Germany

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Frau Merkel’s lover

16933418,14048206,highRes,1344610095Sorry, there isn’t one. François Hollande, her counterpart across the Rhein?  Sure, he’s French.  The stories in the news recently from France and Germany make it hard to imagine that the two cultures have Charlemagne (Karl der Große) as a common ancestor, or that they share much at all in terms of values and way of life. It’s nothing surprising or shocking in France that a politician would have a maîtresse, even a politician as uncharismatic and down-to-earth as François Hollande. Just because they are elected to public office, French politicians aren’t expected to stop being human or men or French.

In Germany one expects politicians to be serious, that is to say, to focus on their responsibilities and to do their duty.  Such extra-curricular activities are verboten as an unnecessary and unwanted distraction.  How do German leaders break the public trust?  If they plagiarize on their university theses, as has caused the downfall of several ministers in the last few years (dishonesty).  Or they fall behind schedule on a building project, such as the debacle over the years late new Berlin airport (incompetence).  Or they spend an inordinate amount of public money (in this case from Church tax paying German Catholics) on luxury for themselves (extravagance), as did the “bling bishop” (Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg).

The big news in Germany in recent days has nothing to do with lovers or sex, but instead with something much closer to the hearts of many Germans: their automobiles.  The scandal in the news is the sudden loss of trust in an organization Germans depend on and see as the ideal complement to their cars, namely their automobile association, the ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club). The ADAC has served as the trusted advisor to German car owners and prospective car buyers since 1903.  The most widely published periodical in Germany is not Der Spiegel or Die Zeit, it is the ADAC Motorwelt (motor world). Now it turns out that data supplied by the ADAC (for example on the number of votes for car of the year) has in some cases been either manipulated or invented, possibly in order to inflate the importance of the organization in order to gain more members.  This is not just dishonesty, incompetence and greed – it’s all three combined to swindle Germans in relation to their prize possession, the symbol of German economic power and engineering prowess. Mein Gott, o Gott! 

Unlike their preferences in cars, Germans don’t like flashy leaders.  What they do value in leaders and cars is dependability and familiarity – just the qualities the reliable and consistent Mutti Merkel provides.  Mutti take a lover?  No way.

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Housing Styles and Openness to Strangers

lanaiI am in Seoul, South Korea this week but was in Honolulu last week for the CALICO Conference on language learning and technology.  Walking around Honolulu and seeing how people live prompted some thoughts about the relationship between housing styles/preferences and communication patterns.  One of the things that struck me in riding around Honolulu on the bus was how open communication between strangers was.  I noticed on a couple of occasions older Hawaiians striking up conversations with schoolchildren and, contrary to the reaction typical in many other U.S. cities, the children readily responding.  Guess they didn’t get the message about not talking with strangers.  The porous barriers between people is reflected in the housing styles in Honolulu where there is an open transition between indoors and outdoors.  You see lots of furniture outside, including sofas, that would be a strange site in most North American cities.  Hawaiians love to hang out on the lanai, which is a patio that serves as another room of the house. This is related of course to the wonderful year-round weather in Hawaii, but it struck me also as being in harmony with the casual communication style.

I think those thoughts came to me from watching while in Hawaii the German news reporting on the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.  There was disbelief on the part of the German reporter in Oklahoma and the news anchor that houses there were made of wood and had no storm shelters. There are no tornadoes in Germany (hence probably the intense interest by Germans in this exotic and frightening weather event) but if one roared across the Atlantic, German houses would be ready.  They are built very securely and have heavy shutters with which to cover windows, with roofs covered in slate or ceramic tiles (not our flimsy roof tiles).  German houses are self-sufficient islands of security, fenced off additionally from the outside world through tall hedges or fences surrounding the garden areas and house. Doors are closed and locked.  When we exchanged houses a few years ago with a German family, my German colleague’s wife was quite upset that there were not locks on all the interior rooms. What a world of difference from Hawaii!  And certainly riding on public transportation in Germany you rarely see the kinds of interactions among strangers I saw in Honolulu. Germans tend to be reserved in public, but quite open and friendly once you get to know them. Maybe the difference has more to do with the weather than anything else, but it is interesting to reflect on the mirroring of environment and communication.

