German Joys

When Will Guttenberg Go?

Apropos the plagiarizing defense minister zu Guttenberg, this seems like a good time to relay a rule of thumb from American politics which, I believe, was coined by Michael Kinsley (if I'm wrong, let me know): When a politician denies that he has any intention of resigning for the fourth consecutive time during the same scandal, his resignation is imminent.

I think Guttenberg's at two now...

Gumbrecht Dissects Deutschland

In an interview with Die Welt, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, a German professor of Romance languages who relocated to sunny California and became an American citizen, notes the things that annoy him about Germany when he returns (excerpts, in my translation):

Welt:...What is lame about German debates?

Gumbrecht: I would say: The fact that there actually aren't that many different ones. There is a certain spectrum, but the individual positions on the spectrum are always there and recognizable. Here's how it works: On the one side you have people who say we should just love all the wonderful foreigners, on the other side, people who think German culture is unique and must absolutely be preserved, a view that's almost fascistic. When people like Sarrazin come along with their viewpoints, which are somewhat right-wing, then a certain predictable sequence of reactions begins. It reminds me of a xylophone: You keep hammering your little plate, and the others hammer theirs a bit -- but always in the same way.

...

Gumbrecht: In Germany, there's still this idea that Europe, and not America, should be the center of the world, and that Europeans actually already know how the world should be ideally. But you actually see things going wrong there constantly.... This creates a lot of dissatisfaction.

Die Welt: How does that present itself in the society?

Gumbrecht: In the nine months when I was in Germany, it struck me as extreme how social democratic the country is. You barely ever meet anyone who isn't somehow calculating how they can obtain the maximum amount of leisure time with the least effort.

 ...

Gumbrecht: My thesis is there's a specific kind of German know-it-all self-righteousness (Rechthaberei).

Die Welt: A German kind?

Gumbrecht: You very seldom talk to people in Germany who are capable of viewing their own opinions in a sort of second-order way; that is, to be able to say 'this is my opinion, and it might be correct or false.' Or people who enter a conversation without thinking it would be a terrible defeat if they were to change their opinion. If it begins to seem during a conversation -- either in academic ones or in normal middle-class ones -- that not everybody is going to sonorously state their agreement, then the subject will be avoided. Take, as an example, that there are no 'debate clubs' in Germany.... [In the U.S.], it's like a sport. But it's completely unthinkable that there would be debate clubs in Germany. Either you know what's right and wrong, or you don't. By the way: Two out of three Germans who visit me in Stanford explain to me after ten minutes what America is and how it works. When they notice that I don't think the same way they do, they then explain to me why I'm wrong and what the right opinion is. Even people whom I consider intelligent do this.

...

Die Welt: And this doesn't happen in America?

Gumbrecht: Oh sure, there's a culture of political correctness here. But the basic differences begin with the legal system, the common law and it's basic principle that 'each case is to be argued.' Or with nationality. The judge who swore me in stressed that from that moment on, I was 100% American, just as American as someone whose ancestors came here in the 17th century. That is an interesting premise. Or look at these absurd churches. You have to have them all. Whether they'll last is another question. But this inability to tolerate all sorts of things existing side-by-side -- this need to force them all to be compatible -- this you find specifically in Germany. Take the university debates. In Germany, people think there's an ideal model of a university that can be made uniform. But here in the USA, it's considered perfectly fine that Stanford is so different from Berkeley, or Harvard from Yale. The more diverse, the better.

Die Welt: ...so can you think of anything positive?

Gumbrecht: I really tried! I have to say one thing. All these things I've just mercilessly dissected -- a very academic thing to do, by the way -- also exist in American, as trace elements. But the worst know-it-alls here are slightly less annoying, because it's clear to them that there are lots of people around who don't think as they do. In a society in which you can either be Protestant, Catholic, or nothing, you can be convinced you're right. In the crazy plurality over here, though, even when you're a total fundamentalist, you have to recognize there are others. And thus, one thing doesn't exist here: the desperate search for correctness and this German oxymoron: the 'desired opinion.'

I'll refrain from comment, except to note that this blog noted the lameness of German debates years ago...

Your Reading Assignment for the Weekend...

...is this study of criminal-justice policy in post-war Germany, which confirms the venerable hypothesis that it is the certainty of being prosecuted for crime -- and not the severity of the eventual sentence -- that generates deterrence.

