Here are some of the most frequently assumed anti-German prejudices which i have encountered in Great Britain within the last few years. They range from slight misunderstandings to ridiculous generalisations to frankly xenophobic attitudes. And the one thing they all have in common is that they are completely and utterly false!
1. There is no word for happy in the German language. I start with this one because i used to believe it until someone set me straight. My German teacher at school, who might reasonably have been expected to know better, imparted this bizarre untruth to my class in 1998. She was totally off her rocker! The literal german translation of happy is gluecklich and it is used just as frequently and with the same connotations as its english counterpart. There are also a whole host of other words which can be used to convey any positive feeling from mild amusement through to ecstatic joy.
2. How do you make a german laugh?
Put a gun to his head and say: Laugh!
The most common stereotype i encounter whenever i attempt to talk to people about Germany is that the country is devoid of humour, a nation of serious partypoopers who cant so much as crack a smile. To be honest, i dont understand where this comes from. German people are just as capable of enjoying a good laugh as anyone else. The German language is rich in jokes and double entendres. Admittedly they may not translate well into english, but in the original they can be hilarious. Many german cities have thriving cabarets which are far more frequented than comedy clubs in this country and there are the same sort of satirical programmes on the TV that you might see here. I suspect most people who believe in this stereotype have never actually met a german, much less attempted to make one laugh. Ultimately humour is a very personal thing and what one person, or indeed nation, finds funny, another may not. But so what?!
3. German food is nasty. A lot of people seem to think this. I admit that Germany probably isnt world renowned for its culinary expertise, but then to be fair, neither is the UK. That said, i think the average british person would not be in danger of starving on a trip to Germany. Meat plays a central role in many german dishes. A particular favourite of mine is Schnitzel, which consists of meat in a tasty sort of batter. Its a bit like a turkey drummer would be if it was flat and actually contained meat! Germans are also big on interesting types of ham and sausages. If you suspend belief and dont expect the german variant on the sausage to represent the english version, youll find they can be truly delicious. Whats more you dont even need to go to germany to try them out. If youve got a Lidl anywhere near you, youll find you can pick up some fascinating german foodstuffs, including some mouthwatering examples of german cakes. In Germany itself, the two things to watch out for are bread and potatoes.
Once youve been to a german bakery, youll cease to regard the sliced white pap we have in England as actually being bread. And as for potatoes - well lets just say i wouldnt touch them with a barge pole at home. Yet in Switzerland i will happily sit in a restaurant night after night and eat plates of them. My family rightly regard this as a miracle!
4. What do you call a german who doesnt use the postcode? An anarchist! Along with the misperception of germans being unable to have fun, comes the related idea that germany is a country obsessed with law and order, specifically with upholding petty regulations. There is a grain of truth in this, insofar as minor transgressions that the english police couldnt care two hoots about, may attract more attention from their german counterparts. Its not a good idea, for example, to ostentatiously drop litter or to jaywalk. Depending on where you are you may or may not get away with it. A girl i know who came to england after a spell in germany said the best thing about england was you could cross the road whenever and wherever you wanted! I remember spending my first 15 minutes on german soil in a state of anxious turmoil because i needed to dispose of my chewing gum. Being a good citizen i searched Frankfurt airport for a bin.
In the end i found 3, for paper, metal and glass respectively. I debated with my sister which classification was most appropriate to gum and came down on the side of glass on the grounds that like gum, it needs a long time to biodegrade. I didnt dare to approach the bin however until i had translated my justification into german in case the two armed police standing nearby should question me. Of course they didnt, being too busy preventing terrorism in a major international airport. The moral of the story? German speaking societies may be more regulated than english ones. However i think youll find this only applies to areas of social conscience like recycling.
It does not on the whole extend into peoples private lives or influence their personal relationships. So is Germany a more orderly nation than Britain? Possibly. Are German people any more orderly tham British people? No, definitely not!
5. Germans are a bit rude. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, hes a really polite and not at all prejudiced guy, and suddenly he said: i dont know why, but i have the impression all germans are a bit rude. he gave me food for thought. In the end i said to him that that definitely wasnt true but there was a tendency for english people to perceive germans in that way because they arent fans of polite insincerity. In german it isnt necessary to start conversations with an observation on the weather, or begin complaints with the phrase: I'm terribly sorry but....Theres also the danger that if you ask someone if they would like to move out of your way or something similar, they will take this as a genuine enquiry as to their desire to do so and not as the direct order you intended it to be. I dont believe this has anything to do with national characteristics, but is more a result of linguistic differences. German is a more direct language than english.
There are less words in it and that means you cant afford to beat around the bush but have to get straight to the point. There is not always the possibility to translate every polite nuance and subtlety of english into german. What you have to bear in mind is that when a german says something to you he is probably translating a phrase which sounds completely acceptable in his own language into english, and what he says may therefore come across a little bluntly. Try to overlook this and not be swayed by first impressions of people. Its really not easy to speak other peoples languages!
6. Germany started the First World War. Well, you could write a book about this one. Having spent the first half of my life firmly believing this commonly held misconception, i was rather shocked in A Level history when the teacher pointed out that there were other points of view. At GCSE there hadnt been: typical exam question - what caused the first world war? Answer - Germany. Congratulations, full marks! Unfortunately most people dont take A Level history and so go through life harbouring this strange idea that Germans are the evil baddies of Europe, who like nothing more than to start wars and kill as many upstanding british citizens as possible. Now this website is not the place to start a detailed discussion about the causes of WW1. But the point i want to make is that it is dangerous to oversimplify history. There are two sides to every story, and indeed, it takes two sides to start a war. In the early years of the twentieth century, the climate in Europe was very volatile.
