Re: the Austrian guy who kept his daughter locked up in a cellar for 24 years (g): From all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I hear the faint clicking sounds of movies, plays and, most importantly, operas about this case beginning to be written. Can it be long before Gregor Schneider (g) re-creates the Amstetten cellar dungeon in an art gallery near you?
Famous Duesseldorfers include Kraftwerk, Heinrich Heine, and Josef Beuys (sort of). Plus, never forget that Robert Schumann went insane in this city! Unfortunately, few of these names rings a bell outside of Germany (although they should, they should!). Therefore, I've been on the lookout for other famous Duesseldorfers.
And I found one. The one, the only, the inimitable Brother Theodore:
Brother Theodore (11 November 1906 - 5 April 2001) was a German monologuist and comedian known for rambling, stream of consciousness dialogues [sic] which he called "stand up tragedy." He was born Theodore Gottlieb into a wealthy family in Düsseldorf, Germany, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore attended the University of Cologne. Under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp until he signed over his family's fortune for one Reichsmark. After being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland he went to Austria where Albert Einstein, a family friend, helped him escape to the United States. He worked as a janitor at Stanford University, a dockworker in San Francisco and played a bit part in Orson Welles' The Stranger before moving to New York City.
His 'act', if you can call it that, explored what would happen if you re-animated Schopenhauer, glued mutilated chunks of a silver wig on him, stuck a gun in his back, and ordered him to 'be entertaining.' Here is BT from one of his sixteen legendary appearances on the David Letterman show.
Now, I'll admit, a little of Brother Theodore goes a long way. In fact, 2 minutes or so is enough to last most people their entire lives. But I couldn't get enough of the man. As I watched the flickering, glowing television screen in my suburban home, I thought to myself: "One day, I must go to live in the city that brought forth this diseased man-child!"
Some of Brother Theodore's other aphorisms:
"The best thing is not to be born. But who is as lucky as that? To whom does it happen? Not to one among millions and millions of people."
"All the great spiritual leaders are dead .... Moses is dead .... Muhammed is dead .... Buddha is dead .... and I'm not feeling so hot myself!"
"Her hair was of a dank yellow, and fell over her temples like sauerkraut, her face was sweaty like a chunk of rancid pork..."
"What this country needs, and I'm not joking, is a dictator. I feel the time is right, and the place congenial, and I am ready. I will be strict but just. Heads will roll, and corpses will swing from every lamppost."
Here's an advertisement for the German national rail company (Deutsche Bahn) that flashes on a ticket automat when it's not in use:
They're prancing about gaily on a train platform, wearing bright pastels. Smiling confidently into the middle distance.
You will never see this on a German train platform.
Via Kevin Drum, I learn that a recent study of Germans conducted jointly by scholars at the Harvard Business School, DIW Berlin, and Imperial College, London, says this is how you achieve happiness:
Happiness[it] = ( α1 log yit+1 + α0 log yit + α-1 log yit-1 + α-2 log yit-2 + α-3 log yit-3 + .. α-T log yit-T) + ( β1 log Sit+1 + β0 log Sit + β-1 log Sit-1 + β-2 log Sit-2 + β-3 log Sit-3 + .. β-T log Sit-T) + δ Xit + fi + ηt + eit
Those Anglo-Saxons think everything can be reduced to a number, some German readers are now chuckling.
OK, enough snark. I am not one to pooh-pooh happiness research. I've read a few of the better books on the subject and come away impressed. Yes, you can measure happiness pretty reliably, and you can identify factors which are strongly associated with it (a good social network, being married, having some sort of religious belief, and feeling and expressing thankfulness).
Money and status are somewhat associated with happiness, but not as strongly as most people think. More money can create a "hedonic treadmill effect," in which rising levels of income ratchet up your desire for yet more comsumer goods, and your frustration at not being able to afford the next-most expensive high-definition television (U.S.) or next-most-prestigious contemporary sculpture (Germany). And what about status? Here is the basic conclusion of the study's authors:
In this paper, we ... estimat[e] a happiness equation with a distributed lag structure for income and status on individual panel data on 7,812 people living in Germany between 1984 and 2000. We find strong adaptation to changes in income but not to changes in status. The adaptation effects to income are large in size. Once the long-run effects are estimated (by summing up the current and lagged income coefficients) we cannot reject the null hypothesis that people adapt totally to income within four years. By comparison, significant effects of status are found to remain after this time.
