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By: Innervoice_chan
Posted: February 24, 2006
Notes: Hmm...sadly, this chapter isn't quite as entertaning as the previous ones. Oh well...
Hey, why don't you go read and comment on Chapter 3 instead? (hint, hint! *is feeling unloved at the total lack of response, compared to the enthusiastic response to chapters 1&2*)
Behaviour
The Family
The Germans are family oriented, though not conspicuously more so than their neighbours. The family is the ideal, the focus for Treue (loyalty), but divorce rates are high, as couples succumb to the ubiquitous stresses of modern life.
German society as a whole is not well disposed towards children. In public your dog will usually get a warmer welcome than your offspring. Children are regarded as noisy and disruptive, liable to interfere with other people’s right to quiet and Ordnung. Some of this may be explained by the fact that more Germans live in flats than houses, where noise and disturbance can be more problematic. Yet in the home, family life is warm, affectionate at gemütlich (cosy).
For the Germans, the concept of cosiness is much more than comfort. It is interwoven with the idea of Heimat - the cosy heart and hearth of home and family, the safeguard against Angst and homesickness, the warm and orderly shelter in a cold and chaotic world.
Eccentrics
The Germans do not share the English taste for public displays of eccentricity. This need surprise no-one in a country where neighbours have been known to complain about the irregular way others peg their washing out on the line (and have even rearranged it in a more pleasing symmetry).
Fitting in is a virtue, standing out an offence. As a foreigner, should you don a Union Jack waistcoat and a kiss-me-quick hat, pedal around on a tricycle bedecked in pennants, and carry a selection of your favourite mice in your pocket, the Germans will assume that you are bonkers but will smile indulgently. Similar behaviour in another German will have them tutting furiously, looking up the number of the asylum, and worrying about the effect on property values.
The Elderly
The Germans also differ from the British on the matter of the elderly. This is an old person’s society. Germans only really come into their own after retirement, at which point they discover within themselves reserves of conservativeness and a passion for Ordnung they had never dreamed of in their crazy youth.
To the average German senior citizen (and that is the only kind there is), life is a perpetual round of vigilantly seeking out infractions of rules and regulations, and helpfully (and loudly) pointing them out to the miscreants concerned. In Germany, the autumn of life is the most Ernsthaft time of all, and you will never see a senior citizen smile or laugh in a public place (though they may permit themselves a wry chuckle in the privacy of their homes).
Other Germans treat the elderly with the deference and respect due them and eagerly anticipate taking their place among this élite.
Animals
The Germans are fond of their pets, which come in two forms – Alsatians, and preposterously small poodles wearing little woolly jackets and ribbons in their hair. The point of these creatures is to be Obedient and Loyal (Alsatians) or to eat expensive chocolates and pooh everywhere (poohdles). Saying anything rude (or even mildly critical) to a German about his dog is more than your life is worth. All dogs are beautiful, and the world is their litter tray.
Those Germans who do not own a dog are strange (and could even be eccentric). Those who own a cat are certainly Communists and may be cut dead in the street. If the man next door acquires a budgerigar or hamster, any self-respecting German will think about moving house (and perhaps going to another town altogether).
Immigrants
Unlike America or, to a lesser extent, Britain, Germany is not a melting pot where peoples from diverse cultures are thrown together to make the best and worst of it. Remarkably few people immigrate in the true meaning of the word, to make their permanent home in Germany and to take up citizenship.
Foreign workers in Germany all intend to go ‘home’ eventually, even if they stay for decades. They live in a sort of mental and cultural limbo, not wanting to carve out a place for themselves in German society, and not really expected to. Their rootlessness is caught in the German word which describes them - Gastarbeiter, guest-worker.
German treatment of minorities will always be scrutinised by the outside world. Encouragingly, the majority of young Germans are passionate about supporting minority rights and wanting a multi-cultural society.
Violent exceptions to the general rule of indifference or goodwill are bound to grab headlines. In fact, for every act of hostility, there are many acts of kindness.
The guests were invited, they do the jobs which Germans don’t want, they have brought a degree of internationalism to a parochial society and have worked wonders for German health, bringing urgently-needed relief from the national diet of unremitting stodge.
The largest group is the three million Turks, many of whose young are now of the third generation. The problems they face are repeated in most European countries. (Other groups of guest-workers include the Spanish, Italians, and Greeks who are regarded as co-Europeans.)
The Germans now face a different problem. Thousands of Poles, Romanians, Kurds, and other economic and political asylum seekers clamour to be allowed to live and work in Germany. The Ossie guards who used to be employed to keep people in, have had to be reassigned to patrol the Eastern borders to keep people out.
Why do the Germans envy the Chinese? Because they still have their Wall.
Past posts:
Ch.1, Nationalism and Identity
Ch.2, Character
Ch.3, Beliefs and Values
book by Stefan Zeidenitz and Ben Barkow. Ravette Publishing: Horsham, 1997
Posted: February 24, 2006
Notes: Hmm...sadly, this chapter isn't quite as entertaning as the previous ones. Oh well...