All the major countries were threatening and provoking each other, spoiling for a fight. There was a certain inevitability to the fact that they would at some point come to blows, it was only a matter of finding an excuse. Austria and Serbia eventually provided that excuse and the whole continent exploded. It is true that Germany had a particularly aggressive military strategy at the start of the war. But it is inaccurate to accuse the germans of causing the war and wholly incorrect to believe that their army behaved any worse than ours did. The only reason that the British have spent the last century smugly blaming the germans for the whole fiasco, was that the germans had the misfortune to lose and we had the good luck to win. Whether winning a war is something to be proud of is debatable. Winning doesnt necessarily mean you were in the right, it probably just means you were more efficient at killing people. The outcome could quite easily have been reversed, in which wed probably all be speaking german now.
The moral of the story is not to give in to misplaced patriotism. Its that kind of thing which causes wars in the first place!
7. Germans want to pretend the Second World War didnt happen. To a certain extent i already dealt with this prejudice on the Dont Mention The War page, and yet it seems so important i cant help but mention it again. Contrary to what you may believe, there is no attempt in Germany to cover up the atrocities of the Second World War. Many Germans, especially the younger generation, are particularly open about it and will readily discuss it with a foreigner. All over Germany you can see monuments and memorials in tribute to those who lost their lives. I was recently in Augsburg, the third largest city in Bavaria, and the town hall is home to two very touching memorials. On either side of the main hall there is an alcove in the wall. In the righthand alcove, the names of all the soldiers from Augsburg who died in combat are engraved on large stone tablets. In the lefthand alcove, the names of all the Jews who were rounded up from Augsburg and sent to concentration camps where they later perished, are similarly engraved, along with the name of the camp where they died. Its very tastefully done and very moving. You cant go into the town hall and not be aware of it. Please tell me then exactly how this constitutes pretending the Second World War never happened!
8. German is a difficult language to speak. Somehow German has developed the reputation of being a very tricky language to learn. In fact even in English schools right now, German is no longer considered cool and is increasingly being dropped from the syllabus in favour of Spanish. Admittedly German is a very grammatical language, and by that i mean that you have to be more overtly conscious of grammatical rules and terminology than you might be if you were learning French. For English speakers this can be quite difficult to initially get used to. Nevertheless, German is technically one of the easiest languages an english person can learn, because english and german belong to the same family of languages. This means they have a lot of things in common, specifically words which have evolved from the same roots. Try guessing the meanings of the following german nouns: der Name, das Haus, das Auto, die Katze, der Hand, der Freund. How about these verbs? trinken, singen, lernen, helfen, studieren. Plus some adjectives: gut, interessant, blau, amerikanisch. If you missed any of those, the answers were name, house, car, cat, hand, friend; to drink, to sing, to learn, to help, to study; good, interesting, blue, american. But i hope you agree that most of them were fairly easy to spot. Obviously there are differences in spelling and pronunciation, but when learning German, such similarities are reassuring. A language which resembles German even more closely than English does, is Dutch. To a native German speaker, Dutch just sounds like German with a funny accent. Even to a learner of German, Dutch can sound fairly comprehensible. Its almost like learn one language, get one free!
9. Germany isnt an exciting holiday destination. Im hoping that one of the lasting effects of the 2006 World Cup will be to establish Germany as a valid location for a holiday. Whenever i tell people i am going on holiday to Germany, i tend to get met by rather strange looks and comments in the vein of "What do you want to go there for?" Germany is actually a huge country, and packed full of things to do. There are vibrant and exciting cities, such as Berlin, Munich and Cologne, as well as stunning countryside like the Black Forest and the Bavarian Alps. Admittedly there arent a lot of beaches, although Germany does have some seaside resorts along its small northern coastline, but almost every other taste is catered for. The flights are cheap, the people are friendly and, for the most part, fluent in English. The wine and beer are world famous, the sausages are cheap, you can drive as fast as you like on the motorway and the trains run to timetable. What more could you want out of a country?!
10. The germans hate us as much as we hate them! It is perhaps ironically sad that there is not a shred of truth in this accusation. Most germans i have spoken to either have a positive attitude towards Britain, being staunch Robbie Williams fans, or simply dont care about it in much the same ambivelent way you feel about Latvia. In vain i have asked people the length and breadth of germany to provide me with anti-english jokes, to be met only with a slight air of bemusement. ive been offered anti-turkish jokes, anti-polish and even anti-italian, but never anti-british. The nearest thing to a stereotype i have been able to get my hands on is the firm german belief that the english weather is appallingly bad. In other words, that it rains more here than in germany. Unfortunately, I dont have the climatic statistics at my fingertips to assess whether or not this is actually true. In any case, it doesn't really matter. When the Germans comment on how miserable the English weather is, they are not trying to be insulting; rather they appear to feel sorry for us that we were born in a country where summer only lasts for a fortnight. On the whole i would say that Germans appear to feel a certain affinity with the British. During the World Cup there were several news reports on TV which showed German fans supporting the England team and genuinely wishing them well. Its a shame that in this country we cant seem to return the favour.