In this context, adaptation means "it wears off." That is, 10% raise increases your level of contentment for a short time, but then you revert to being as happy as your were before the raise. A raise in status, however, seems to permanently increase your level of contentment. Most interesting of all is the results along political lines. The authors designated sub-groups of people who had distinct left-wing and right-wing views and found: "that those on the right (left) of the political spectrum adapt to status (income) but not to income (status)." In other words, right-wing Germans tend to be made lastingly happier by increases in their income (but not by status increases), while left-wing Germans tend to be made lastingly happier by increases in their status, but not by income increases.
I find this fact fascinating. It also helps explain something I've always found a bit amusing: German professors with known left-wing views who still insist on being referred to by all of their titles: "Prof. Dr. Dr. hc.," etc. I would be willing to bet there's a strong cultural factor at work here; i.e. that you would get somewhat different results in other countries. Deriving satisfaction from being rich is still a little declasse in Germany, where you encounter traces of something like the English disdain for "trade money." You also find very evident traces of admiration for those who act from "noble" or non-monetary motivations. Here, for example, Reinhard Mohr argues (G) that condemnation of the "Black Bloc" rioters in the German press during the G8 summit was muted because of the German cultural trait of forgiving those who operate from "pure" motivations. There might be something "wrong" with having money, from this perspective, but there's nothing wrong with having status (degrees, awards, impressive job titles etc.). Especially if you got those status designations for doing something unselfish, such as writing or heading up an NGO.
Anyone agree/disagree?
A while ago, I was leafing through the playbill to the Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus' stage adaptation of Bunuels classic 1962 film The Exterminating Angel - a typical afternoon's pursuit here at the Joy Division.
There, I found a reprint of a speech (G) given on April 26, 1997 by then-Federal President Roman Herzog. The Federal Presidency is an odd office. He's the titular head of state, and thus performs the sort of official functions a king might perform in a monarchy. His role has also, however, developed into the scold/cheerleader/conscience of Germany. Federal Presidents usually have a political background, but are supposed to put that off, as much as possible, when they take office. They're meant to look at Germany from an Olympian perspective, praising what is admirable and denouncing what is not.
Probably the biggest scold of the past few decades has been Roman Herzog, who was President from 1994-99. His political origins lay in the mainstream-conservative CDU/CSU, so he's a cherished whipping-boy of the left. Whatever you think of him politically, there's no question that he was one of the greatest scolds that ever scolded. In this 1997 speech, Herzog begins by describing the optimism he encountered on a recent trip to Asia, and then comparing it with German society, where he laments: "the loss of economic dynamism, the paralysis (Erstarrung) of society, and an unbelievable mental depression." Instead of approaching new technologies and challenges soberly, he continues,
...we fall prey to fear scenarios. There’s hardly a single new discovery which does not first provoke questions about the risks and dangers – but never about the opportunities. There’s hardly a single reform effort that is not immediately suspected of being an “attack on the social state.” Whether atomic energy, genetic technology, or digitalization: we suffer from the fact that our discussions are distorted into unrecognizability – to some extend ideologized, to some extent simply “idiotized.” Such debates no longer lead to decisions. Instead, they end up following a ritual, which always seem to play out in the same seven-step pattern:
1. In the beginning, there is a reform proposal which would require some sacrifice from some interest group.
2. The media registers a wave of “collective outrage.”
3. Now (at the very latest) the political parties jump onto the bandwagon, one of them in favor, one against.
4. The next phase produces a blizzard of alternative proposals and empty symbolic gestures of all kinds, going all the way to mass demonstrations, petition drives, and questionable blitz-polls.
5. A general lack of orientation follows; citizens become insecure.
6. Now, from all sides, come the appeals toward “prudence.”
7. Finally, at the end, the problem is put off. The status quo is maintained. Everyone waits for the next big subject.
These rituals would be amusing to watch, if they didn’t also dangerously cripple the ability to actually make decisions. We fight about the unimportant things, in order to avoid having to concentrate on the important ones.
I find Herzog's description spot-on. In fact, you can classify many German news stories precisely according to which of the above 7 steps they embody. Now you know why I rarely read German newspapers...
