“Why are Germans so blunt?” my clients or friends ask frequently. If you knew me personally, you’d agree with my husband that my French blood has mixed well with the German tendency to be direct. However, this is an easy question to answer: Germans are not rude; they just prefer clear communication and dislike beating around the bush. What someone perceives as bluntness is more of a cultural misunderstanding than impolite behavior.
After one last oral exam, my daughter will graduate from the German School in a few days. We all know that she will finish with honors, so I feel confident enough to talk about Mister S., one of her former science teachers and one of the most controlled and direct Germans I’ve ever met.
Mr. S. is a serious person who I’ve never seen smile. Once a year, for three years, I’ve met him during parent-teacher conferences, in the cafeteria, or occasionally at some school events. Usually, when you’ve known somebody for a while, you can expect, even in Germany, to move on to lighter topics or at least to make some small talk. But, Mr. S. always sticks to the facts, informing me how often Jasmine raised her hand, arrived late, or forgot to do her homework. He reminds me which grades she achieved (really good and really bad) and instruct me to talk to her about her behavior in class.
Mr. S. is a good example of the cliché that many foreigners attribute to Germans. He’d meet you with a brisk nod, gesture for you to take a seat, and immediately start to talk. His notes are always neat and organized, and did I mention that he never smiles?
I’ve already demystified the alleged German lack of humor in another post (“Seriously, do Germans have a sense of humor?“). It’s time now to talk about German directness.
Why are Germans blunt?
What someone perceives as bluntness from a German person is more of a cultural misunderstanding than an impolite behavior. There is no room for ambiguity in German communication; they say exactly what they mean because they value directness and honesty. Of course, they don’t mean to be rude and rarely notice the impact of their directness on people from other cultures. Mr. S. probably wouldn’t recognize himself in my earlier story. If he did, he wouldn’t see anything wrong with his behavior.
According to Edward T. Hall, a late American cross-cultural researcher, “The German language is much more literal than English. This means Germans are conditioned from early childhood to be exact in the meaning of words.”
I first learned German at school in France, and I became fluent after moving to the country. In my first job, my German boss always asked me to rewrite her emails because she knew they were too rude for French managers. The first time I did, she was really excited about my work and loved my more temperate tone.
In Doing Business with Germans, Sylvia Schroll-Machl explains that “A clear question gets a clear answer . . . Germans consider this to be the most honest, straightforward, authentic, and believable way to behave.”
Plus, besides honesty, Germans highly appreciate efficiency. Being direct just saves them time!
Of course, I have to quote Adam Fletcher’s hilarious book How to be German. Fletcher doesn’t explain if Germans are blunt or not, but he concedes that “Once you’ve practiced regularly getting to the point, you may find the way to be short very enjoyable.”
How should you deal with German directness?
Don’t take it personally; it’s just the way Germans are. Think about their bluntness as a type of goal-oriented behavior. They say what they want, what they think, and how they feel. Period.
In Germany, my husband got scolded for mowing our lawn on Sunday. Another time, a foreigner rang to ask why my son was crying so loud, as she could hear him from the street. A colleague once told me I was wrong to go back to work while my child was only a few months old since the child would turn into a criminal. My list could go on and on. The point is that almost all Germans act similarly. Some will be nicer and ask you with a smile not to mow on Sunday. Others will lecture you about why Sunday is the Lord’s Day when everyone should rest.
Avoid hasty generalizations!
Germans have been export champions for years. In that time, they have collected a lot of experience by working with foreigners in or outside of Germany. I know many direct Germans who don’t fit into the “rude” category. They are well-behaved, curious, and aware of their bad reputation. They can make small talk and work on establishing a relationship.
Believe me, many Germans are direct, but not all Germans are rude.
If you’d like to read more about German bluntness, you can check out these books:
Photo credit by Jan H. Andersen
Yes. That’s how it is. We’ve been that way for centuries. Even though my folks left there before Germany was even a thing, they act like modern “Germans” in many ways.
I think we’re even more direct than those folks, actually. Old Saxon coldness for you.
Take care.
I’ve often heard tell of German rudeness, but to be perfectly honest they are the farthest from being rude of the various cultures I have experienced. I have lived in 4 countries on 3 continents, travelled many places. America is the worst of all for arrogance, rudeness and poor communication and comprehension skills. Many of those who behave pleasantly can become savages the very instant you stray from their accepted views. Various Latin American countries were far worse. The Middle East is not a very savoury place to be, and that’s putting it mildly. When I see people complain of German bluntness/rudeness, I often see people who simply can’t handle hearing something they don’t like. Yes, there are generally rude Germans, but are they particularly rude as a culture? Definitely not. I think the molly coddled cultures further West need to toughen up.
It’s just a different concept of what type of behavior is rude and what constitutes a breach of personal privacy.
