With a well-calculated and redundant Freut mich, dich wieder zu sehen!, Nice to see you again!,, two German friends meet after a long time. They both have the same expression and behave exactly as they should. It’s summer, birds are chirping, and both have a polite yet artificial expressio, like a woman posing for a toothpaste commercial. Not a word or gesture out of place.
I, an invisible spectator sitting in a corner smoking a cigarette, feel an unsettling contrast within me: it’s as if I’m split in two. One part of me thinks everything is perfect, but another part senses that it’s too perfect. Something is missing, but I don’t know what.
This was a feeling I had for a long time after moving to Berlin, and only years later did I manage to understand what the “problem” was. I was finally able to put it into words and, as a result, free myself from a burden.
Once, while talking to a German girl, she told me that her parents, one way or another, pushed her to leave home. She was still very young, not even twenty, when she had to move out. And shortly after her departure, her room had already been turned into a living room. Translation: she was no longer welcome. I smiled with a hint of melancholy, thinking of my mother, who still happily makes my bed, or my grandmother, who couldn’t wait to fatten me up like a turkey, knowing I would eventually return home.
You might say: Yes, but this attitude is a double-edged sword and has created a society of overgrown children! I agree. But knowing that there is someone who loves you and who, no matter what, is ready to welcome you back (within reason) gives you strength and security. Unless you have a very low IQ. And like everything else, love needs to be balanced. But that’s another story.
As I was saying, German society is one that forcefully places rules and social functions ahead of direct empathy. This is why almost everything has always functioned almost perfectly, at least until recently (but that’s yet another story).
Germans tend to follow implicit behavioral norms that make social life smoother and more efficient but also incredibly dull. For example, if a German sits in a restaurant and picks up the menu, it’s very rare for them to want a dish that’s not listed. I’ve come to believe this happens because a German sees the menu not as a suggestion but as a set of pre-optimized choices designed for the functioning of a specific system, perhaps because they perceive their own life as a system. Asking for something different would mean disturbing the established order, wasting the chef’s and waiter’s time, and slowing down the entire mechanism.
This realization hit me one of my first years living in Berlin when I worked at a restaurant downtown. I once served a table of Italian guys, specifically Neapolitans. While one of them struggled to decide which pizza to order, the others were cracking jokes, both implicit and explicit, that made us laugh and, consequently, made me lose time at work. The restaurant was full, and tables needed to turn over quickly to keep the system running. In the end, since no pizza satisfied him, the guy started making up his own combination, mixing ingredients from different pizzas (or maybe he did it on purpose and just wanted to keep talking to me, but we’ll never know).
Moral of the story: serving that table made me lose about fifteen minutes between laughter, special requests, and jokes. Then I lost another ten minutes explaining to the German pizza chef how to make that blessed pizza, who, being as German as ever, nearly had a breakdown at the thought of adding four basil leaves instead of three.
That’s when I thought: Oh my god—if everyone did this, this job would be complete chaos! And with that, I probably found my answer as to why Germany is boring but works better than Italy. It’s not a matter of intelligence, actually, quite the opposite: having a mind set on autopilot mode, Germans have less creativity, which is a sign of intelligence. Their behaviors fit perfectly into pre-set boxes, making everything run more smoothly.
This autopilot mode works wonderfully in the workplace. In fact, I will always be grateful to this country for teaching me organization, order, and precision. But when you realize that this way of thinking is so deeply ingrained that it carries over into relationships, then it becomes a problem. Sacrificing emotions in the name of discipline when it comes to human interactions is like wearing a fake jewel that only shines from a distance. If you get too close, especially for someone who grew up in a warm and welcoming land like mine, you get a lump in your throat.
A similar scenario was masterfully described by Thomas Mann in his novel Buddenbrooks, which tells the story of a German family obsessed with public image and maintaining their social status, obsessed with behaving exactly as one should. This obsession inevitably led them to suppress emotions and desires that could damage their reputation in society’s eyes. But in the end, this repression harmed their happiness more than their social status. The youngest son, a highly sensitive artist unable to adapt to the rigid rules imposed by his family, eventually fell ill and died.
The life lesson from this story is that the inability to fully express emotions builds a seemingly solid society, but one that is extremely fragile and unhappy. Many Germans appear efficient and disciplined, but in the end, they seem incapable of forming deep and authentic connections.
That I’m observing a general cultural phenomenon seems obvious and doesn’t need to be pointed out: I’ve met extraordinary, incredibly intelligent, and even empathetic Germans (unbelievable!). But after ten years in Germany, I have to admit that they are very few, and that’s a real pity.
Anyway, after many years, I’ve finally managed to decipher my discomfort when witnessing a behavior that seems altruistic yet detached, a kindness that is more of a social norm than true emotional involvement.
So, the myth of Germany as a paradise was, indeed, just a myth. But no one ever had the courage to say it.
