Comments on German and American Culture and Society
#17 Order must be
Maybe you get the point - Ordnung muss sein! - is not easy to translate. The closest thing in the U.S. would be "Get your sh*t together." And so the intercultural headaches start: the German maxim is very impersonal, the American directive highly personal. The latter is a command, in other words, an order. This raises the question of our relationship to authority.
Order is our response to the existential threat of chaos. Life is unpredictable, and we seem very unhappy about that, so we create some sort of master-matrix that we want to place everything in. Order is a concept, something in our minds, but which we also try to discover on the outside.
Life has not always been an easy game in Germany. Numerous, horrible wars, currency reforms, and fundamental changes of the political state have left Germans with a deep need for order and security. The sense of order that Germans have found, especially in the course of the 20th century, is one that is often abstract and impersonal. This can easily conflict with the more personal American sense of order.
It's not just that Germans so eagerly refer to rules, regulations, and principles as if quoting the bible. To my American mind, in the early years of my living here, the effect was often something like, "But Mama says..." I didn't realize it then, but I was rebellious and exasperated by the impersonal, implied authority of Ordnung.
Americans, bewildered by what may seem a kind of religious worship, should never take this personally. Bear in mind that Ordnung is the collective result of a long and difficult history. Germans, on the other hand, would do well to explain the rules more thoroughly and clarify interests on both sides. Remember that Americans are habitually tuned to radio station WIIFM: What's In It For Me.
Independance day, Reunion day
structure, efficiency
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