There will be a pop quiz on Monday, which may include methodological questions. Happy reading!

Is Our Germans Learning?

According to a recent report (summarized here by the New York Times) by the College Board , an umbrella organizaton of U.S. universities, America is producing fewer citizens with at least a two-year post-secondary education. Here are the relevant OECD graphs, with the U.S. highlighted:

 

What struck me, though, is the placement of Germany on these graphs, especially the top one, measuring degree completion among young people. Germany is well to the right, being bested even by Poland and Greece. In fact, comparing the top chart with the bottom chart, Germany appears to be slipping further behind in this category: a couple of decades ago it was well above the OECD average, now it's well below.

I've scratched my head about this for a while now. My daily experience (granted, not the best measure) doesn't seem to confirm such a large gap in academic performance. I wonder if this might be caused by a measuring error -- some form of university education (for instance, in the Fachhochschulen) which is not being captured by the OECD criteria. Assuming the gap is not a measuring artifact, though, what explains it? Here are a few of my theories:

• An unusually well-developed trade apprenticeship system that reduces graduation rates by providing a good fall-back option for marginal university candidates and dropouts.
• Some of the other countries on the list generate a lot of 'college degrees' that don't actually mean anything.
• A user-unfriendly university system that discourages students with (1) mounds of unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork, (2) overfilled lecture halls staffed by apathetic professors; and (3) a lack of adequate support and career assistance.

Those are a few of my guesses. I'd love to hear what the hive mind thinks in comments. (Title reference here).

Stratification in Secondary Education

The New York Times reports on a new study of the college landscape in the United States:

The United States is reputed to have the world’s wealthiest postsecondary education system, with average spending of around $19,000 per student compared with $8,400 across other developed countries, says the report, “Trends in College Spending 1998-2008,” by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit group in Washington that advocates for controlling costs to keep college affordable.

“Our analysis shows that these comparisons are misleading,” said Jane Wellman, the project’s executive director. “While the United States has some of the wealthiest institutions in the world, it also has a ‘system’ of postsecondary education with far more economic stratification than is true of any other country.”

Community colleges, which enroll about a third of students, spend close to $10,000 per student per year, Ms. Wellman said, while the private research institutions, which enroll far fewer students, spend an average $35,000 a year for each one

Scholarship Opportunity for a German Law Student

Here's a scholarship opportunity that just came to my inbox. I know the people involved, and they are first-rate. This is a great opportunity:

Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia, USA announces a scholarship for one qualified German LL.M. student.

The financial aid package will include:
* $10,000 tuition scholarship [provided by Washington & Lee Law School]
* employment as a research assistant [provided by Washington & Lee Law
School]
* € 975/month (nine months) living-costs stipend [provided by DAAD- if
the DAAD application is successful]
* airfare [provided by DAAD- if the DAAD application is successful]
* health insurance costs [provided by DAAD- if the DAAD application is
successful]

The fellowship will require the student to work closely with W&L law professor Russell Miller in three distinct capacities:

1. Fellow will serve as a managing editor of the German Law Journal.
2. Fellow will serve as a teaching assistant in the German law related courses.
3. Fellow will be responsible for assisting Professor Miller with research on other comparative law related projects.

Read more here (pdf).

Writing Readable History

In a review of Richard Evans' new book about British historians, Mark Mazower reviews some of Evans' explanations for why British historians are more recognized for writing about European history than almost all European historians:

The most pertinent concerns the university’s relationship to state and society. British history departments are not in the business of churning out high school history teachers.... Continental universities, operating with less autonomy and under greater central ministerial control, could never shape their own place in the academic market.

And in the background of this institutional analysis lurks something more general—an implicit contrast between the Continentals, egocentrically worrying about their own national identities, and the British, almost as obsessively unconcerned with theirs, and drawn for all sorts of reasons to the Sturm und Drang of the European past. Some British Europeanists, says Evans, take up the challenge out of what he calls a “sense of adventure.” Others simply find the stability of modern political life in Britain less noteworthy than the radical instability of the world of fascism and totalitarianism. Why bother with Oswald Mosley—a study in failure—when the Nazis give you the real thing?