On talking to the strangers, there is a very nice recent TED talk by Maria Bezaitis, “The surprising need for strangeness“

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Turks in Germany

turksInteresting piece today on NPR on the changing situation of Turkish “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) in Germany today.  These are workers who were brought to Germany in the 1960’s with the expectation that they would go back home after a few years.  But instead, the Turkish workers stayed in Germany and brought their families to join them – jobs were much better paid in Germany and the political situation in Turkey was unsettled. Today there are 2nd and 3rd generation German-Turks, who often stand between two cultures. The report indicates that increasing numbers of Turks are going back to Turkey.  In contrast to the economic problems in the European Union, the Turkish economy is doing well.  The earlier Turkish ardor for entering the EU has cooled considerably.

Another aspect of that movement back to Turkey has to do with the attitude changes in Germany (and Europe generally) since the economic downturn of the past few years.  Racism and islamophobia have increased, as jobs become harder to come by.  In Germany a group of neo-nazis murdered Turks over a period of several years.  This has led to much questioning in Germany about police lack of interest and/or competence in fighting violence against foreigners from far right groups.

One of the interesting twists in the story about Turks returning to their home land is the reverse culture shock described by one of the young returnees, who had gotten used to the sense of order in Germany society:  “He was surprised to find a Germanic desire for order welling up in him one day while walking down Istanbul’s teeming downtown thoroughfare, with masses of people jostling this way and that. ‘You know, I can’t understand why all the people are walking like this! And one day I was nearly to cry, “Stop! You go right and you go left!”, ‘ he says.” .Anyone experiencing everyday German life quickly sees the real life acting out of the German saying Ordnung muss sein (There must be order).

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German rock

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Dieter’s dance party on Sprockets

Story today on NPR about German pop singer Herbert Grönemeyer, one of the more popular singers in Germany in recent years.  He has a new album in which he sings some of his best known songs in English.  This has always been a dilemma for German singers, whether to record in English, so as to reach a larger audience.  Even within Germany there have been periods when radio stations would be more likely to grant air play to German singers if they sang in English, as the overwhelming number of songs played were in English, building that expectation for listeners.  Of course this has been in issue in rock music not only in Germany but for all rock singers whose native language is not English.  Interestingly, hip-hop, has gone mostly native in non-English cultures, as can be heard in popular German, French, Turkish, etc. hip-hop groups.

Predictably in the NPR interview, Grönemeyer had to address the perennial question from the US when it comes to popular artists in Germany:  what about David Hasselhoff,.  American journalists may know very little about contemporary German music, but they do know that David Hasselhoff has been very popular in Germany, not just for Bay Watch, but for his singing, hard for Americans to understand.  Scott Simon in the interview also brings up the old stereotype chestnut that in Germany there is “taste for some of the darker material than we do in this country or they do in the U.K.”  You need only consider the popular SNL skit Sprockets, in which Mike Myers played the very dark and eccentric Dieter (“Touch my monkey!”) to see this idea perpetuated.

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Copy or have sex?

annette-schavanIt’s interesting to compare across cultures how politicians run into trouble from their personal behavior.  In the USA having an affair can get you into hot water.  In France, not a big deal.  The ultimate  no-no for American politicians may be saying you’re an atheist.  Lately in Germany, it’s been plagiarism that has gotten two of Angela Merkel’s ministers into trouble.  Two years ago, the wonderfully named Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg was forced to resign from being Minister of Defense after it was discovered that he had plagiarized passages in his Ph.D. dissertation.  At the time he was the most popular politician in Germany.  Now, the current Minister of Education, Annette Schavan, has been found by a university panel to be guilt of plagiarism in her Ph.D. thesis.  It’s particular troublesome, as she oversees German universities.

For German politicians having advanced academic degree can be a big plus (unless , of course, they’re caught cheating).  That’s quite a difference from the U.S. where politicians don’t want to be labeled intellectual eggheads.  George W. Bush promoted himself by talking up his Texas roots, not his ivy league degrees.

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Competitiveness

Screen Shot 2013-02-03 at 10.26.11 PMI’m in the process of watching the Super Bowl, a quintessentially American institution and a demonstration of American competitiveness. There’s a lot of stake of course, but do the coaches and the players have to look so angry all the time? It started with the coin toss when the team captains frowningly looked away from each other. As the game progresses, lots of scowling players.  The tv commentators commented that the respective coaches encourage their players to be “on edge”.  In fact, lots of pushing and near fights.  But for me the most interesting scowling was the “game face” on Beyonce throughout her half time set. Does even music have to have an “in your face” attitude? This is an image of America that’s being projected to the rest of the world, in an event broadcast to a large number of countries.

