My friend Heidi recently introduced me to the expression: “Mein Name ist Hase.” This is a humorous way of saying, “I’m clueless” or “I have no idea” or “I’m staying out of it.” I already knew that der Hase is a rabbit. What’s so clueless about that?
It goes back to the 1850’s, when a college student named Victor von Hase ended up in trouble with the law. All he would say in court was “Mein Name ist Hase; ich weiß von nichts“–“My name is Hase; I know nothing.” Other college students of the time thought this was hilarious, and the expression soon spread throughout Germany and the Netherlands as a funny way to say, “Don’t ask me about it” (something college students have to say quite a lot). So deeply ingrained was this in German culture that when the Bugs Bunny Show came to Germany, it was called, “Mein Name is Hase.”