How to explain the enduring appeal of Stromberg?
The German mockumentary sitcom, inspired by the Officehas outlived both the original BBC series and the Steve Carell-led U.S. spin-off,and remains a cultural force in Germany. This weekend, a new Stromberg feature hits German theaters, marking the return of Christoph Maria Herbst as Bernd Stromberg, the terminally insecure, politically incorrect (former) deputy head of claims settlement at insurance company capitol Versicherung AG.
Stromberg 2 – Everything as usual again (Everything as Usual Again) rolls out as sly counter-programming to the holiday tentpoles (Zoomania 2, Wicked: For Goodthe upcoming avatar 3) expected to dominate the German box office. Amazon Prime Video, which is backing the film with Banijay Media and Pro7, is betting that audiences – many of whom weren’t even born when Stromberg first aired – will happily indulge in a bit of ashamed of others (“second-hand embarrassment”) as the world’s worst middle manager tramples his way through awkward office politics.
They could be right.Two decades on, Stromberg is enjoying a full gen Z revival. Nowhere is this clearer than online, where Herbst has become a meme as social media users seize on parallels between his fictional character’s cringey, politically incorrect demeanor and that of Germany’s real-life Chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
On TikTok and Instagram, the hashtag mash-up “Strommerz” has become a sub-genre, remixing news clips of Merz with the Stromberg theme and classic office reaction shots.Many use AI to sync Herbst’s voice – delivering some idiotic or sexist aside – to Merz’s image.# ‘Stromberg’ Creator on the Show’s Enduring Appeal and Avoiding a Ricky Gervais impression
MadeFor Film GmbH/Willi Weber
Instead, the new film leans into what has always made Stromberg both horrifying and liberating: his total lack of self-censorship.
“People love Stromberg because he doesn’t censor himself,” Herbst says.”We watch him slowly form his thoughts while he’s speaking. He suddenly remembers the camera is there and just talks. He says and does things we barely dare to think thes days, even after a beer, or a crate of beer.”
Despite The Office DNA and the “inspired by” credit (which Pro7 added only after the BBC threatened legal action), Stromberg is its own, distinctively German beast.
“When we started,the term ‘mockumentary’ didn’t even exist in German,” Herbst recalls. “I can still barely pronounce it. I deliberately didn’t watch The office to avoid doing a Ricky Gervais impression.This is our own, very German figure, not a translation of the british one.”
“In the beginning, the idea was just to adapt the original scripts,” adds Husmann. “I always said: That makes no sense. Working life in Germany is different from that in England, Spain, or France. We don’t have Red Nose day in offices here. You know the two thinnest books in the world? Great British cuisine and the big book of German humor,” he quips. “If you want to make people laugh here,you have to do it differently.”
Where the BBC and NBC series mined social embarrassment and kitchen-sink realism, stromberg pushed things darker a