Then there is the asymmetry of influence—between the British historian whose work on, say, Italy or Poland, is immediately read and discussed in those countries, and the rare Polish or Italian historian of Britain whose work, if noted at all, circulates only in small scholarly spheres. There are good and bad reasons for this. On the one hand—a note of self-congratulation sounds here—Brits just write better than most mainland scholars, encouraged as they are by a strong public demand for stylish, jargon-free general history. On the other hand, that same public has little interest in translated works, and British publishers do little to foster that interest. The result is a largely one-way stream of readable history translated from English into other languages.

Evans is an instance of the phenomenon he's writing about. His magisterial work on the death penalty in modern Germany (Rituals of Retribution) is incomparably rich, but also quite readable. It's also, one might think, a book that a German historian should have written. It was quickly translated into German and won excellent reviews (g). The same goes for Evans' histories of the Third Reich.

English historians seem to have mastered the skill of writing serious history -- not tendentious screeds or conspiracy-mongering tracts -- that nevertheless find an audience among general readers. Germany has writers who do this, too -- such as Joachim Fest or Goetz Aly -- but they are writers, not professors. When German professors do write for a general audience, they usually write shorter, more popular books which contribute to some current public debate. Not many German books manage to straddle the realms of popular readership and academic gravitas.

I think a lot of this has to do with some of the unwritten rules of German academic publishing:

1. The habit of spending 100 or so pages of throat-clearing on a summary of all that's been written on the subject to date.
2. The expectation that the book will have, or engage with, some complex theoretical apparatus. Often this discussion begins the book, and frightens off all but the doughtiest of readers. Just as often, this part of the book is the most dispensable. Most of the interesting new knowledge the book contains is probably contained in the historical research.
3. The need to project an aura of 'objectivity', which forbids 'serious', 'scientific' authors to use the first-person pronoun or make direct personal observations, even when doing so would make the argument clearer and livelier.
4. On a related point, no apparent stigma against using the passive voice. Using the passive voice, of course, makes it much easier to establish the apodictic, impersonal tone important to #3.
5. The widespread culture of subventions -- subsidies for publication provided by foundations or out of the author's own pocket. You are never expected to make any money by publishing, and the failure to connect with a broader audience is not going to harm your academic prospects.

I suppose I should make clear that I'm not trying to be too hard on German academia here. Germany has quite an active book culture, and there are lively discussions of important subjects everywhere you look. Further, there are plenty of German professors who write well, and who excel at crafting complex, yet well-grounded and elegantly-structured arguments. The monthly magazine Merkur (g) always contains several fine examples of this kind of talent. Yet I still think that a country that produces as many historians as Germany does could produce more who were able to write for a broader audience.

An Embarassing Problem

Shit, what's the fine for 13,087 days? And where am I going to get all those Deutschmarks? And what do I do about the fact that they tore down the circulation desk and replaced it by a modern-art museum (g)?

I think I need a lawyer.

Quote of the Day: Mephistopheles on Professors

Many visitors to German universities puzzle at the tendency of many professors to 'lecture' by reading from their most recent textbook in a flat monotone, and ask themselves: 'Whoever thought this was the way to teach?'

The answer: Mephistopheles -- who else? Jaroslav Pelikan's prose translation of a passage (g) in Faust in which the demon explains the facts of life to a prospective student:

For ... five hours a day, the student should be prepared to listen to the professor, in accordance with the pedagogical method of the universities, "in such a way that afterwards you will be able to recognize better that he is not saying anything except what is already in the book. But you must be writing it down, as thought the Holy Spirit himself were dictating it to you!"

Norton Critical Edition of Faust, p. 590.

Commencement: Bats & Dementia

Heidelbergerin has some observations on German commencement ceremonies:  

Graduates sat in the front few rows, and each got to invite three people to come see them go up for their diploma. There wasn't any checking of tickets or anything, though. The graduates just dressed nicely - no funny robes or hats. There was one Scottish guy in a kilt. The program opened with some Beethoven on a piano. Nobody processed in, everybody was already just sitting there. Next, a guy with a cool bow tie and hat - the only guy who had any remotely academic costume going on - welcomed everybody, presented something to a couple of the graduates (frankly, I didn't find this part important enough to bother trying to translate it in my head), and introduced the main speaker.

