The German Character

Let's compare national stereotypes. Canadians must endure the perception that we are lumberjacks who live in harmony with the bears. Germans get all misty-eyed at the mention of the word Canada, which for them represents a magical land of open spaces and mountain vistas. It's really just a big version of Austria. Germans associate Canada with the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver is the only Canadian city that Air Berlin flies to, as the nine provinces to the east are irrelevant.

The reverse holds true as well. While I don't think the German landscape brings anything to mind for most people, the German character is a well-known cliché. The stereotype of Germans is that they are gruff if not downright rude. They are always portrayed in the movies as shouting commands. This is because “Germans” in movies are invariably the bad guys in uniform. The ones that are not barking orders are stuffy and cerebral and play the role of psychiatrists. Another stereotype is that German men all wear lederhosen and drink beer from huge mugs while listening to oom-pah-pah music. In summary; a nation of very organized, but rude and impersonal beer-swilling soldiers.

But Germans of my age and younger, and certainly those who are educated and cosmopolitan (like my colleagues at iFQ), are in fact very pleasant. They have modern, international cultural traits that make them almost indistingushable from the same cohort found in Calgary or Halifax. But I have noticed that older people tend to exhibit some of the negative aspects of the stereotypical German, and that leads me to believe that a cultural change is taking place, with younger urbane Germans being more like Canadians or Americans (of the same age) than previous generations.

This dynamic is also expressed in terms of geography. There are actually a fair bit of regional differences within Germany, and my colleagues have remarked on this as well. We have noticed that people in North-Rhine Westphalia (the state in the west that holds Koln and Bonn) are nicer and more easy-going than Germans from the south and/or east. And this is regardless of age. My German teacher, a born-and-bred citizen of Bonn (Bonnizen?) recounted how he and his wife move to Bavaria when he retired. After two years they moved back to Bonn because they couldn't stand the stuffy loudmouths in the mountains. So there is some truth to the stereotype, but it varies from region to region, and is too broad a brush to describe all Germans.

In the lead-up to the move from Bonn to Berlin my colleagues warned me that Berliners are known (within Germany) for their grumpiness. It's called the “Berlin snout”. I actually haven't noticed anything like that. That is not to say that Berliners are cheery folks: this is a big city and people are busily going about their business, so it's naturally a more impersonal place than the small-town feel of Bonn.

So the German character is actually a range of personality types. Younger people from the cities of North-Rhine Westphalia would be the most friendly and international, wheras old folks in rural Bavaria would tend toward the old stereotype of grumpy, hide-bound Germans. Though this country is never going to have the extroverted national culture of (say) Spain, the “new” Germany is increasingly a land of nice, friendly people.