Roger Boyes is an Englishman and Berlin correspondent for the London Times. He can often be seen on German talk shows commenting on international affairs (in perfect German). Now he's written a book, "My dear Krauts," which is designed to help Germans learn to laugh. First, I'll give you the gist of Boyes, then I'll add my take:
Germany is in urgent need of "humor development aid," Roger Boyes, the London Times correspondent in Berlin.
The Germans are a nation of paranoid schizophrenics who can't decide whether to love or loathe themselves, says Roger Boyes, the Berlin correspondent for the London Times, whose new book "My dear Krauts" marks the start of a one-man mission to help the country lighten up.
"It's not that they can't be funny. In fact they like a good laugh. It's just that they're a bit slower on the uptake than the rest of the world. And they don't understand irony."...
Even if the controversial Austrian statesman had never existed, Germany would still have a good claim to the title as the world capital of hating. Little effort is made to airbrush hatred out of society here; artists still freely express their utter contempt for bourgeois society, conservatives sneer at mosques, Greens despise fur-wearers, former hippies verbally assault conservatives who have verbally assaulted 70's leftist radicals, who in turn physically assaulted banks and American military bases. Legal periodicals are filled with professors' hair-raising broadsides against one another over such topics as the meaning of "negligence" or the interpretation of some obscure paragraph of the civil code. It all makes for great fun, so long as you're not stuck at some dinner table with one of these cranks.
Why all the hate? A couple of theories. First, there is no particular stigma against openly declaring your hatred. If he hated the book he just read, or if he hates a politician who was just elected, an average German see no particular reason to conceal that fact, just as he see no reason to cover up his dangly bits when he walk into a sauna. German even has an expression English lacks -- Intimfeind or "intimate enemy" to capture your feelings for that person who's given you all of those precious moments of sheer, joyful, exuberant hatred. To paraphrase George Michael, "hate is natural, hate is fun, hate is best when it's one on one." (from "I Want your Hate Sex.").
Urban density -- lots of people living stacked on top of and right next to each other in lively little neighborhoods. You don't get much of it in most U.S. cities, but you do in Germany.
Urban density means there are hundreds of people from all income levels and walks of life living within, say, 300 metres of your home. When you live in a nice, dense neighborhood, excitement comes to you; every time you leave your front door, something fun has happened. In my neighborhood, the "German-Iranian Cultural Center" just inserted a marble plaque into the sidewalk commemorating Goethe's praise of the Persian poet Hafiz.
Another recent addition to the neighborhood is a "store" called diesistkeineuebung.de (=thisisnotadrill.com). The cardboard man in the window is smiling and holding a sign saying "I've got a good feeling!"
What can you buy here? Hard to say. The website offers no products (or if it does, they're well concealed), and describes its "motivation" thus:
Continue reading "Here Come the Testicle-Biting Optimists!" »
...so put those flags away and wipe the smile off your face: Pessimistic Germans Losing Faith in Democracy, Study Shows. Meanwhile, across the pond:
Americans will go to almost any lengths to avoid sounding negative, pessimistic, or defeatist, even if it means being somewhat less than honest or candid. They try to stay away from topics they refer to as “downers” and to stay out of conversations that “bring you down,” as in down from the giddy heights of optimism and happiness. These topics include anything to do with evil or the dark side of human nature, which Americans either ignore or try to explain away, anything that suggests failure, defeat, or any kind of setback – especially with death, the ultimate setback – or anything to do with limits or limitations, such as reasons why something cannot be done, should not be tried, or is impossible.
[from Craig Storti, Americans at Work: A Guide to the Can-Do People, p. 118]
It's the one thing that drives people who engage with Germany at anything but a superficial level up the wall: the bitter, pessimistic whining. Sometimes, outsiders can chuckle about it. But sometimes, you get to thinking: Is there something in the water here? Is there perhaps actually something deeply wrong with the psyche of these people?! As one German writes: "I have been living in the US for about seven years now, and if there's one thing I dread when I go home to visit Germany, it's the complaining."
Maybe it's their TV. From Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly:
In the LA Times today, Alissa Rubin writes that Europeans don't like American politics but do like American entertainment. The following passage from Reinhard Scolik, chief of programming for Austria's largest broadcaster, caught my attention:
"In American programs, people have problems, serious problems. In 'Grey's Anatomy,' people are dying, it tells you that life will be very, very hard, but at the very end they get a little hope and there is a way to get through," he said. "In German shows, which we also get on Austrian television, it is mostly a hopeless situation, it is too heavy."
