Interviewer: Werner, it is such a profound joy to have you here. I have to show you something before we continue. Our stage manager found this in a storage box labeled “1965.”

Werner: Leaning forward, squinting slightly. Oh, goodness. Is that… let me see.

Interviewer: It’s the original. The monocle.

Werner: Laughs warmly, taking the small piece of glass with a touch of reverence. You know, I haven’t held this in twenty years. It’s smaller than I remember. And much more troublesome.

Interviewer: Troublesome? I always thought you wore it so naturally. On the show, it looked like it was part of your anatomy.

Werner: That was the secret, you see. I had to train my facial muscles like a professional athlete just to keep that bit of glass from escaping. If I relaxed for even a second, it was gone. It had a mind of its own.

Interviewer: Did it ever cause any real-world trouble?

Werner: Chuckles. Oh, constantly. On the set, Bob Crane would always try to make me laugh during my close-ups just to see if he could make it pop out. But the best story… the one that still makes me blush… happened far away from the Hollywood cameras.

Interviewer: Please, tell me.

Werner: It was 1967. We were in the middle of a massive press tour across the Midwest. I was in Chicago, staying at a very prestigious, very quiet hotel. I had just finished a grueling day of interviews and all I wanted was a sophisticated dinner.

Werner: I was dressed in my finest tailored suit. In my mind, I was Werner Klemperer, the concert violinist and serious actor. I was certainly not the bumbling commandant of Stalag 13.

Werner: I sat down at this dimly lit table, ordered a very expensive bowl of lobster bisque, and tried to disappear into the shadows of the restaurant.

Werner: Then, I saw her. A woman at the next table. She had been staring at me for ten minutes. Finally, she stood up and walked over. She looked terrified, but also strangely determined.

Werner: She leaned in and whispered, “Colonel, I didn’t know you were stationed in Chicago.”

Interviewer: She actually thought you were the character?

Werner: Entirely. I tried to explain. I said, “Madam, I am an actor. I am merely a man having dinner.” But she didn’t hear a word. She wanted a performance. She wanted to see the man from the television.

Werner: The whole restaurant had gone quiet. The waiters were hovering. The manager was watching from the kitchen door. I realized I couldn’t be Werner anymore. I had to be Klink.

Werner: I reached into my vest pocket, where I always carried a spare piece of glass for emergencies.

Werner: I leaned forward, the shadow of the candle hitting my face just right, and I snapped the monocle into place to give her the full, terrifying Colonel Klink experience.

And then, everything went wrong.

I snapped that monocle into my eye with the practiced precision of a Prussian general.

The transformation was instantaneous. My spine straightened, my lip curled, and my face took on that familiar, pinched look of a man who is constantly being outsmarted by his own prisoners.

The woman gasped, clutching her pearls in delight. She was seeing the “Iron Colonel” in the flesh.

But then, nature and physics took over.

You see, I had just taken a very large, very hot spoonful of that lobster bisque right before she approached.

As I held my breath to maintain the “Klink” persona, the heat from the soup hit my face, the steam rose up into my eye, and my facial muscles—which were already exhausted from a day of smiling for promotional cameras—decided to go on a total strike.

The monocle didn’t just fall. It launched.

It flew out of my eye socket with the velocity of a projectile, arced through the air like a tiny glass bird, and landed with a perfect, resounding “plop” right into the center of my soup bowl.

A fountain of creamy orange bisque erupted.

It splashed across my crisp white shirt, it dotted my forehead, and a significant portion of it landed directly on the woman’s expensive silk sleeve.

The silence that followed was absolute.

I sat there, dripping with lobster soup, looking through one naked eye at a piece of glass slowly sinking to the bottom of my dinner.

The woman didn’t scream. She didn’t get angry about her dress.

She looked at the orange mess on her arm, looked at my wide, startled eye, and then let out a laugh so loud it probably shook the chandeliers in the hotel lobby.

“Oh, Colonel,” she wheezed between gasps for air, “you really are as clumsy as they say!”

The entire restaurant erupted. People were cheering. The waiters were doubling over, trying to hide their faces behind their trays.

I was sitting there, a serious actor who had studied under the greats of the European stage, covered in seafood, realizing that my dignity had just been traded for a laugh that I hadn’t even planned.

I remember looking at the manager and just gesturing to the bowl with a trembling hand. I said, in the most high-pitched, indignant Klink voice I could muster, “Dismissed!”

When I got back to the set a few days later, word had already traveled. I don’t know how they found out—maybe a waiter was a fan of the show, or maybe the story was just too good not to share.

But when I walked into the barracks for the first scene of the morning, John Banner—our wonderful, giant Schultz—was standing there with a massive soup ladle.

He didn’t say a single word. He just held the ladle up like a royal scepter.

Bob Crane was leaning against the bunk, practically vibrating with suppressed laughter.

He looked at me and said, “Werner, we heard you’re diversifying. Moving into underwater surveillance?”

I tried to stay in character. I really did. I tried to look stern.

But the crew had placed a tiny, plastic lobster inside my desk drawer. Every time I opened it during a take to look for a map or a secret report, I saw that lobster staring back at me.

It became a running joke for the rest of the season.

If a scene was going poorly, or if the director was getting frustrated with a technical delay, Richard Dawson would lean over and whisper, “Anyone fancy a bisque?”

It would break the tension every single time. We would all lose it.

That little piece of glass was supposed to be a symbol of authority, a sign of the “Iron Colonel.”

But in reality, it was the greatest comedic partner I ever had. It knew exactly when to fall to make a point, and it knew exactly when to stay put to let a line land.

That night in Chicago taught me something important about the show and about myself.

We weren’t just making a sitcom. We were giving people a reason to laugh at the very things that used to scare them.

If a man in a monocle can’t even eat soup without a disaster, how powerful can he really be?

I eventually fished the monocle out of the bisque that night, wiped it off with a napkin, and handed it to the woman as a souvenir.

I told her, “Take it. It clearly prefers your company to mine.”

She kept it, too. I like to think it’s sitting on a mantelpiece somewhere in Illinois, still smelling faintly of lobster and 1960s television history.

The crew even started a “Soup Fund” in the breakroom. Every time the monocle fell during a take when it wasn’t supposed to, I had to put a nickel in a jar.

By the end of the month, we had enough to buy the entire cast and crew a gourmet lunch. Naturally, Bob insisted we order from a seafood place.

He stood on a chair and toasted to “The Colonel’s Eye,” while the rest of us roared.

It’s those small, ridiculous moments that bonded us. We weren’t just coworkers; we were a family that thrived on the absurdity of our own existence.

Even now, thirty years later, when I see a bowl of bisque on a menu, I instinctively check my pocket for a spare piece of glass.

Comedy is often just a tragedy that happened to someone else—or a piece of glass that chose the wrong time to go for a swim.

Do you have a favorite prop from the show that always made you laugh?