Alfred Hitchcock appears three times in his films with an instrument case. The first time in “Spellbound” from 1945. Hitchcock leaves a hotel elevator with a violin case. Two years later, in “The Paradine Case”, it seems to be a wrapped cello with which he gets off the train in a film scene, and in 1951, in “Strangers on a Train”, the director reappears with such an instrument case on. This time he is transporting a double bass with it.
Over time, the instrument cases at Alfred Hitchcock’s got bigger and bigger, that can be observed. But otherwise, as a look at the German-language newspaper archive proves, the “instrument box” has grown into a kind of monster in recent years.
He was often mentioned last, for example on Sunday evening on Anne Will’s talk show. Above all, the outgoing Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) used it again and again as a metaphor. In the 1950s, when Hitchcock was still filming “Strangers on a Train”, the “instrument box” was only rarely used in German-language newspapers (and then almost exclusively in connection with doctors or musicians).
From the 1960s onwards, the term mainly stood for measures in German property, housing, eastern and, above all, economic and financial policy (the former finance minister Hans Eichel, for example, was a great friend of the expression “instrument box”). And so it is no surprise that the first article in which the lively word in connection with the pandemic can be found comes from the business-savvy one Handelsblatt originates. As early as March 2, 2020, under the heading “Fight against the Corona Crash”, the Ministry of Finance and Economics in Berlin was working “on an instrument kit” for companies.
When is it half empty, the instrument case?
Since then, the box can no longer be held. Every minute there is someone who wants to exhaust the “instrument box of the Infection Protection Act” (FDP parliamentary group vice Michael Theurer) or doubts “whether the instrument box is sufficient for the future” (Brandenburg’s SPD Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke). The old black-red coalition is often accused of having “made the instrument box half empty” (democracy researcher Wolfgang Merkel). It’s just funny that the Austrian Finance Minister Gernot Blümel constantly speaks of “instrument cases” in connection with the pandemic. In the foothills of the Alps, “suitcases” tend to refer to corona deniers.
While the use of the term “instrument box” in the general practitioner context, in comedies (“The Big Blonde”) or in connection with cars like the “Fuldamobil”, which was unfortunately discontinued many years ago, seems to be a new, to have found a shining stage. A stage on which the instrument case can finally shine like never before in any orchestra pit. The box is to be granted. Now politicians just have to find the right tool.