In 2010 the online-career portal monster.de conducted a study regarding German behavior in social online networks. 61% of people said that they are not friends with their colleagues via social media.
Only 27% indicated that they talk to their colleagues on Facebook. 12% of the survey participants are friends with their colleagues on Facebook. However, most have different profile settings for colleagues. The survey results suggest that Germans separate their private life and their professional life.
On June 22, 2015 Juli Hirschfeld Davis authored an article in the New York Times under the title “Obama Lowers His Guard in Unusual Displays of Emotion.”
“His eyes well up without warning in private, thinking about his teenage daughters growing up. He choked back tears in public recently while delivering the eulogy for Beau Biden, the son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who died at 46.”
“My takeaway was, ‘Wow — where’s this guy been?’” said Kent Conrad, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota. “I turned to my wife and said, ‘My God, if he’d shown those kinds of feelings, and that kind of connection to others, I think he would have had a different experience as president,’ ” Mr. Conrad said. “If he could let himself show that, he would do much better with the American people, and much better with Congress.”
Days earlier, Mr. Obama had begun a health care speech with an uncommonly intimate greeting for Sister Carol Keehan, the chief executive of the Catholic Health Association of the United States and a political ally.
But even Mr. Obama has admitted that he has been blindsided recently by fits of sadness, many of them prompted by the thought of his daughters growing up. “I start tearing up in the middle of the day and I can’t explain it,” Mr. Obama told attendees at an Easter prayer breakfast in April. “Why am I so sad? They’re leaving me.”
He wiped away tears in February as he bade farewell to Eric H. Holder Jr., a confidant who served for six years as his attorney general. People close to the president say he is often unfairly tagged as apathetic simply because he does not carry on publicly about his feelings.
“This is, in many ways, a private man — he is not somebody who wears his emotions on his sleeve,” Mr. Connolly said of Mr. Obama. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have emotions.”
Germans don’t wear their emotions on their sleeves, either.
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.
Germans strive to separate substance from person. They can argue vehemently and still respect each other, even remain close friends. This allows them to pay less attention to the specific context of the interaction.
It is relatively unimportant whether they are communicating with their neighbor in front of their house, an acquaintance in the streetcar, a relative on the phone or a colleague at their workplace. A discussion about a topic of substance has little to do with the person individually.
The ability to separate substance from person is in the German business context among the fundamental abilities expected not only of employees, but especially of those who lead them – management. The self-understanding of the German citizen includes – consciously or unconsciously – the obligation to argue a point, to address a problem, to state an opinion objectively, critically, fairly.
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.”
Beamtendeutsch – the German of civil servants – prefers nouns instead of verbs, in the hope of coming across as sophisticated. It is not only typical in documents and correspondence with and between German government agencies at local, state and national levels – Beamtendeutsch has also found its way into large German companies. Its compact form, and supposed clarity, aim to be objective and authoritative. Verbs are turned into nouns. To notify becomes a notification of.
Beamtendeutsch also turns the active form into the passive, making it difficult for the reader to know who the subject is. It then creates Substantivketten, literally noun-chains: Application for Registration of Residence for Foreign Students in the County. The German language in general favors individual words made up of several nouns:
Leistungsnachweiserbringungspflicht or Leistung (benefit, performance) – Nachweis (certificate, confirmation) – Erbringung (producing, provision) – Pflicht (duty, responsibility), which in English would read: „Students must show proof of course completion.“
Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps – literally: Work is work. Schnaps is schnaps (alcoholic beverage) – is a very well-known German figure of speech underlining the strict separation between work and play. A similar figures of speech conveys German thinking: Erst die Arbeit, dann das Vergnügen – first work, then enjoyment.
The former Google CEO has reinvented himself as the prime liaison between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex.
General Thomas, who served in the 1991 gulf war and deployed many times to Afghanistan, spent the better part of a day showing Mr. Schmidt around Special Operations Command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla. They scrutinized prototypes for a robotic exoskeleton suit and joined operational briefings, which Mr. Schmidt wanted to learn more about because he had recently begun advising the military on technology.
After the visit, as they rode in a Chevy Suburban toward an airport, the conversation turned to a form of artificial intelligence.
“You absolutely suck at machine learning,” Mr. Schmidt told General Thomas, the officer recalled. “If I got under your tent for a day, I could solve most of your problems.” General Thomas said he was so offended that he wanted to throw Mr. Schmidt out of the car, but refrained.
In an interview, Mr. Schmidt — by turns thoughtful, pedagogical and hubristic — said he had embarked on an effort to modernize the U.S. military because it was “stuck in software in the 1980s.”
Yes, Eric Schmidt is an American. But check out his last name. He is thoughtful, meaning intelligent. He is pedagogical, meaning can be pedantic. He is hubristic, meaning arrogant. Schmidt.
Honesty. Honorableness. Straightforwardness. Truthfulness. Candor. Directness. Fairness. Honesty is often confused with impoliteness.
In Faust II (1832) written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany‘s greatest writer, Baccalaureus is criticized for being rude, rough, abrasive. He responds with: “Those who are polite in German are lying“.
Literal: In the truest sense of the word; without interpretation. “He literally took apart the automobile, piece by piece.“
Euphemism
A euphemism is a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing: pre-owned car instead of a used car; sex worker instead of a prostitute; in between jobs instead of unemployed; senior citizen instead of old person; underserved neighborhood instead of impoverished neighborhood.
frank und frei
Literally frank and free, as in “Let me speak frankly and freely with you”. The term ‘frank’ is an age-old German word for free. The Franks were a Germanic tribe which successfully withstood the influence of tribes migrating from the Nordic countries into what is today’s northern Germany. Frank as a male first name was derived from Franko: a member of the Franks, meaning courageous, free.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) – German, Catholic priest, Augustinian monk, professor of Theology – was the foremost driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, challenging fundamental teachings of the Church.
In April 1521 Luther was under intense pressure to recant his theological teachings before the Reichstag in Worms, an assembly of Germany’s worldly and religious leaders. Although there is no historical evidence of this, Luther is said to have responded with:
“I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.”