Here’s another TV program which may not embody the best of a culture:  the German variety show, “Wetten, dass…” (I’ll bet that…).  An article in today’s NY Times, “Stupid German Tricks, Wearing Thin“, discusses the drop in popularity of the show which has run since 1981 and has been one of the highest profile shows on German TV.  I have to agree with the article that it’s astounding that such a dreadful show would have such a long run, given the grand cultural traditions in German literature and music.  Of course one could say the same for the popular German singers of recent decades such as Peter Alexander or Heino.  Could it be that the silly antics of “Wetten, dass..” (contestants bet with the host and others that they can win ridiculous challenges) are a release valve for the seriousness of German life? German society, like that of the US, is largely individualistic and values and rewards individual achievement. But for Germans, entertainment is making a mockery of that competitiveness.

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Reconciliation

barbaraStory today on NPR about the song “Gottingen” from French singer Barbara.  A beautiful song, beautifully sung, on an unlikely subject for a popular French song – French-German friendship.  This was even the more the case at the time when the song was written, in 1964, when the memories of WW II were fresh.  More surprising is the fact that the woman who wrote and performed the song, whose real name was Monique Andrée Serf, was a French Jew, who had a traumatic childhood, hiding from the Nazis in occupied France. She had been invited to come to Göttingen, a small university town in central Germany. She categorically declined the offer, but eventually was persuaded to come for just one concert, but then ended up staying for a week, having been overwhelmed by the positive reception and the friendliness of the people.

At the end of the week, she wrote the moving tribute to the city, in which she dares to compare the sleepy German town to Paris.  She celebrates “les enfants blonds de Göttingen” (the blond children), the Grimm fairy tales (Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were professors there), and the dark soul of the Germans (“Eux, c’est la mélancolie même” – with them it’s melancholy itself).  The images strike us today as stereotypes, but they are positive – not like the negative images prevalent at the time in France. The song had an impact on the relations between the two countries and has been referenced by politicians from both Germany (Gerhard Schröder) and France (François Mitterand).

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Rise of the Nones

empty-church-with-wooden-benchesInteresting series this week on NPR about religion in the United States.  Today’s broadcast was about the increased number of Americans who don’t identify with any religion.  The data is based on a Pew Research Center study released in October, 2012.  The study indicates that about 20% of Americans have no religious affiliation, a percentage that has been on the rise in recent years.  The percentage of those under the age of 30 is higher, about 1/3.  Harvard Professor Robert Putnam was interviewed for the report.  His explanation of the drop among young people:  rebellion – based on disillusionment of a generation coming of age during the “culture wars” in the U.S., which created a toxic mix of religion and politics.  He associates the lack of interest in organized religion with the lack of participation by young Americans in civic organizations.  I would offer a different perspective – I assume that under 30’s have simply re-directed from conventional social institutions to online social media.  Maybe the Church of the Internet has replaced the brick and mortar versions.

Putnam points out that even with the drop indicated by the survey, the U.S. stats in terms of religion are high: “Even with these recent changes the American religious commitments are incredibly stronger than in most other advanced countries in the world…The average American is slightly more religious than the average Iranian, so we are a very religious country even today.”  What has been very striking to me is the radical drop in religious affiliation in Germany.  The wonderful medieval cathedrals throughout Germany are virtually empty on Sundays.  More and more Germans are leaving the Catholic and protestant churches.  Part of the reason may be financial:  if you are a (Christian) church member, you have to pay a church tax.

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Oma Export

Germany pensioners elderlyOne of the interesting issues in modern societies is how certain segments of the population are viewed and treated.   Recently in the news have been reports about retirees in Germany and orphans in Russia.  A recent article in the Guardian discusses the issue of Oma (Grandmother) export, namely pensioners leaving Germany to live in other countries due to the high cost of living in Germany and their modest pensions.  Examples are given of German senior citizens moving to Hungary, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Thailand.   In some cases, the facilities to which the older Germans emigrate have German-speaking staff and offer activities familiar from German culture (singing folk songs), but this is an exception. This is a quite different phenomenon from the long-time practice of well-to-do German retirees moving to Mediterranean beach locations.  The current “Oma export” of  German citizens living off their pensions has raised concerns in Germany, especially when the people involved have limited faculties and few options. Such a situation would be hard to imagine in countries where it’s understood that families, no matter what, care for their own, such as in many Asian, African or Latin American cultures. Americans tend to have fewer scruples about sending family members off to homes.