By using loud machinery on a Sunday and thus not respecting your neighbors’ right to a peaceful, stress-free day off work, YOU were being rude! (And also breaking local town rules, most likely. Be glad your neighbors just told you to stop instead of calling the police on you for “Ruhestörung”.) Have some empathy and respect for other people’s needs.
And the woman who asked about your son was probably genuinely worried. Beating your children is illegal in Germany. In my experience (Northeastern German, middle class suburban upbringing), it takes A LOT of worry until people will actually poke their noses into your private life. I’ve been annoyed by babies screaming for hours on end in my neighbor’s garden plenty of times (seriously, at least take the kid inside so only you are unable to concentrate, not everyone in a 500 m radius – some of us are trying to work from home or have to study!) and another neighbor used to scold their son literally every time I heard them speak in their garden, for 20 years, making me worry for the poor boy. But, other than taking a quick look through an upstairs window to make sure the baby hadn’t been left alone, I’ve never bothered these neighbors about these issues because child rearing (unlike using loud machinery during rest hours) is personal business and therefor not a place to meddle in lightly. Even if your kid misbehaves loudly in public (e.g. the train or the supermarket), you will get the stink-eye from everyone around you, but they will not say anything.
Though perhaps this is handled differently in West Germany. They have a reputation to be more conrontational neighbors (though the scolding neighbor is the kind of antisocial a-hole who keeps scolding us everytime he sees us, ever since my father died and his son moved out, and he keeps throwing garbage over the fence and has broken into our garden to fell some of our trees, and even sued us once; that is not normal behavior here, however – the guy clearly has some serious mental issues) and, possibly more importantly, Eastern Germany has had a bad history with people spying on their neighbors/colleagues and the government trying to control children’s upbringing and basically brainwash them through school/kindergarden and afterschool activities, so we don’t necessarily enforce social laws in a peer-pressure way. The worst insult here isn’t calling someone a “traitor” against some authority/group or “unpatriotic”, but rather to call them a “snitch” who rats out someone to an authority figure.
(As a result I find it quite odd when I see in US television series how extremely involved schools and teachers are in their students’ lives and moral education. Disciplinary measures from the school, even just detention, were almost unheard of when I was going through the school system (starting in 1989, though I primarily just remember highschool). As was this pressure to join some after-school club activity I see in America, especially regarding sports. And nobody of the students who weren’t members of the one sports club we did have (lady’s volleyball) was expected to care about the team or their championships – American “pep rallies” look so utterly weird and vaguely creepy to me. I think they wouldn’t even have had the teachers to spare for that kind of thing – as it was, they barely managed to go a day without any classes cancelled because the teacher called in sick, since there were no substitute teachers. And my highschool may have had a rule that said your parents get a letter if you miss 10 classes per semester without a letter from a doctor, and you might get kicked out if it’s more than 14, but they never bothered to punish me in any way for the over 20 missing classes per semester I acrued when I was 16 or 17 because I had trouble getting up in the morning – mainly because it wasn’t significantly affecting my grades. Mind you, I was attending a Gymnasium – the highschool types not meant to prepare you for university might have been more strict about this sort of thing. Talking to a teacher about problems not relating directly to my education would never even have occurred to me as a teenager. And I was very weirded out when one (West-German-born) teacher was telling me to stop being a grouchy wallflower at the class Christmas party “just” because my parents had just told me they wanted to get a divorce – after all, many of the other kids had divorced parents. Like, lady, how is that even any of your business?! Essentially, the attitude is: School is for learning facts and skills; ethics and behavioral management are your parents’ job, and no-one else’s.
(This may have changed a little in more recent years. Apparently they’ve introduced a dedicated “Ethics, Lifestyles, and Religions” class that is now mandatory for 2 years, to make the formerly completely religion-free East German school system more similar to the West German systems, where Catholic/Protestant classes are a thing in normal, state-run schools. East Germany is famously “the most godless place on Earth” (52% atheists who never set foot inside a church, even if a good percentage of them may still be registered members of the Protestant congregation out of gratitude for the support the church gave to the revolutionaries in the 80s and because church tax is an easy way to give to charity, and almost all of the rest, especially people under 40, are apathetic agnostics for whom religion just never comes up in their lives; I knew exactly 3 other kids in school whose family actually went to church on Christmas, though the kids themselves weren’t believers or at least not ever talking about it, plus one goth girl dabbling in paganism; the only people who seriously care about religion here are some of the rural elderly and Muslim immigrants), so we get the secular humanist version of social/religious indoctrination now. I and most of my class even got the secular humanist version of a confirmation ceremony at puberty, where there was a one-time ethics lecture and a few books gifted to us – but that was organized by the parents, not the school.
