don’t follow traffic rules in Germany.

4. Memes uff Schwäbisch

A Facebook group serves as a solid way to see an ongoing collection of posts, and this one focuses on students and younger people in the Schwäbisch town in Germany. Keep in mind that many of them are a little vulgar.

Schwäbisch is also considered a dialect of High German, so the memes might be a little tricky to decipher, but they provide a nice look into a whole different way to speak German.

Example meme from this resource:

Dogs make memes more interesting, so one meme stands out on this site, which everyone can relate to. It shows a dog looking as if he’s sitting and using a computer.

The dog says, “Windows 10? I benutz emmer no XP,” which has a rough translation to “Windows 10? I’m still using XP.” In terms of cultural significance, the meme shows that Germans are rather tech and business oriented, bashing companies like Microsoft and Apple.

5. A Google Images Meme Search

Another unlimited meme searcher, the German Google Image Search, brings up plenty of memes based on categories if you click on the titles at the top of your search. Just a quick search revealed that they have categories for Spongebob, Merkel and other funny memes.

Example meme from this resource:

Some statements don’t sound too funny until you put them on SpongeBob’s face (or Spongebob Schwammkopf, as he’s known in the German-speaking world). In this meme from Google Images, we see Spongebob in bed dramatically clutching his foghorn alarm, utter anguish in his eyes. The captions reads: “Dieser Moment, wenn dein Wecker klingelt, während du einen schönen Traum hattest.” (The moment when your alarm goes off while you were having a nice dream.) Some quotidian struggles are clearly universal, it seems.

Google Images works well for beginners and intermediate learners, seeing as how the caption in this meme gives a good example of how verbs behave in sentences. Here we see how a word like während can be used as a subordinating conjunction, which means it pushes the verb hattest to the end of the clause.

6. Memes auf Deutsch (Memes in German)

This Facebook page seems to be active recently, so here’s hoping that new memes are added soon! In case they aren’t, this page is still a pretty big archive of memes in German.

Run by administrator Sei Peruanisch (Be Peruvian), these memes draw on pop culture icons such as Spongebob SquarePants, the Simpsons and Mr. Bean. They also have an international flavor, sometimes commenting on Peruvian and other cultures.

Example meme from this resource:

The above meme shows a baby with her eyes closed and her hands in the air. The German reads, “Wenn du betrunken im Club bist und dein Song kommt” (When you’re drunk in the club and your song comes on).

While this meme is hilarious in German, its content also mirrors memes in other languages such as English. In fact, that’s the great thing about learning with German memes: sometimes you may already know their structure or what the words are supposed to say. This makes understanding them easier!

Since memes are a huge part of German pop culture, you can understand them better by consuming other authentic German media too, like TV shows (especially comedies), German music and even the news (political cartoons can be a great place to start). 

Seriously? Can German Memes Really Help My Language Learning?

You bet they can. Memes provide a quick and hilarious way to brush up on quick phrases, jokes and vocabulary. Many of them use images referring to recent or past events, offering a unique look into what Germans are talking about right now.

Some memes are like brain busters too, causing you to really work your mind. For example, a pun requires you to translate the initial joke, but also think about the other German word the phrase is referring to. 

As you can see, some German memes are easy to translate and understand the jokes, but others use Internet slang, jargon or even varying dialects, forcing you to search around and learn what they actually mean. You may even have no problem with the translation, yet the humor doesn’t translate.

Regardless, the hunt is part of the fun, so enjoy brushing up on your German humor skills with some of these silly German memes.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)