“Berliner Sonderschule”: History, Space, and Humour in Jan Ole Gerster’s Oh Boy (A Coffee in Berlin)

The term Berliner Sonderschule appears both in a humorous scene in Jan Ole Gerster’s 2012 film Oh Boy (English: A Coffee in Berlin) and in a media interview in which Gerster uses it to refer to his own cinematic aesthetic. He thereby consciously sets his work apart from recent films belonging to the Berlin School. Exploring various cinematic and narrative techniques in Oh Boy—including how the director spotlights the city’s palimpsestuous architectural objects and displays the influence of German history on present-day Berliners—we reveal what Gerster might mean with his use of the tongue-in-cheek designation Berliner Sonderschule. We assess this appellation also as a way for the director to reinforce his distance from the Berlin School and to refer to his kaleidoscopic aesthetic with self-deprecating humour. In Oh Boy, Gerster confronts the interconnectedness of past and present, critiques the state of cinema in post-Wall Germany, and is not afraid to laugh at himself in the process.