Brüh, Emanze, Tiefgekühltes

The official lyrics to the German national anthem are known to almost anyone who’s heard it a few hundred times: unity, justice, and freedom, brotherhood and the fatherland flourishing in happiness—standard civic poetry, solemn and familiar. What the players of the German national team were actually mouthing during the 2018 World Cup—a tournament they’d exit in the group stage in one of the most embarrassing collapses in football history—turned out to be something else entirely.

The German satire channel Bohemian Browser Ballett brought in professional lip reader Julia Probst to find out what was actually coming out of those mouths during the pre-match ceremonies. Instead of Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit, what Probst read produced things like Brüh, Emanze, Tiefgekühltes—roughly: broth, feminist, frozen food. The national hymn, as performed by Germany’s professional footballers before a tournament the whole country was watching, was apparently the scattered grocery list of someone having a quiet crisis in a supermarket.

There’s something poetically right about this. Bad lip reading—originally an American internet format, applied here with considerable German precision—turns out not to be absurdist comedy so much as accidental documentary. These men did not know the words. They were approximating, guessing, filling in the gaps with their mouths while the cameras watched. The team went on to go out in the group stage. Somehow it all makes sense.