We thought the speaker would say something relevant to the occasion of graduating, receiving a higher degree, education these days, the philosophy of the practice of and research in medicine, or something. But, the talk was actually about dementia. Not that dementia is not an interesting topic, but I totally failed to see how it fit with graduation. The speaker was totally full of himself, but it was at least amusing to watch him up there making animated academic-looking gestures, the likes of which you normally only see in comedy, quoting Latin and English, and being generally dramatic.

Halfway through his incredibly long speech, unfortunately a woman in the audience actually had a seizure and her friend called for a doctor. I think 3/4 of the room stood up. We were also entertained by some cute little bat that found its way into the auditorium and then just couldn't get out again.

After the speech, there was another piano piece, followed by an opera selection from The Marriage of Figaro. Again: huh? The singer and pianist were great, but the relevance of all this was still failing me. Then the graduates received their degrees. First the summa cum laude graduates were called up individually and received diplomas placed inside black folders. Then the rest of the graduates were called up four at a time and received their diplomas stuck inside a plastic sleeve with binder holes. Even though they were called up alphabetically, no advance effort had been made to seat the graduates in any sort of order, so they had to clamber over each other to get up to the front when called. There had also been no effort made to ask the graduates how their names were pronounced, so the MC had to stumble through them on his own, and it wasn't pretty. After this, yet another irrelevant opera selection, then we got to have some champagne and pretzels in the lobby (best part!!!). In all it took two hours.

I love the bat. A delightful detail. The "commencement speaker" was almost certainly a recently-appointed professor giving his Antrittsvorlesung, or inaugural lecture. These generally don't have anything to do with graduation; they relate to whatever the professor's research interests are. (Full disclosure: I'll be giving one of these (g) in about two weeks myself). To an American used to American-style graduation ceremonies, it will probably seem a bit off-putting to have to sit through a lecture on some topic that may be of very limited interest. Certainly nothing like the touchy-feely, brimful-with-hope commencement addresses typical in the U.S.

Signs of my creeping Europeanization appear in my reaction to the commencement address. Sure, the shriveled remnants of the American in me say "Goshdangit! Isn't it all supposed to be about the students? Isn't it their Special Day? Shouldn't they receive congratulations and perhaps some good advice for the road?" The American thinks there's something chillingly impersonal -- and perhaps even sinister -- about hundreds of people being forced to listen to a speech on a topic that is likely only to interest a few.

Then the European retorts: "Ach! You narcissistic Americans! First you shamelessly coddle your college students, inflating their already-healthy sense of self-regard and solipsism. Then, when they finally have to leave college, you shower them with yet more praise, giving them a big pat on the back for having finished college and, at least at the better colleges, warning them about all the Responsibility they will have to shoulder in their important new careers.

But in Europe, young people go to college not to feel better about themselves, but to learn things. The Antrittsvorlesung reminds everyone in the audience of what the primary purpose of the university is: to generate and convey knowledge. And so what if the Antrittsvorlesung might be a little complex? You American always want everything to be fun, perky, bite-sized, shrinkwrapped into easily-digestible edutainment. One of life's more important skills is sitting still and paying attention. Especially to something that may be a bit challenging to understand, or that you might disagree with. And believe me, that's what most of these graduates are going to be doing a lot of once they enter the hard, cold world of real work. The sooner they start practicing, the better.

Let us now draw a veil before the increasingly heated debate between the American and European. We can all agree that not practicing the graduates' names or seating them in a logical order was incompetent and rude. I've never seen a German commencement ceremony where this was done right. Part of the problem is, of course, the authoritarian design of most German university classrooms, which force everyone to cram in beside one another in cramped, narrow, wooden seats. But another reason is the general lack of professionalism in the way German universities are managed. The task of organizing the commencement ceremony was probably just given to some hapless employee of the Dean's Office or to a team of bored graduate students. Nobody has any incentive to put more than the minimum amount of effort into organizing the event. 'The commencement ceremony has always been chaotic and amateurish,' they think, 'and that hasn't ended anyone's career, so why should I kill myself to make this one much better?'

On the other hand, the situation's even worse in France, where, I have it on good authority, the 'commencement ceremony' generally takes the form of a contemptuous, chain-smoking bureaucrat shoving your diploma at you through a slit in a greasy plexiglas window.