Tünnes and Schäl are two figures from the puppet

Puppet

A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....

 theater of Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

.

The name Tünnes is the Rheinish form of Anthony

Anthony (given name)

Anthony or Antony is a masculine given name, , derived from Antonius, a Roman family name . That name seems to have come originally from the Etruscan language, although nothing further is known about this derivation...

 or Antonius

Antonius

Antonius is the nomen of the gens Antonia, one of the most important plebeian families at Rome. It is also the source of the English personal name Anthony, as well as a number of similar names in various European languages....

. Tünnes is good natured and has a rural, farmer-type of common sense and cleverness.

Schäl can refer to the squint-eyes of the two figures or also a term meaning two-faced or iniquitous in the Kölsch

Kölsch language

Kölsch is a very closely related small set of dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian Central German group of languages. Kölsch is spoken in and partially around Cologne in the area covered by the Archdiocese and former Electorate of Cologne reaching from Neuss in the north to just south of Bonn,...

 dialect. Schäl is skinnier than Tünnes and wears a tailcoat.

History

Christoph Winters, the founder of the first Cologne Hänneschen puppet theater, introduced Tünnes to the ensemble in 1803. Schäl was introduced in 1847 in a competing theater run by Franz Millewitsch, an ancestor of actor Willy Millowitsch

Willy Millowitsch

Willy Millowitsch was a German stage and TV actor and the director of the Volkstheater Millowitsch in Cologne.-Early life:...

. Millewitsch placed the sly figure of Schäl with the good-natured Tünnes, clearly a nudge against his clever competitor Winters.

Culture

The two characters are embedded in the culture and humor of the city, apparently personifying many traits of people from Cologne, and there are many jokes referencing the figures.