We’ve all heard the stereotypes. Something like “Germans are
all so closed off and private” or “Americans are such loud and shallow people”…
“Germans never smile” or “sometimes Americans seem too ‘friendly’, it can be off putting…”
Our concepts of openness and privacy come off as quite
different, and often lead to unfair judgments being made. Yet are our values of
openness and privacy really that different? Let’s look at the concept of
friendship to help illustrate this comparison.
Friendship. Freundschaft.
Both words have the same dictionary definition, yet what is
considered a “freundschaft” in Germany is not the same as its American
counterpart.
Here, becoming ‘friends’ with someone is often as simple as
knowing the same person, sitting next to each other in class, or even clicking
“send request” on facebook. …“My friend knows her!”, “A friend of mine has
that-”, “One of my friends posted such-and-such on facebook”…
We call so many of our acquaintances our ‘friends’, yet how
well to do we really know them? And where is the line drawn between friendship
and acquaintance? In American society, it can often become quite blurred.
In Germany, freundschaft can be much different. It involves
a serious investment on both sides. If something stressful happens in your
life, your friend is there for you and vice versa. If you need to talk, your friend
will make time to listen and if you want to hang out, your your friends will be
sure to make time. Friends are very open to and trusting with each other as
well and rarely keep anything from each other. It takes a little while to
actually become “friends” with someone, but after that you’ll probably be
friends for life.
This is not to say either meaning is better, or that
Americans are shallow, friendless people to the German eye, just that the word
‘acquaintance’ just doesn’t have much of a place in our society. And again,
this is also not to say all Americans have such “friends”; I’m American and find
myself leaning more to the German side of the definition. It is simply, as our
instructor Sabine said, a different social code. Just like the notion that
Americans can be very superficially friendly and smiley, even to those they
don’t know, or the assumption that Germans are cold and closed off.
We’re both closed off to an equal extent, it’s just that
Americans keep their personal lives personal through the use of “small talk” (leading
to accusations of superficiality) and Germans don’t really use such a social
device (leading to accusations of being cold and closed off).
Neither culture should be considered more superficial or
closed off than the other, and upon consideration, we’re not that different
after all. It just comes down to different social codes.
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