Wir pfeifen auf den Gurkenkönig (1976)

The film presents key images from the novel’s plot in a condensed sequence. The Hogelmanns live together under one roof across three generations: a father, a mother, and three children aged about seven, twelve, and fifteen. Along with the grandfather, they initially give the impression of an intact family, but things are already going wrong on all sides. The focus is on conflicts involving the two eldest siblings. Wolfi is having trouble at school and suffers particularly under the tyrannical math teacher, who piles him with punishment assignments and bad grades. A classmate bullies him. Wolfi retaliates—without being recognized—by scrawling graffiti on the house wall and even carrying out a bomb attack on the teacher’s car. The situation becomes critical when Wolfi has to get his father’s signature, since his father has no idea about any of this. This is where the film’s story begins. Wolfi has long had an ambivalent relationship with his father. Because of his already poor school performance, his father bans him from swimming practice, even though Wolfi has the potential to become a champion in his age group. His older sister Martina is not allowed to meet up with people her own age. Here, too, their authoritarian father imposes his outdated ideas about decency and morality, for instance criticizing his daughter’s new bikini as too revealing—a complaint even the grandfather, who lives with them, finds amusing. Martina therefore meets her first boyfriend in secret. She soon loses him, however, to a rival who has been brought up with fewer restrictions. Only the youngest son, Nik, still has access to his father. He admires him, and his father showers him with affection, although he firmly refuses Nik’s request for a pet. The father forbids all the children to watch television. This conflict even escalates to the father destroying the family television. Overwhelmed by his financial responsibilities, the father throws himself into his work at an insurance company, though he has no prospect of a promotion or higher pay. Without support from the grandfather’s pension, the household’s financial situation would be hopeless. The father has hardly any time for his family and has to realize that they have grown estranged from him, each absorbed in their own lives. As a result, he interprets the children’s behavior, disagreements with his own father, and even his wife’s attempts to mediate as disloyalty and disrespect. The mother has given up and tries to avoid conflict. She herself is struggling with the pressure of being a housewife and mother of three, the lack of money, and her waning trust in her husband. She secretly buys a dishwasher on installment and passes it off as a gift from her aunt. In the midst of all this, a cucumber-shaped creature wearing a golden crown appears from behind the kitchen cabinet. He introduces himself as the King of the Kumi-Ori, who have been living undiscovered in the Hogelmanns’ cellar. His criminal subjects have staged a coup against him and driven him from his kingdom. The father decides to grant the “Cucumber King” asylum, and the youngest son, Nik, initially befriends him. The conflict between the father and mother now escalates. After a failed attempt to accommodate the Cucumber King in the parents’ bedroom, the marriage is effectively over, and the father moves into his study with the Cucumber King. The mother recognizes the family’s financial predicament and considers returning to work part-time as a physiotherapist after an extended break to care for the baby. She secretly goes to the employment office to inquire about work. Her husband is against it anyway, so the family must know nothing. When Wolfi finds out, they talk it through, and an alliance forms against the father’s authority. Wolfi tries to solve his school problems by studying with his older sister, who is good at math. A young, open-minded substitute teacher helps him reconnect with school. His mother provides the signature, but he continues going to swimming practice without his father’s knowledge. The father is now completely absorbed by the Cucumber King and has cut off all contact with his family except for the youngest son, Nik. The allies quickly discover that the arrogant king lies and steals. He gathers information so he can manipulate those around him and turn them against one another. Objects, documents, and letters go missing. Nik tells them about the king’s plans for revenge, in which the father is supposed to play a crucial role. In return, the king promises to make the father an insurance director. To do so, he will contact a related monarch who, he claims, is emperor of the Kumi-Ori living in the insurance company building and can influence the company’s hierarchy. Naively, and believing he is acting in his family’s best interests, the father follows him. Wolfi ends the king’s reign of terror with a bold search of the house. The stolen objects are returned to their owners, the king’s control is dismantled, and the situation initially calms down. The children now descend into the cellar and meet the other Kumi-Ori. The revolution there had good reason: they had been suffering from hunger and poverty while their tyrannical, universally unpopular king lived in abundance. Nik says that the Cucumber King plans to flood the cellar by staging a burst pipe and destroy all his subjects. Once again, they expose their king as the scheming liar they know him to be. There surely cannot be an emperor at the insurance company. The Kumi-Ori live exclusively on potato sprouts, and there could never be any potatoes in the insurance company’s concrete cellar. The children promise to help. When they catch their father holding a pipe wrench, they stand united against him. Furious at having his role as the family breadwinner called into question and being accused of potentially committing mass murder, he leaves the house. Meanwhile, Wolfi has made peace with his math teacher, who has returned from a break due to illness. His mother’s signature is finally accepted as equal to his father’s, and the oppressive cycle of doubling his punishment assignments is abandoned as pedagogically worthless. Impressed by Wolfi’s improved performance, the teacher questions his own methods for the first time and even offers Wolfi a position of trust as keeper of the biology collection. In the insurance company’s archive cellar, the father searches for the supposedly resident Kumi-Ori. He finds nothing and eventually faints, buried beneath a collapsing pile of files. Worried about him, the family organizes a search the next day. They find him in the company cellar and safely bring him home, weak but alive. Once he learns the truth about the situation, the father returns to his family. From his sickbed, he shows an unprecedented degree of insight, gentleness, and understanding. Reunited, the family decides to join forces against the Cucumber King and get rid of him. While they are still discussing their plan, the youngest son, Nik, takes action. He ties up the Cucumber King, puts him in a stroller, and secretly loads him onto a city bus in the dead of night. As the secret cargo heads off into the darkness, Nik remains at the stop, grinning. This is where the film ends.