A German Escapes the Valley of Whining

E.J. Graff of the American prospect relates the story of a German expat who's settled into the U.S. and why:

"Why do you stay in the U.S., then?" I asked the German-born historian whose last professional job in Germany [actually, I think this is supposed to say the U.S.] ended two years ago. Since then, she has been doing piecemeal work and relying on a much thinner social safety net in the U.S. than she would have in her country of origin. There, she'd have her family, health care, lower housing costs, and other social and economic guarantees. She had just told me how much Germany had come to life since her youth: instead of "don't walk on the grass" signs, there's a lively public culture; instead of beige houses, there's an explosion of color; instead of the grim and clenched authoritarian culture for which Germany was once famous, there's playfulness. So why stay in the U.S.?

I wasn't challenging her; I was genuinely curious. It takes a certain kind of person to leave your culture behind and be unfamiliar with everything forever after. No matter how long she's been here, she can never be part of certain shared cultural conversations, which we refer to by particular markers: the Brady Bunch, or Seinfeld, or what Ellen's "puppy episode" meant to lesbians at the time....

She had two answers, both which interested me. The first was that, having been an expat for more than a decade, she would never again be fully at home in Germany; she was Americanized now, to some degree, and would be out of place there. I've heard that before from Americans who've lived abroad for some extended period. ... So I wasn't surprised by the historian's answer. But why would that keep her here? Because, she explained, here her accent marks her as foreign; it reveals her reason for being a little different, a little unfamiliar with ordinary cultural habits. But in Germany, where she is unmarked as a foreigner, her different-ness irritates people. Aha! That made sense. 

But there's a second reason she likes the U.S., and it surprised me: Because of our famous "can do" attitude. She used the phrase with the air quotes, of course—but she meant it. She can't stand it, she said, that Germans whine all the time. They complain about what the government isn't doing. Americans, she said, just fix it. Even the whiners do something about whatever it is they dislike.

The German word for this phenomenon is Jammertal, roughly, the Valley of Whining. I can sympathize with the expat here: the whining is probably the unloveliest of German personality traits, which is why I'm going to simply point it out but not whine about it.

Comments

[Norbert]

Actually, the term Jammertal has nothing to do with the phenomenon of people whining all the time.

The term goes back to a biblical description, referring to the sorrows on earth which are only left behind when one leaves the world and enters heaven. It can be traced to the term “valle lacrimarum” (Valley of Tears).

Accordingly, Jammertal metaphorically refers to a period of hardship and bleakness that a person has to go through.

Jammerlappen (literally “whining piece of cloth”) would be more appropriate to characterise the type of persons / Germans you describe here.

[Marcellina]

I've taken a more philosophical attitude toward general whining in Germany (which seems, btw, to be markedly less present in the southern parts) — I think think that Germans don't really want to step up and change things — they're more or less happy enough with what they have going (compared to Italy, say) and don't want to rock the boat lest it get worse. So that leaves them the option of just griping.
I work in a theater full of people from all over Europe and beyond — my German colleagues are definitely not the biggest complainers at all. Former citizens of certain eastern European countries beat them by a mile. And, interestingly, the Brits are Olympic champions at it.

[The Honourable Husband]

"She can't stand it, she said, that Germans whine all the time. They complain about what the government isn't doing. Americans, she said, just fix it. Even the whiners do something about whatever it is they dislike."

Oh, really?

[John Carter Wood]

Signs of a German can-do attitude? (Noted on Twitter under the headline 'Handeln statt Jammern'.) http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2012-01/leserartikel-aufruf-engagement

[dubuc]

Andrew,
did you hear about a part of the brain which only germans have? It is called 'Jammerlappen' by the comedian (and MD) E. von Hirschhausen. He states that this is the part where all the whining and wailing comes from.