Wow. Are German TV shows really that bleak?
It's a good question. I don't have much experience with German TV, but it seems to be a bit bleaker than U.S. TV, but not horrifyingly pessimistic. I'd put it at about the same level as British TV in terms of bleakness. (Come to think of it, the Brits are also more pessimistic than Americans, but they are nowhere near as glum as the poor Germans).
On German TV, there are quiz shows, shopping shows, crime shows that are unusually thumbsucky and psychoanalytical, and pretty good soap operas in which ordinary people have problems, sometimes overcome them, and sometimes fail. There is generally a lot more open conflict in these soap operas than there is on American TV, but Germans can handle conflict.
"The German is friendly," says German Business and Technology Minister Michael Glos says, "he just has to show it."
Glos is worried about the upcoming 2006 soccer world championships. When the world comes to be "Germany's guest" will it leave thinking "golly, those Germans sure were nice," or "they have rods up their asses"? Glos (hardly renowned for cheerfulness himself) wants to use the world championship to dispel the image of the grumpy German. Which means Germans had better get pretty friggin' friendly, pretty friggin' fast.
Glos' comments provided another occasion for Germans to engage in their third-favorite hobby, navel-gazing speculation about What it Means to be German. The local public-radio call in show today hosted Heinz Gruene of the Rheingold Institute. Gruene (G) who doesn't look at all like a Nibelung, researches Germans' attitudes toward themselves, and provided expert input on the questions: Are we really that unfriendly? If so, why?
The callers were, as usual, well-spoken and thoughtful. They seemed to split about 50/50 on the question of whether Germans were really grumpy. Many returned from abroad only to be "slapped in the face" by rudeness when they returned to Germany. Others said it's all a relative thing; lots of the friendliness in other countries is fake and put-on (aufgesetzt), and Germans show friendliness by sincerity and politeness more than frothy good-cheer.
Marginal Revolution points us to a study by an American professor which blames umlauts for German grumpiness: "Hope College psychology professor David Myers says saying a vowel with an umlaut forces a speaker to turn down his mouth in a frown, and may induce the sadness associated with the facial expression." English, he claims, involves broad 'ah' and 'eh' sounds which require you to mimic smiling motions. This story was originally reported back in 2000 by the BBC.
Hat-tip to Marian Wirth, valued German Joys Commenter and freshly-minted blogger, for the link.
Now to the substance: I have my doubts. I'm not going to address Myers' theory in detail, because there's not enough information about it in the article to draw an informed conclusion. I have an email in to Myers to see if he published his results anywhere; I'd love to learn more about the methodology and conclusions.
However, I can't see how umlauts could be the culprit here. Some background for non-German speaking readers, umlauts are the two little dots on top of a, o, and u in the German language. They change both the pronunciation and the meaning of words considerably. 'A' in German is pronounced like the 'o' in 'gone,' while 'ä' is more like the 'a' in 'bake.' 'O' is pronounced a lot like the English 'o,' but 'ö' is pronounced like "er." Pronouncing 'u' with an umlaut is tricky, it's a sound halfway between 'u' and 'e' that non-native speakers almost never master.
What I don't understand about the theory is that rough equivalents of the umlauted sounds of 'a' and 'o' exist in English, so the umlauted 'u' is really the only way in which umlauts introduce a sound into German that doesn't exist in English. I have tried smiling while saying umlauted vowels, and it seems to work just fine, it's only a little tricky with the 'ü', since you've got to tighten your cheek muscles a bit to really get it right.
Mr. Wirth noted another potential objection: If Germans are so glum because they have a few umlauts, what about Finns and Turks, who decorate their vowels (and even their consonants) with an almost-ludicrous variety of diacritical marks?
As I said, I'll withhold an analysis until I get more details. But color me, so far, not yet convinced.
Wal-Mart came to Germany in 2001 and found out something a little odd. Germans, apparently, didn't necessarily want salespeople to be friendly:
The marriage of American hominess and German frostiness has been rocky so far for Wal-Mart.... With its first two custom-built "hypermarkets," or superstores, open in time for holiday shopping, Wal-Mart is under pressure to make its huge investment pay off in Europe's largest economy. Much of its challenge lies in coaxing attitudinal changes in the country where the customer traditionally comes last.
