Germany Archives - Page 39 of 62

Sigmund Freud

Although Sigmund Freud was an Austrian his methods of psychoanalysis to resolve personal conflicts had tremendous influence in the entire German-speaking world, and eventually beyond. Psychoanalytical therapy involved up to three hundred individual sessions.

For Freud, as the founder of psychoanalysis, it was essential to identify unconscious emotional developments in order to understand human behavior. The earliest years of childhood are especially relevant. Psychological problems – conflicts – can be traced back to those earliest of years.

Understanding developments over very long periods of time are fundamental to Freud’s approach to conflict resolution. Tracing psychological problems far back into one’s personal history, making the unconscious conscious, is the opposite of a quick (hasty) resolution of conflict.

“Patience is the strongest of weapons”

Max Weber described politics as “slowly drilling through the thickest boards”, meaning it demands patience and perseverance to reach one’s goals.

Konrad Adenauer – West German chancellor form 1949 until 1963 – had the same thought in mind when in 1946 he said:

“Patience is the strongest of weapons, of a defeated people laid so low.” Germany after the Second World War lay in ruins. And due to the crimes committed by its Nazi-regime was an occupied pariah state.

Because Adenauer knew it would be many years before Germany would be reunited, he stressed patience and perseverance not only to the West Germans, but also to the Western Allies – the occupying forces.

Adenauer referred time and again to German history, to the two world wars and the centuries further back. His approach, his long-term perspective, his stamina, proved to be right. Twenty years after his Adenauer’s death the two Germanies were reunited and has become one of the great forces for stability in and for Europe.

German Humor meets American Mentality

This from German Science Comedian Vince Ebert:

A comment: “A German compliment sounds like this (and I quote my brother): “You look fat in that dress, but great dress!”

Another comment: “In the U.S., we have a satirical News outlet called The Onion that writes fake stories to make fun of our culture and government. In Germany, I’ve heard their version of this is a website called Stupidipedia that’s a satirical version of Wikipedia, that’s full of fake, interconnected information. They made a whole encyclopedia as a joke. The Germans do in fact have a sense of humor, its just over-engineered like everything else in Germany.”

“What the hell were you thinking killing all of the Native Americans?”

An interesting comment: “The smoking areas on train station platforms are actually more helping to concentrate the cigarette waste in one place so it’s easier to clean, that’s why I like this system. It’s meant to keep smoke from non-smokers but whatever. It has working benefits.”

One cliché after another. The German people have a wonderful sense of humor.

Revanchism

Revanchism, from French revanche or revenge, is a term used since the 1870s to describe the desire to reverse territorial losses by a country after losing a war. Revanchist politics rely on the identification of a nation, of a people, with a nation-state. This mobilizes ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside of the state where members of the ethnic group live.

See the strong desire during the French Third Republic to regain Alsace-Lorraine from Germany after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. French Emperor Napoleon III had declared and lost the war. In the Treaty of Frankfurt, France lost Alsace-Lorraine, which France under King Louis XIV had previously annexed from Germany in the 17th century.

French revanchism was one of the forces behind the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. Alsace-Lorraine went back to France. Blame for the outbreak of the the Great War was pinned solely on Germany. Huge reparations were extracted from the Germans.

The United States Congress rejected the Versailles Treaty, citing its harsh, unfair and one-sided punishment of Germany, and warning against the inevitable development of German revanchism.

Alsace-Lorraine. Just one piece of territory in dispute between two neighbors. One of many examples in European history. Their experience as a people, their historical consciousness, has taught the Germans to seek lasting resolutions to conflicts. Acceptance, freely chosen, is the foundation.

Crisis and insecurity

The experiences during, between and after the two world wars continue to exert great influence on German thinking. During both wars the economy was geared fully towards producing armaments. There was little material, money and manpower to supply everyday consumer goods.

The years between the wars were filled with civil war type unrest, weak governments, and several phases of inflation including a dramatic hyper-inflation. The years after the Second World War were marked by hunger, lack of housing, severe winters, high unemployment and a fear of what the future would bring.

The entire West German economy had to be rebuilt. This was achieved surprisingly fast due to the generous and far-sighted help of the Western allies and on the production of high-quality technical products. After nearly thirty years of instability, unpredictability and hardship, there was a strong demand among the German people for reliable, durable, high quality products. The Germans wanted security and predictability.

The German product philosophy has not changed, even though there are few alive who experienced the war years. The experiences were so dramatic that they have been passed on to the younger generations. German products which carry the name Bosch, Siemens or Volkswagen speak to the experiences of both earlier and current generations.