A 100% German comment! Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts Vivi
By using loud machinery on a sunday and this not respecting your neighbors’ right to a peaceful, stress-free day off work, YOU were being rude! (And also breaking local town rules, most likely. Be glad your neighbors just told you to stop instead of calling the police on you for “Ruhestörung”.) Have some empathy and respect for other people’s needs.
And the woman who asked about your son was probably genuinely worried. Beating your children is illegal in Germany. In my experience (Northeastern German, middle class suburban upbringing), it takes A LOT of worry until people will actually poke their noses into your private life. I’ve been annoyed by babies screaming for hours on end in my neighbor’s garden plenty of times (seriously, at least take the kid inside so only you are unable to concentrate, not everyone in a 500 m radius – some of us are trying to work from home or have to study!) and another neighbor used to scold their son literally every time I heard them speak in their garden, for 20 years, making me worry for the poor boy. But, other than taking a quick look through an upstairs window to make sure the baby hadn’t been left alone, I’ve never bothered these neighbors about these issues because child rearing (unlike using loud machinery during rest hours) is personal business and therefor not a place to meddle in lightly. Even if your kid misbehaves loudly in public (e.g. the train or the supermarket), you will get the stink-eye from everyone around you, but they will not say anything.
Though perhaps this is handled differently in West Germany. They have a reputation to be more conrontational neighbors (though the scolding neighbor is the kind of antisocial a-hole who keeps scolding us everytime he sees us, ever since my father died and his son moved out, and he keeps throwing garbage over the fence and has broken into our garden to fell some of our trees, and even sued us once; that is not normal behavior here, however – the guy clearly has some serious mental issues) and, possibly more importantly, Eastern Germany has had a bad history with people spying on their neighbors/colleagues and the government trying to control children’s upbringing and basically brainwash them through school/kindergarden and afterschool activities, so we don’t necessarily enforce social laws in a peer-pressure way. The worst insult here isn’t calling someone a “traitor” against some authority/group or “unpatriotic”, but rather to call them a “snitch” who rats out someone to an authority figure.
(As a result I find it quite odd when I see in US television series how extremely involved schools and teachers are in their students’ lives and moral education. Disciplinary measures from the school, even just detention, were almost unheard of when I was going through the school system (starting in 1989, though I primarily just remember highschool). As was this pressure to join some after-school club activity I see in America, especially regarding sports. And nobody of the students who weren’t members of the one sports club we did have (lady’s volleyball) was expected to care about the team or their championships – American “pep rallies” look so utterly weird and vaguely creepy to me. I think they wouldn’t even have had the teachers to spare for that kind of thing – as it was, they barely managed to go a day without any classes cancelled because the teacher called in sick, since there were no substitute teachers. And my highschool may have had a rule that said your parents get a letter if you miss 10 classes per semester without a letter from a doctor, and you might get kicked out if it’s more than 14, but they never bothered to punish me in any way for the over 20 missing classes per semester I acrued when I was 16 or 17 because I had trouble getting up in the morning – mainly because it wasn’t significantly affecting my grades. Mind you, I was attending a Gymnasium – the highschool types not meant to prepare you for university might have been more strict about this sort of thing. Talking to a teacher about problems not relating directly to my education would never even have occurred to me as a teenager. And I was very weirded out when one (West-German-born) teacher was telling me to stop being a grouchy wallflower at the class Christmas party “just” because my parents had just told me they wanted to get a divorce – after all, many of the other kids had divorced parents. Like, lady, how is that even any of your business?! Essentially, the attitude is: School is for learning facts and skills; ethics and behavioral management are your parents’ job, and no-one else’s.
(This may have changed a little in more recent years. Apparently they’ve introduced a dedicated “Ethics, Lifestyles, and Religions” class that is now mandatory for 2 years, to make the formerly completely religion-free East German school system more similar to the West German systems, where Catholic/Protestant classes are a thing in normal, state-run schools. East Germany is famously “the most godless place on Earth” (52% atheists who never set foot inside a church, even if a good percentage of them may still be registered members of the Protestant congregation out of gratitude for the support the church gave to the revolutionaries in the 80s and because church tax is an easy way to give to charity, and almost all of the rest, especially people under 40, are apathetic agnostics for whom religion just never comes up in their lives; I knew exactly 3 other kids in school whose family actually went to church on Christmas, though the kids themselves weren’t believers or at least not ever talking about it, plus one goth girl dabbling in paganism; the only people who seriously care about religion here are some of the rural elderly and Muslim immigrants), so we get the secular humanist version of social/religious indoctrination now. I and most of my class even got the secular humanist version of a confirmation ceremony at puberty, where there was a one-time ethics lecture and a few books gifted to us – but that was organized by the parents, not the school.
