From 1947 to 1967, the writer Hans Werner Richter invited authors to the meetings of the Gruppe 47. Authors read unpublished texts aloud, and the others criticized them on the spot. The reader sat on the free chair next to Richter, which was jokingly called the elektrischer Stuhl, the electric chair.
Zur wichtigen Maxime wurde, dass der Vortragende sich nicht verteidigen durfte, sowie dass die Kritik der konkreten Texte im Mittelpunkt stand. It became an important rule that the reader was not allowed to defend himself, and that the criticism focused on the actual texts. In 1958 Günter Grass read the first chapter of his still unpublished novel Die Blechtrommel at a meeting in the Allgäu and won the group’s prize.
The Tagesschau is credited with keeping a sober, informative format since 1960. As a rule, its newsreaders read the reports from a teleprompter. The journalist Willi Winkler described the news as delivered “im amtsmännischen Ton der reinen Sachlichkeit,” in an official’s tone of pure objectivity.
When the program turned 70 in December 2022, its editor-in-chief, Marcus Bornheim, named what it values most. “Der größte Wert, den wir haben, ist unsere Glaubwürdigkeit.” The greatest asset we have is our credibility.
In his 1919 lecture Politik als Beruf, Politics as a Vocation, Max Weber named three qualities a politician needs. “Leidenschaft – Verantwortungsgefühl – Augenmaß.” Passion, a sense of responsibility and a sense of proportion. Then he named the danger. It is ordinary vanity, “die Todfeindin aller sachlichen Hingabe und aller Distanz,” the deadly enemy of all devotion to the matter and of all distance.
Vanity tempts the politician to become an actor and to ask only about the impression he makes. In politics, Weber wrote, there are in the end only two kinds of deadly sin. One is Unsachlichkeit, losing sight of the matter. The other, often though not always the same, is irresponsibility.
The philosopher Jürgen Habermas wrote of der zwanglose Zwang des besseren Arguments, a phrase that is now much invoked in Germany. It means the unforced force of the better argument. In a discussion, the better argument should win. The phrase belongs to his theory of communicative action.
Friedrich Schiller published Das Lied von der Glocke, The Song of the Bell, in 1799. Generations of German pupils learned it by heart. Until about 1950 it was a fixed part of the Gymnasium curriculum.
The first stanza describes the preparations for casting a bell: Von der Stirne heiß / Rinnen muß der Schweiß, / Soll das Werk den Meister loben, / Doch der Segen kommt von oben. The sweat must run hot from the brow if the work is to praise the master. But the blessing comes from above.
Karl Albrecht, co-founder of the discount chain Aldi, withdrew completely from public life in the mid-1950s. He was considered shy of the media. He hid his identity and refused every kind of interview. The German press knew only three old photographs of him. He died in Essen, the city where he was born, on 16 July 2014, at the age of 94.
That calculates itself. The German way of saying something makes economic sense, and the verb is reflexive — the figures do the work, not the person arguing for them.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ambivalence as “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action; continual fluctuation (as between one thing and its opposite); uncertainty as to which approach to follow.”
Attraction and repulsion. Germans are attracted by logical, well-researched and -argued statements. But they are also attracted by personal appeal, by a speaker who is both appealing and appealing to. Appealing to as in reaching out to.
Germans are repulsed by an imbalance between rational (objective) and personal (subjective) appeal. Mehr Schein als Sein, which translates into more appearance than substance, is a severe criticism. But they are also repulsed, perhaps moreso, by a sophisticated and effective appeal to emotions, to the less rational.
Germans are also capable of persuading by placing themselves front and center, by establishing a personal connection, by appealing to emotions. They choose not to, however. They choose not to teach, train or reinforce it. Ambivalence. They can and often want to, but are wary of the negative effects. Instead, Germans feel the need, the obligation, to constrain themselves, to not go there.
Why? Partly it is their strong scientific, rational, intellectually rigorous approach. Partly it is their belief that persuasion should not be deceptive. Appealing to human emotions – pushing all of the right buttons without the listener being aware of it – is a form of manipulation.
For if the listener is not aware that their thinking is being steered by their emotions, she is not in a position to freely choose to accept or reject the arguments presented. That person is reduced from subject to object. Deception. Manipulation.
Robert H. Goddard, now considered the American father of modern rocketry, was often mocked and ridiculed by his fellow Americans during his lifetime, but was well-respected in Germany, largely because of his persuasive techniques.
Early in his rocketry research, Goddard funded his own testing, but as his work grew in scope he began to seek outside funding. However, as a publicity-shy man who tried to keep media-focus on his work instead of himself, most of his attempts to solicit financial assistance failed, with the exception of the Smithsonian Institution, which agreed to grant Goddard modest funding.
In 1917, Goddard made several proposals to the U.S. Army and Navy about the possibility of his rocket research being used in the military. Although both organizations were interested, the only one of Goddard’s proposals that he was allowed to develop was his idea for a tube-based rocket launcher to be used as a light infantry weapon. This launcher became the precursor to the bazooka.
After WWI, Goddard returned to researching rockets, and in 1919 he published a book titled A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. As part of this book, he mentioned the possibility of sending rockets to the moon.
At the time, this was considered an outlandish and impossible suggestion. Although this was only a small part of the book, Goddard was soon subjected to what David Lasser, the co-founder of the American Rocket Society, called the “most violent attacks.”
In 1926, Goddard successfully launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. Partly due to Goddard’s poor reputation and partly due to his media-shyness, this launch was largely unnoticed. In 1929, following one of Goddard’s rocket launches, a local newspaper mockingly printed the headline “Moon rocket misses target by 238,799.5 miles”
Although Goddard had difficulty convincing Americans that his ideas were useful, his work was very persuasive to Germans, and it wasn’t long after his book was published that Goddard began receiving queries from German engineers asking about his work.
Initially Goddard answered these queries (his help is even acknowledged in Hermann Oberth’s 1923 book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen) , however, increasing aggression from Germany began to worry him, and by 1940 he had stopped responding to the engineers’ questions.
Realizing that he may have inadvertently assisted in German development of long-range missiles, Goddard attempted to warn the U.S. Army and Navy about a potential German threat from rockets.
Although Goddard was not able to sell his idea that long-range missiles were a possibility (both organizations considered his warnings too far-fetched to be worth contemplation), he was able to sell himself well enough that between 1942 and 1945 the Navy employed him as Director of Research in the Bureau of Aeronautics, where he worked developing experimental engines.
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.”