TÜV

TÜV Technischer Überwachungsverein. The Institute for Technical Testing has locations across Germany (and in many countries), applies vigorous testing procedures to products of all kinds. A TÜV certificate is a sign of the highest quality.

Stiftung Warentest. The Foundation for Product Testing, similar to Consumer Reports in the U.S., is an independent, neutral organization which tests critically over 200 products each year. Its standards are among the highest internationally, including all requirements defined by law. The media covers many of the test results.

The quality of a product is its most important characteristic. The testing results produced by TÜV and Stiftung Warentest are considered by Germans to be 100% reliable. Each have been taken to court many times for the critical scores they have given products. Neither organization has lost a court case.

Prussian Reforms

Much of what is Germany has its roots in the Prussian reforms of the early 19th Century. Napoleon‘s rapid defeat of Prussia in 1806/07 led to a deep-dive analysis of what went wrong, of what required reform. The Germans radically changed their agricultural system, their business laws, their military training, and most importantly their system of education.

Public eduction for all was introduced. The universities adopted the Humboldt education philosophy, which stressed free and independent inquiry and teaching. Knowledge quickly became the foundation of a modern Prussian economy and state, in many ways for contemporary Germany.

The Prussian Reforms also addressed state institutions. A system of professional civil servants and a bureaucracy was instituted. Bureaucracy then stood for efficiency and professionalism. The tax laws were simplified and made transparent. The state should function more efficiently and become a motor for positive change.

Germany today remains a rather bureaucratic country, with its scores of civil servants, rules and laws. It is a country where one simply cannot do as one pleases. From the perspective of other societies this is a limitation on freedom. Germans, though, view it as a sign of security and stability. Doing things the right way, punctuality, reliability, predictability, following the rules, bureaucracy. Germany has a 200 year history of these. They are who the Germans are as a people.

Wunderwerk

“Buy yourself a flatscreen tv!” was the advice given by one German graduate student to the other, after the latter struggled to carry his old television – Röhrenfernseher or cathode ray tube television – up several flights of stairs to his new, smallish, apartment. The old tv is, indeed, just that. Twenty years. It belonged to his grandmother, then to his parents.

This Wunderwerk deutscher Ingenieurskunst – wonder work of German engineering – a term once used ironically by a tv repairman – was built by a renowned German electronics company. Siemens. It continues to work flawlessly.

When the Röhrenfernseher – literally tube far see-er – some day gives up the ghost, it will be replaced by a flatscreen tv. But because the age-old German belief in not throwing anything out which still works applies to this truly durable German household appliance, it could see a few more schweißtreibende Umzüge – sweat-inducing apartment moves.

Crazy Germans!

Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwör!

Qualität. Quality. Latin qualitas, how something has been made, a characteristic; how crafted; the sum or totality of characteristics; the level of workmanship.

Beschaffenheit. The outer, inner, material, make-up of something.

Tüftler. Tinkerer. Someone who with patience and stamina can work on a complex problem; a kind of inventor; a person who finds new ways to solve a difficult problem.

Ingenieur. Latin ingenium, an ingenious person, inventive, complex thinker; to create, produce; one trained at a university.

Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwör! For the engineer is nothing too difficult, with Ingenieur and schwör rhyming, from the Engineer‘s Song by Hinrich Seidel, a German engineer and novelist of the 19th Century.

The text of the song contiues: Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwere – Er lacht und spricht, geht dieses nicht, so geht doch das! For the engineer is nothing is too difficult. He laughs and claims: It this doesn‘t work, then that will!

Wo man ihm ein Rätsel schenkt, steht der Ingenieur und denkt. When he‘s given a problem, the engineer stands still and ponders, with schenkt (to give) and denkt (to think) rhyming. Engineers are tinkerers. They‘ll work on something until they find an acceptable solution.

When German engineers are bored

Engineering in Germany is prestigious. As a field of study it ranks among the most respected. Germany‘s economy, its sophisticated technical products, rely on an abundance of first-class engineers. More than 20% of all first-year university students major in a technical field.

No other European country has a higher percentage of engineers among the workforce than Germany. Nonetheless, industry and the media constantly warn of decreasing numbers of Germans willing to enter the engineering profession.

In order to attract more women to the engineering sciences, German schools and universities organize so-called Girls Day, hoping to fascinate young women with the prospects of a technical career. Engineers begin their careers with a yearly salary of roughly 45,000 Euros. Graduates in the humanities, in contrast, earn about 31,000 Euros per year.