Germans being blunt is a misconception…the proper word should be obnoxious. Trying to get a straightforward answer in Germany is as rare as hen’s teeth. Germans generally babble in some convoluted cryptic fashion.
The only time Germans are direct is when they are criticizing. And it’s a one way street. Germans can dish it out but if a foreigner has the audacity to point out that they’re wrong, they’ll throw a hissy fit like a six year old girl who dropped her lollipop.
The reason that Germans are hands off parents who he Dr teach their children manners. I have a friend who constantly brags of how much better mannered his children are than mine because mine are loud…which in reality means not sullen and morose.
And yet, when his children have come to my house, they’ve never thanked me for the meals I’ve cooked them or for having them over. I served one of his children homemade spaghetti and meatballs. The only thing he said to me was, “WHERE’S MY FORK!” The parents said nothi g to reprimand him. My children would never be rude like thzt but you can be certain if they did, that plate of food would have disappeared from under their nose.
This isn’t an isolated example. In general, Germans have horrible manners and don’t teach their children anything but leise (quiet). So, they grow up to be quiet and mumble obnoxious things.
I’ve been directly called fat many times. I’m 5′ 10″ and about 165#s. I’m not even fat. But even if I were, that’s not direct…thats rude…who asked you.
And it’s regional…the further north and east you go, the more obnoxious the people get. We actually moved South and West away from my wife’s hometown because we didn’t want our children growing up around so many miserable rude people.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience in Germany. It looks like you have a hard time there.
actually one of the things you mention here about German correcting others for mowing the lawn etc – is not about direct communication – it is about the propensity of many Germans to think they know better – and thus tell you so – as soon as they think you or anyone else have done something wrong – I have been amazed at how inefficient they can be when stuck n this point – so many act as self appointed keepers of the rules – and if they are in another country with different rules – it doesnt matter – the German culltural rules they have brought with them are the best rules in their opinion – this is more like arrogance than directness to me, esp in a country like the USA which is busy going in the opposite direction – where there is antagonism to rules, even laws – the law is whatever your cultural group thinks it should be – as long as you arent atheists or commies!
Interesting point of view Kara as there are certainly arrogant Germans outside. Same with the American tendency to oversell everything which is perceived – among non Americans – as arrogant. You point out to their rule loving behavior, and it’s true d that they don’t question the rule!
thGermans are certainly not all direct – like all stereotypes this one should be used only as a very rough guide – having worked there – bluntness was NOT a way to work in the office – and recently a German lectured me as to how Saturday is the Lord’s day and all the other Christians are wrong to celebrate it on Sunday, because the Bible says Saturday.
LOL!!!
I like when people are blunt (saves a lot of time!). Not to the point of being rude, but being clear and direct especially in a business context is something I appreciate. In my personal life, I’ve noticed that the French are less blunt. If my mother-in-law wants me to do something differently, she’ll say “Oh shouldn’t you wash the floor like this?” and I’ll just tell her no. But if she had said something more direct like, “You should do it like this. It’s more efficient,” I’d probably have been more receptive. Maybe I’m more like the Germans 😉
Maybe you are one of the 50 million Americans who claims German heritage?
My mother-in-law (the sweetest person one can imagine!) would never say anything like this. I remember her one day talking with husband “You know Jean, if you think the other way is better, why don’t you try yourself? I would be glad to give you the responsibility back.” This was the rudest thing I ever heard from her and my husband was so stunned that he immediately stopped talking!
Catherine,
thanks to you I have a new appreciation for German bluntness, when and if I see it in action. Up until just now when I read your blog, I had the conception that Germans, out of every other culture in the world, were the most blunt, even about quite delicate subjects like while looking at “human remains” (the way I would say it). Up until tonight, the only example I have had of the German tendency to speak bluntly without smiling came from Sprockets on Saturday Night Live. The host of the Sprocket show could well be your daugher’s teacher, Mr. S., except for the host’s very inappropriate BLUNT vocabulary (He says exactly what he means. No euphemisms.) Go ahead and Google “Sprockets on Saturday Night Live” and select the video titled “Germany’s most disturbing videos” from all the choices that pop up. CAUTION: Short clips are shown of German videos competing for the title of “most disturbing”. THE.NARRATOR.DOES.NOT.MINCE.WORDS. He does NOT say “human remains” as I would say here in America. He says CORPSE. This video from Sprockets is not for the faint of heart. In a very exaggerated way, it completely illustrates what you have written about! Thank you, Catherine, for blending the niceties of the French with the admirable direct nature of the Germans in all you do. I LOVE that you say what you mean and mean what you say (GERMAN part of you) and I LOVE that you smile and know how to say the truth to me in very gentle ways (FRENCH part of you).
What a wonderful parody of German humor!!
Did you mean this one?
http://dai.ly/x9p5ey