Nonchalance Mäurer & Wirtz 1960 Eau de Toilette

so says the impulsively delivered compliment from Mayor Lütje in 'Pappa ante Portas', Loriot's second and last feature film, to his dowdy gray sister-in-law after one or two schnapps - to that Hedwig, for whom her husband 'is always happy when she knows something better' and who 'would never mock the misfortune of a person', but of course also 'likes to chuckle, provided there is a reason for joking' - which Hedwig also enjoys doing.

Hedwig is thus the sharpest thing for miles around between Borkum and Heringsdorf - and as she sits on the train next to her Hellmuth (dressed in an easy-care, tripe-colored travel ensemble - and later at the birthday party in a monkishly modest black and white), one imagines how she has just refreshed herself in the bathroom or on the train toilet with a splash (or at most two, certainly no more) of nonchalance.

Nonchalance is one of the old-timers of the German drugstore scents and as conservative and dowdy as the rural women's association of Böblingen (pardon!). Touchingly old-fashioned, it is one of those fragrances that can presumably be found on the bathroom shelf or in the handbag of those ladies who fundamentally find perfume indecent, as it is extravagant, and deep down still believe that 'only whores wear rouge, while ladies merely pinch their cheeks'. Bony and didactically simple and unpretentious, it is the olfactory memory of a time when 'real' perfume, just like lipstick and silk stockings, was still something decadent and corrupt, which only a Rosemarie Nitribitt would dare to think of without blushing. What its French name intends to convey - lightness and charm and something cheeky - must be sought very hard amidst its steam-ironed, morally strict soapy quality, which seems to repeat like a metronome: 'Simple, but sufficient. I don't need more.'

Conclusion, in Hedwig's stern words:
'True joy comes from the heart! We are cheerful people and enjoy ourselves together.'