Germany – Page 17 – understand-culture

Why Every NBA Team Needs an Australian

The safest way to win an NBA championship is to land one of the league’s few unstoppable players. But even superstars require the right surrounding parts. They are the Australians. And every team in the NBA could use one.

Australian players tend to be the opposites of most American players. They don’t seek superstardom. They actively avoid attention. They excel in the egoless roles that most players reject.

Aussies can be so obsessed with their teams, in fact, that individual awards make them uncomfortable. They want to win more than anything else. “The kids in the U.S. are told from the time they’re 12 years old that they’re the next Michael Jordan.”

Derrick

Derrick – a Kriminalserie or detective show – remains to date the most successful of all German television shows. Its 281 episodes, filmed from 1973 until 1997, have been translated and shown in 102 countries. Derrick, the detective, is tall, slender, focused, sparing of words, analytical, unemotional. The show is all about his detective work, not about him.

Colleagues aren’t best friends

In 2010, Karriere.de, a web-portal on the subject of professions sponsored by the publications, conducted an interview with Simone Janson, an expert on career advice.

The interview was titled Kollegen sind nicht die besten Freunde – colleagues do not make the best of friends, in which she extensively discusses interactions and relations between colleagues. Her statements demonstrate in the German work environment the importance of having a clear boundary between one’s career and private life.

Bei der Arbeit ist zu enger privater Kontakt nicht immer von Vorteil. – Too close of personal contact at work is not always of benefit.

“One can choose one’s friends, but not one’s colleagues […] presumably everyone has had the experience of having a colleague share a lot of private information about themselves, and discussing their private concerns which they did not know how to handle at least once. Or they themselves have shared something private which they then realized was making their sympathetic colleague uncomfortable.”

“There also exist the long-term professional contacts, which eventually evolve into true friendships. Even I can’t succeed in maintaining a strict separation between the two areas. That would be synthetic and non-authentic. After all, no one can forcefully avoid conflict between fellow humans. These are part of cooperating, both at work and at home. Nevertheless, I still advise maintaining a certain professional distance wherever it is necessary.”

Under the hood

German products focus on the technical. German advertising focuses on the technical. Cars are often presented without the driver, wristwatches without the wrist, newspapers without reader or author. Quality should speak for itself.

German tabloids may personalize the news by displaying large-format photos. Serious publications do not. Content should speak for itself. For Germans it is self-stated that a good product or service aims to serve people. A view under the hood of the car is, therefore, more persuasive than a happy face behind a steering wheel.

Methodology

German academic training focuses on methodology. The quality of results – whether in the natural sciences or in the humanities – is determined by the quality of methodology. German students are taught that the person applying the methodolgy, but not the methodology itself, is interchangeable:

“… the conclusions verifiable; the starting point and operating assumptions logical and understandable; the individual steps taken re-traceable; so that the same results are arrived at by anyone taking the same path of inquiry.”

The academic (scholar, scientist, inquirer) is fully detached from the topic substance, both in the execution of the inquiry and in the presentation of results. Message and messenger are kept separate.

In public space

Because Germans separate strictly between their work and private spheres, they are very reserved in public. Just as they would never ask their boss about her hobbies or family, Germans very seldom initiate a conversation with a stranger in a public place like a bus, train, store or restaurant. Nor would they talk about aspects of their private life. Both would be inappropriate and make the other person feel uncomfortable.

Germans feel comfortable with periods of silence. They use quiet time to work, read, reflect, listen to music. Deutsche Bahn – German Rail – is modern, fast, affordable, and for the most part on-time. The routes offer beautiful views of the countryside, especially along the Rhine River from Koblenz to Mainz, one castle after the other sitting atop a hill.

Some train cars have rows of seats, two on each side separated by the aisle. Other cars have cabins seating six. It’s not at all unusual to enter the cabin, say “Guten Tag”, sit down, read, reflect, work on a laptop, or sleep and not exchange another word except perhaps “schöne Weiterreise” (literally “have a nice further-trip”), and this over several hours.

“Not about me!”

In German politics one hears time and again: Es geht hier um die Sache! – this is about substance. Or Es geht hier nicht um meine Person! – this is not about me as a person.

This is the German politician’s way of saying, that their political program, not them as a politician, is the focus, is at center stage. They want to persuade based on their message, not by who they are. As if one could make a clear distinction between the two.

In 2013 two women in the CDU (Christian Democratic Union – the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel) – Katrin Albsteiger and Barbara Lanzinger – ran against each other in a party-internal race for an election to the Bundestag in Berlin. German political parties do not have primary races. Neither of them, however, spoke of a Machtkampf – literally: power battle – between them.

“This is not about me”, Albsteiger wrote. “This is not about my person”, Lanzinger said in an interview. But it was about them. As members of the same party they stood for the same political platform. They had no other choice but to persuade the other party members that they could win in the general election.

Academic language

The University of Oldenburg provides students with guidelines for academic work. One of them reads: “Academic language is objective. Topics are presented subject-independent. The author moves to the background. Write ich-frei.” Literally: I-free or free of I.

Using “I” is considered in German universities to be un-academic, un-scientific. The passive form is used: “The following statements argue that …” or “It can been seen that …” But, isn’t it the case that a person (the author) performed the research and the analysis, and formulated the text?

Passive form

When Germans learn English they are told to avoid the passive form! Active form: “Joe fixed the car.” Passive form: “The car was fixed by Joe.” In Germany the passive form is far more common than the active.

Even when the subject – Joe – is known, Germans still tend to use the passive form: “The car was fixed” (leaving out poor Joe altogether).

Or the Germans will use the so-called one-form: Man wird sehen – one will see – instead of Ich schaue mal – I will take a look. The passive and the one-form are meant to signal objectivity, a distance between messenger and message.

Term paper

German universities have clear guidelines concerning term papers and the formal presentation of their results. Objectivity and precision (accuracy) are a must. Statements not supported by sources are considered invalid.

The focus of the presentation should always be on the subject matter. The discussion thereafter serves the purpose of delving deeper into that subject matter in an objective, impassionate, and academic way.

Distanz! – literally: distance. Personal pronouns (I, he, she, they, we) are avoided, in order to avoid “drifting into subjectivity.” Instead the passive form is expected. German professors watch very closely. Not following these guidelines leads to lower grades, or worse.