Hey, why don't you go read and comment on Chapter 3 instead? (hint, hint! *is feeling unloved at the total lack of response, compared to the enthusiastic response to chapters 1&2*)
Behaviour
The Family
The Germans are family oriented, though not conspicuously more so than their neighbours. The family is the ideal, the focus for Treue (loyalty), but divorce rates are high, as couples succumb to the ubiquitous stresses of modern life.
German society as a whole is not well disposed towards children. In public your dog will usually get a warmer welcome than your offspring. Children are regarded as noisy and disruptive, liable to interfere with other people’s right to quiet and Ordnung. Some of this may be explained by the fact that more Germans live in flats than houses, where noise and disturbance can be more problematic. Yet in the home, family life is warm, affectionate at gemütlich (cosy).
For the Germans, the concept of cosiness is much more than comfort. It is interwoven with the idea of Heimat - the cosy heart and hearth of home and family, the safeguard against Angst and homesickness, the warm and orderly shelter in a cold and chaotic world.
Eccentrics
The Germans do not share the English taste for public displays of eccentricity. This need surprise no-one in a country where neighbours have been known to complain about the irregular way others peg their washing out on the line (and have even rearranged it in a more pleasing symmetry).
Fitting in is a virtue, standing out an offence. As a foreigner, should you don a Union Jack waistcoat and a kiss-me-quick hat, pedal around on a tricycle bedecked in pennants, and carry a selection of your favourite mice in your pocket, the Germans will assume that you are bonkers but will smile indulgently. Similar behaviour in another German will have them tutting furiously, looking up the number of the asylum, and worrying about the effect on property values.
The Elderly
The Germans also differ from the British on the matter of the elderly. This is an old person’s society. Germans only really come into their own after retirement, at which point they discover within themselves reserves of conservativeness and a passion for Ordnung they had never dreamed of in their crazy youth.
To the average German senior citizen (and that is the only kind there is), life is a perpetual round of vigilantly seeking out infractions of rules and regulations, and helpfully (and loudly) pointing them out to the miscreants concerned. In Germany, the autumn of life is the most Ernsthaft time of all, and you will never see a senior citizen smile or laugh in a public place (though they may permit themselves a wry chuckle in the privacy of their homes).
Other Germans treat the elderly with the deference and respect due them and eagerly anticipate taking their place among this élite.
Animals
The Germans are fond of their pets, which come in two forms – Alsatians, and preposterously small poodles wearing little woolly jackets and ribbons in their hair. The point of these creatures is to be Obedient and Loyal (Alsatians) or to eat expensive chocolates and pooh everywhere (poohdles). Saying anything rude (or even mildly critical) to a German about his dog is more than your life is worth. All dogs are beautiful, and the world is their litter tray.
Those Germans who do not own a dog are strange (and could even be eccentric). Those who own a cat are certainly Communists and may be cut dead in the street. If the man next door acquires a budgerigar or hamster, any self-respecting German will think about moving house (and perhaps going to another town altogether).
Immigrants
Unlike America or, to a lesser extent, Britain, Germany is not a melting pot where peoples from diverse cultures are thrown together to make the best and worst of it. Remarkably few people immigrate in the true meaning of the word, to make their permanent home in Germany and to take up citizenship.
Foreign workers in Germany all intend to go ‘home’ eventually, even if they stay for decades. They live in a sort of mental and cultural limbo, not wanting to carve out a place for themselves in German society, and not really expected to. Their rootlessness is caught in the German word which describes them - Gastarbeiter, guest-worker.
German treatment of minorities will always be scrutinised by the outside world. Encouragingly, the majority of young Germans are passionate about supporting minority rights and wanting a multi-cultural society.
Violent exceptions to the general rule of indifference or goodwill are bound to grab headlines. In fact, for every act of hostility, there are many acts of kindness.
The guests were invited, they do the jobs which Germans don’t want, they have brought a degree of internationalism to a parochial society and have worked wonders for German health, bringing urgently-needed relief from the national diet of unremitting stodge.
The largest group is the three million Turks, many of whose young are now of the third generation. The problems they face are repeated in most European countries. (Other groups of guest-workers include the Spanish, Italians, and Greeks who are regarded as co-Europeans.)
The Germans now face a different problem. Thousands of Poles, Romanians, Kurds, and other economic and political asylum seekers clamour to be allowed to live and work in Germany. The Ossie guards who used to be employed to keep people in, have had to be reassigned to patrol the Eastern borders to keep people out.
Why do the Germans envy the Chinese? Because they still have their Wall.
Past posts:
Ch.1, Nationalism and Identity
Ch.2, Character
Ch.3, Beliefs and Values
book by Stefan Zeidenitz and Ben Barkow. Ravette Publishing: Horsham, 1997