Russian society, on the other hand, is trying to keep some of their most vulnerable members of society – orphans – from leaving the country, namely to be adopted by Americans.  The recent law passed by the Duma and signed by President Putin is meant as retaliation against the Sergei Magnitsky Act passed by Congress, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials involved in the death of an imprisoned lawyer in 2009 who had been a whistle blower on a tax-fraud scheme.  But it’s not just politics.  Russians have been less than enthusiastic over the idea of foreigners adopting Russian children, despite the low adoption rate in Russia, seeing it as a slap in the face, implying their society can’t take care of their own.  Russia is not alone in this, many other countries have expressed concerns or passed restrictive laws on foreign adoptions.  It would be interesting to see a study comparing attitudes toward adoption around the world.

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Exercise & Politics

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Student during a yoga class at elementary school in Encinitas, Calif (NY Times)

A recent article in the NY Times discusses the protests by some parents in a California school district where first graders are having 30-minute yoga classes.  This would seem to be a beneficial program for small children, doing something positive in the area of physical education, just as art and music classes do, as well as foreign language classes. In the age of strictly controlled and standardized curricula, it’s refreshing to see something creative happening, even if on a small scale. According to the article, the yoga sessions have a noticeably calming effect on the 6- and 7-year olds.  So what’s the reason for the protests?  Religious indoctrination, specifically the protesters “were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs”.  This need to protect children from knowledge has had the unfortunate result in American schools of discouraging teaching about world religions, with a by-product being a wide-spread lack of knowledge about Islam (as well as of other non-Christian religions). In the absence of knowledge, stereotypes replace reality.

The intersection of religion, physical exercise, and politics has had some interesting case histories.  Recently, the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China, combining slow-moving exercises with meditation and a basic moral philosophy, after gaining widespread popularity in the 1990’s, was suppressed by the Chinese government, fearful that such a large movement could threaten state control.  In 19th-century Germany, Friedrich “Turnvater” Jahn (Father of Gymnastics Jahn), who had studied theology, wanted to encourage greater physical fitness among the Prussian youth, after seeing the humiliation of Germany’s defeat by Napoleon.  What started out as gymnastics (he invented the parallel bars, the balance beam, horizontal bar, and the vaulting horse) turned nationalistic and was seen as a threat by the authorities, leading to his arrest.

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Obama at 86%?

A recent survey yielded the following results in terms of voter preference in the upcoming US presidential election:

Barack Obama: 86%
Mitt Romney: 7%

What?  How does this poll have such a lopsided result when all others show the race to be neck and neck?  The answer is that this was a poll in Germany.  It indicates how vastly different the views of our president are in other countries.  His popularity in Germany is common to many European countries.  There are likely a number of reasons for this phenomenon.  Policies viewed as “liberal” or even “socialist” in the US are mainstream in many other cultures.  Universal health care, for example, is something that in many other countries is a given – a fundamental right the government should guarantee.  It’s also the sense of dramatic change that the election of Obama represented, with a transition from the “don’t mess with Texas” perspective to a more internationally cooperative viewpoint.  In fact, what’s important to Europeans and others outside the US is the American president’s foreign policy, usually a matter of little concern to American voters.  For Europeans in that respect there was with Obama a welcome change form a president starting two wars to a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Of course, Obama’s popularity in Europe is unlikely to bring him any votes in the United States.  On the contrary it is likely to be seen as an indication of Obama’s left-leaning politics and kowtowing to foreigners.  The French daily Le Monde’s endorsement of John Kerry in 2004 was seen by many Americans as one more reason not to vote for him.  Even worse was the fact that Kerry was reported to speak French!  Mitt Romney is reported to speak French as well – but you won’t hear him trumpeting that fact on the campaign trail.

It’s a big plus for American politicians to be able to speak some Spanish – but other languages are suspect.  Instead of celebrating the fact that knowledge of another language expands one’s horizons and provides unique insights into one’s own culture, Americans suspect second language speakers of mixed loyalty.  In fact, many Americans would assert that they don’t want their leaders to have wider perspectives or open minds – if you have all the answers you don’t need alternative views.  This is the same kind of mentality that sees the USA as the greatest country on earth without ever having seen any other country.