Customer comes last?! Wait a minute, says a Karl W. Schmidt, former head of the German-American chamber of commerce:
This is "totally incorrect," says Schmidt.
"The customer over there is still the person who pays the bill." But, because German consumers educate themselves about a product before they buy," he said. "The need for interaction between customer and salesperson is minimal."
Can Germans become friendlier? Can and should, says Tanja Baum of the Academy of Friendliness in Cologne. She describes the problem thus:
"We have a society problem, not a service problem," she said.
The Times Online reports on recent developments in the area of happiness research. That is, psychological studies of high-functioning, content human beings and how they got that way.
I've noticed in Europe that mentioning this field often draws suspicious comments, so I'll put in a little defense here: I've read books by a lot of these people. They are reputable psychologists and psychiatrists, not fly-by-night self-help gurus.
Their studies aren't intended to find a "key to happiness," although they do write books delivering the results of their research to average readers. Many of the things they say are somewhat counterintuitive, and have nothing to do with many popular notions of happiness. For instance, TV and unstructured relaxation are generally happiness-killers; people tend to be the most content when they have challenging, absorbing tasks that stretch, but don't overwhelm, their capacities.
I was struck by the following passage:
Great writers from Freud — "the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation" — to Philip Larkin — "man hands on misery to man" — have painted happiness as an elusive butterfly. But ordinary people believe they are happier than average (an obvious impossibility) and that they'll be even happier in 10 years' time. If true, it would be good news because research shows that happier people are healthier, more successful, harder-working, caring and more socially engaged. Misery makes people self-obsessed and inactive.
Germany: self-obsessed? Check. Inactive? Well, perhaps Merkel will crack some heads in Berlin, but if not -- Check. Miserable? Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check...
Looks like I know a certain country that could use a little cheerin' up. Why the long face, Germany? Come on, it's not so bad. [I chuck Germany affectionately under the chin.] Here, let me buy ya an ice cream! Whaddaya say? Then we can go to the park!
Arrgh, it turns out Die grosse Depression is no longer being shown in my neighborhood (Duesseldorf). It's a real shame, the movie looked intriguing. I will find some way to see it, I promise you.
In the meantime, I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring as to why Germans seem so miserable, even though they live in one of the most prosperous, beautiful, and well-run countries on earth. I'll define my suspects in a series of posts. Here is the first.
Widespread atheism. About 95% of all humans on the earth believe in God; as do about 95% of Americans. Only about half of all Germans do.
No, no I'm not going to tell everyone to start going to church. I would hope you expect more of me than that. But I am going to report a fact that may prove unpalatable to some of you: probably the key factor in a person's level of reported happiness is whether they have strong religious beliefs. Don't just take my word for it; go out and read this book: Authentic Happiness, by Dr. Martin P. Seligman. The media term for his kind in Germany is Gluecksforscher, or "happiness researcher", which is a little candy-coated and oversimplified, but still conveys the idea.
Continue reading "Why Germans are so Miserable, Part I: God" »
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Czeslaw Milosz: To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays
Essays on writing, history, cities, politics, Poland, poetry, and religion. Most are as idiosyncratic as they are lovely.
English Title: "In Europe: A Journey through the 20th Century." Dutch journalist and historian Geert Mak traveled for a year throughout Europe and files this almost 1000-page report on the places he saw and the history that shaped them. A bit rambling, but packed with fascinating detail.
James Q. Whitman: Harsh Justice : Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe
Why does Europe send criminals to nice prisons for short, rehabilitative stays, while America degrades them, locks them up for decades, and even kills them? An insightful historical look at the development of criminal justice policy on each side of the Atlantic
Halldor Laxness: Independent People (Vintage International)
1955 Nobel Prize winnder Laxness's epic tale of Bjartur of Summerhouses, a fiercely backward and obstinate Icelandic shepherd, and his willful daughter Asta Solillja, told in feverish, mystical prose.
Sebastian Haffner: Anmerkungen zu Hitler
A German/English journalist's brief but lucid analysis of Hitler's worldview, his achievements, his military strategies, his mistakes, and his crimes.
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